I’m really mining this category and my messy desk this autumn, as I did one of these posts in August. But here are five things on my desk (and, likely, were also on my desk in August and might even be on my desk the next time I write up one of these):
- An inscribed copy of John Donnelly’s Gold.
I sent this to a long-time (coming up on 10 years) client five years ago after my beautiful wife consulted with him about owning a startup. I mailed it to New York, but I found this used copy listed in LA. And I did order it.
- Part of an IPad case.
Shortly after starting my new job, I grabbed one of my wife’s extra gaming IPads for testing a mobile app. After a little while, it stopped charging, and I took it out of its case to troubleshoot it. The case has the rubber outer wrapper and a hard plastic shell that fits inside the rubber. I have the rubber part on my desk as well as the revived after a hard restart IPad, but not the plastic parts. I wonder where those are.
- A laptop hard drive.
When I decommission laptops (and desktops), I strip out the hard drives and chips to destroy and to make magnets. However, I have not decommissioned a laptop in years. So how is it that this hard drive remains on my desk. Well, either it’s so small that it slips under other things or I had it in some cubby and took it out to take it to the garage for destruction. But it’s still here.
Brian J., is that the hard drive from the laptop you made into a mirror? I cannot rule it out.
- A platter made into a clock.
A number of years ago, my go-to craft was buying individual plates and platters at garage sales, drilling/punching a hole in the center, and putting clock movements into them. I created a number of them; this one actually has numbers on it. One of my best. We had it on the wall downstairs by the bar for a number of years, but when my mother-in-law downsized this year, one of her wall clocks displaced the living room wall clock, which in turn displaced this one. So it’s been on my desk for a couple of months, only drawing notice when something gets stacked on it and its movement makes loud, frustrated ticks without tocks.
- A couple of stray spoons.
In my previous accounting post, I mentioned in passing having a bag of spoons on my desk (although this was in an update to a previous FTomD post). I have moved the spoons back into storage, but these two were under some filing and did not make it into the new Ziploc bag.
Now that they’re uncovered, perhaps I’ll get around to having them rejoin their brethren.
So, how about the things mentioned in August? Of the five things in the bulleted list, only the Time magazine has moved to the closet. The Holly Hobbie cup, the face paint, the pillow cover, and the water fowl calls are still here. The spoons, as I mentioned, have been put into the storeroom again for another decade or so. And I mentioned in passing a necklace that needed repair–which I fixed once I thought maybe the two strands ending in jump rings maybe should be connected.
So I’d like to think I’m making some slow progress in cleaning my desk, but mostly I’m making blog posts about it.
