Ah, gentle reader, it has been over a year since I’ve done such a post (the last being December 2022). But I have taken a couple of steps of cleaning my desk, thwarted a little by digging around in my closet/kind of cleaning out my closet by putting things on my desk when looking for a laptop charger. So now, in addition to several things mentioned in December 2022, I have enough other things to make a whole bit of content this morning.
So, what do I have on my desk for now and what will seem like always?
A Swiss bayonet.
I received this from my mother-in-law when she downsized almost two years ago. For a long time, it resided in a box in the garage. We still have several boxes of things we received from her on the floor in the garage, records in boxes under the desk in the parlor, and boxes of books in my closet to move onto my to-read shelves when I make space. But at some point when I took small steps to clean the garage, I brought this bayonet into my office intending to put it on my office wall with the other bladed weapons. But I merely stacked it with the practice martial arts weapons on the books atop the bookshelves until I got around to hanging it.
Well, gentle reader, the kittens (who are young cats now) have knocked the bayonet down a couple of times, including once when I was squatting by the bookshelves looking for something to read (the kitten missed me, but not by much). After the last time they knocked it down, I put it on my desk until I get around to hanging it. Which has been a week already.
A digital photo frame.
This has been hanging around in my closet for some time, and I got it out when I was looking for the laptop power cord. I got this around 2006, so its little micro SD card still has photos of my first son as an infant. I had it on my desk the last time that I had a desk in an office downtown. After that job, I’ve worked from home, so for many years, I’ve had him around in real life, so I have not needed a photo frame.
I am not sure what I will do with it. I don’t have a handy outlet to put it on my current work desk–they’re all full of device power cords and whatnot. Maybe I will look for the dongle for updating the SD card and load it up with family photos for my beautiful wife who does have an office these days.
A stack of handwritten or clipped recipes.
This stack also comes from my mother-in-law’s downsizing–we received all of her recipes collected over decades, primarily in the 1960s through the 1980s. When my wife culled what she might try from the pile, I gathered some that I thought I’d use for découpage. They ended up in a stack on my desk, and then in a stack under another stack atop the computers under the desk, and then back atop the desk after I sorted some things on my desk. At least I think they’re paper for projects. I will have my wife review them again to see if I mistakenly grabbed some she wanted before I glue them to anything.
A tape measure.
One of my tape measures. What did I measure, and when? I don’t remember. Normally, I’m not measuring anything large down here. I have a pen holder that contains some tools, screwdrivers and pliers, because I sometimes work on little things or electronics at the desk. And I have a small wooden ruler, undoubtedly purchased as part of back-to-school supplies lists, for small measurements. Maybe I brought the tape measure when the ruler was lost behind or below other things. Only time will tell when I take it out to the garage where it belongs.
A stack of handwritten or clipped recipes.
A couple of old inspirational quotes. Twenty-five years ago, I was prone to taping these things to CRTs above my 286 or my sainted mother’s 486 (in those days, young reader, commodity computers were desktops, and you put the CRT monitor atop the sturdy metal computer case). One is a handwritten Mark Twain quote from The Prince and the Pauper, which I read (and probably quoted) in college. The second is a Teddy Roosevelt quote about the man in the arena which has become somewhat common on the Internet.
I can’t imagine the last time they were taped to a monitor or the desk hutch. I expect that I had them in a folder or on one of the file organizers on my desk but they came out when rearranging/sorting the desk.
They’re simple bits of paper, but I’m not sure why I cannot discard them. Perhaps because they’re personal relics now.
So what about the items from 2022? Are they still on my desk?
- The dreamGEAR MyArcade DGUN-2561 hand-held electronic game? Nope; sometime in the year that has passed, I got it put onto the wall with the other electronic games.
- The Toys for Tots stickers? Nope; I have discarded them as well as the others that I have received in the interim. Although I think I have a couple of more durable Toys for Tots tchotchkes addressed to my mother up in the hutch.
- The pocket Declaration of Independence and Constitution? Yeah, but it’s getting closer to the end of the desk. I am not sure what to do with it; I don’t expect to put it onto the to-read shelves and read it (I actually have other volumes of the founding documents). Now that I think of it, I’ll put it aside and drop it on the church free book cart or the Little Free Library in Battlefield since I’m doing that now.
- Signed CD and note from Jane Monheit? I put the CD onto the stacks of CDs in the hutch probably shortly after the post, but I just recently as part of cleaning the desk put the note into a little binder of autographed memorabilia that I’ve received from artists when ordering from their Web sites directly. So nope, but just barely.
- The photos of me as a ring-bearer (and the photo of Gimlet’s daughter)? Actually, I am pretty sure I just recently put these into the unsorted box of memorabilia in the closet. And by just, I mean when cleaning my desk in January or when I tore apart the closet for the laptop cord.
So that’s only 20% I am getting better.
And as to previous editions, it looks like only the laptop hard drive from October 2022 remain on my desk, although to be honest, it was only with the January cleaning that I put the remaining stray spoons (noted in October 2022) into the bag of my mother’s spoon collection (noted on my desk in February 2014) which has been relegated to the store room again as polishing the spoons was proving very time consuming indeed. I bought a spoon display case whilst Christmas shopping in, what, 2021? wherein I polished a couple of the spoons and put them into the case, but it was too small to display them nicely (the vertical alignment was too short for the spoons) and it would not have held them all anyway. I have bought another one while Christmas shopping last year which holds the eight spoons I polished (and need to polish again probably). Perhaps I’ll get that bag of spoons to work on them again. Or at least to post about them again in 2027.
Also on my desk: A bag of the Christmas cards we received in 2019. Presumably, they were in the closet, and I got them out to put them in the store room with the others. I’ve been thinking about trimming the fronts off of the stock cards as one of our church’s ministries is creating cards to send for sympathy and to shut-ins. Every once in a while, they put a call in the bulletin asking for cards, but I never hop on it when I see that in the bulletin.
NOT on my desk: The 2023 Christmas cards, which I bagged up after taking them down this year. When packaging them, though, I found the 2022 cards under a pile of “I don’t know where to file this” filing on the other desk in my office. So the bag is labeled 2022/2023 Christmas cards as I’m not sure which year the individual cards arrived. That bag, though, made it to the store room. I think.
Also not on or under my desk: A couple of pillows whose stuffing had gotten balled up with repeated washings. I replaced the batting in them, but I ran into some difficulty sewing them up and asked my beautiful wife if she could. That was probably a year ago. They remained under the desk until I sewed them up yesterday with another bit of unprofessional mending. Because somehow, a needle appeared on my desk. So they’re out of the way. The Marine Corps pillow I mentioned in August 2022? To be honest, I don’t know where that is now. It is quite likely that it is somewhere near the desk even now. And given how I am now a sewer, maybe I will stuff that and give it to my brother.
Wow, that’s a lot of words on trivia. And, to be honest, at the end here, I don’t think how long these things remain on my desk is something to brag about.
But you all are welcome to start a pool as to what will be the first thing removed from my desk (I’d go with tape measure as I could feasibly take it to the garage when getting things to hang the bayonet on the wall) and which will remain the longest (I’d go with the quote cards).
