Ever since I moved into this apartment in the beginning of 2012, there has been a rather large pile of boxes taking up approximately one third of the floor space in my bedroom, full of things I had haphazardly packed away at one point or another for the last 15 years or so. I say 15 because the oldest thing I found with a definite date on it was from 1999. There were certainly things in there older than that, but they could have migrated there at any point, so it’s hard to say exactly how long they’ve been there. It’s been bugging me for quite some time that I had such a large number of mismatched boxes, some of them not particularly in good shape. When I first moved in, I actually went and purchased several plastic bins, with the full intention of consolidating the contents of those boxes either into those bins, or into the trash, depending on whether or not I thought it was worth keeping. Needless to say, I tend to leave things alone if they’re not actively causing a problem, so those boxes and those bins sat there for far too long, mostly out of the way, but still needlessly taking up space. Earlier last week I decided that this weekend is when I would finally attempt to tackle the dreaded box pile, if only to clear up the floor space so that I could put my futon there, and move my clothes dresser somewhere closer to where I do my laundry. Plus, who knew what I might find in those boxes? Well, now I do know:
- 2 plungers of CPU thermal compound.
- Credit card offer from Citi, dated late 2005.
- An old, unopened box of checks, addressed to my younger brother, from a bank he does not remember ever having an account with.
- Many, many old college textbooks, homework assignments, and exams.
- Old pay stubs from when I worked in the college cafeteria sophomore year, some unopened.
- A refund check from the college, dated late 2005, unopened. I remember having to call about this because I thought it had been lost. I guess technically it had been.
- An unopened Christmas card from *1997*, from my great grandparents, both of whom passed away some time ago. I can’t bring myself to open it now, so it remains unopened.
- The shipping receipt to my very first cellphone, circa late 2004.
- A receipt from Silvermine Subs, dated early 2005, still mostly legible.
- A handwritten tax return from 1999, the second one I ever filed.
- The box for a graphics card I purchased in 2005, with a couple of adapters still inside.
- An old PS/2 Belkin keyboard with a missing Z key.
- Two “awards” I got when working at McMurdo during the 2001-2002 austral summer season: Most Annoying Music, and Longest Breaks.
- Install discs for several PC games, including: Baldur’s Gate 2 + Expansion, Planetside, Everquest: Ruins of Kunark (with the cloth map!), Descent 3 + Expansion, Rainbow Six: Rogue Spar, Alien vs Predator Gold, Serious Sam: The First Encounter + The Second Encounter, Unreal, Unreal Tournament, Thief Platinum Edition, Clans (which I’ve never played or heard of, not sure how I ended up with it), Knights and Merchants, Starcraft + Expansion, Warcraft III + Expansion, and Planescape: Torment.
- An old Blizzard Product Catalog, proudly announcing that Starcraft: Ghost is “Coming Soon”.
- Donkey Kong Land and Tetris DX for the Game Boy (Color)
- An old dice bag that I used to carry my Game Boy Color in my coat pocket without scratching the screen on the zipper.
- A Game Boy Advance link cable, unopened but the packaging is slightly bent.
- Bleemcast for Gran Turismo 2 (I never owned GT2, so I’m not sure why I have this…)
- Mega Man X4 case without the disc in it. 🙁
- A homework assignment for my freshman year college roommate, for his “Intro to Computer Engineering” course. Hi Jorge! Hope you didn’t need that…
- A butter knife.
- Three AA batteries, expired 2010.
- 63 cents.
- Several New Zealand coins.
- Lots of medical records, none of them particularly important.
- A copy of Beverly Hills Cop III that I thought I had shipped back to Netflix and reported as such. Guess I might as well watch it again before sending it back.
- $20 gift card for Target.
- A copy of a Hi and Lois strip printed on glossy paper. (Uh… definitely not mine.)
- A set of drill bits. I don’t own a drill. I suppose I might as well go buy one now.
- A pair of boots so old that as soon as I tried to pick them up the completely solidified rubber cracked and crumbled in my fingers.
- Three pairs of work gloves.
- An empty wooden picture frame.
- A battery powered pencil sharpener.
- Lots and lots of old clothes, a good portion of which will likely end up getting donated if they’re intact. I even found a Rockies shirt that I used as a night shirt when I was 9, which would make it older than my sister.
- A radio alarm clock that I first got when I was 7 years old and apparently still works. (See bottom of the post.)
- Quite possibly the most pretentious thing I’ve ever written in my life, I blame the philosophy course I was taking at the time. Maybe I’ll transcribe and post it here later.
- A CD containing, among other things, chat logs from 1999, a picture of me half asleep in the back of my dad’s car while on the top of Mt. Evans, and a bunch of MIDI music.
- Another CD containing acoustic guitar music done by my older brother.
- An old “poetry” book from my senior year high school Improv class. I might post some entries from that, as well.
- The key to the room I was staying in when I worked at McMurdo Station. 13 years ago. Surprised I never got charged for a missing key or anything like that…
Hotel California, Building 166, Room 104.