Sunday, April 20, 2008

Cleaning Out

We are doing some major remodeling at our office. We have closed one half of our office for remodeling, and moved people to the basement and the 12th floor during the work.

As I had to abandon my office, it was a great time to purge. I tossed tons of stuff and it was very liberating. Files that I hadn't used in years. Old 3/4 inch videotapes that I'll never view again. Files of clients that left us years ago. The landfill may hate me, but I feel a lot freer.

I've been thinking how that accumulation happens in a house. It really is just a natural process. The other day, I read an article talking about the high calorie count of some restaurant entrees. It did the math, and said even if you just eat that many extra calories by going to the restaurant once a month, over the course of a year you'd add XX amount of pounds...and XX amount of pounds in XX amount of years. Just one simple meal can add that much....a little like Elder Uchdorf saying that being one degree off when flying around the earth would get you off course by 500 miles.

How does that relate to home clutter? Well, we all save stuff, whether it's books we finished reading, art projects of kids, old tax records, etc. I don't know the number, but let's assume we naturally add another 100 pounds of stuff to house a year. (Not hard to assume if you include heavier purchases) In 20 years, that's ONE TON more stuff than when you moved in.

I guess my point is just the need to regularly and routinely have a purging process to simply stay at par. To avoid being overrun, you need to eliminate at least as much as you accumulate each year or else you're losing the war.

Wednesday, April 9, 2008

Notes from the Cruise

Well, sadly, it's now been a full month since our Caribbean Cruise launched. But I still have great memories of a nice relaxing week.

So what impressions remain in my head after being home for a month? Here's just a random few:

1. We're really 'Anytime Dining' people. That means you don't have a set time to go to dinner nor have an assigned table of dinner guests. Quite frankly, I sit through enough client dinners where I need to make small talk and pretend to be friendly that I don't need that on a cruise. (I know, I'm anti-social).

I liked the Grand Princess (which we took this time) better than the Caribbean Princess (which we took last time) because the "Anytime Dining" rooms had more personable "tables for two". I went on the cruise to become reacquainted to my spouse...and having private tables to have private discussions during dinner was AWESOME!

2. We were big fans of going down to the dining room for breakfast. Nothing wrong with the buffet, but we kind of liked having a "served" breakfast every morning.

3. On our first cruise out to St. Thomas and St. Maartin, it really felt like we were out in the middle of the ocean and far away from the world. This trip was kind of circumference of Cuba, so I kind of felt less isolated (unfortunately). I liked feeling like there's no civilization for miles around.

4. I like being entertained by a comedian! There's always a moment when you worry they may cross the line, but if they don't, it's so much fun. It's something I don't think I could do here in NYC...can't imagine there's a lot of "TV clean" comedians at the clubs. We also liked the comedian juggler.

5. As my brother and his wife were sailing on the same ship two weeks after we did, I set up a scavenger hunt on the boat to find certain words/letters, etc. It was actually a lot of fun for me! My favorite was sticking a business card in a Shakespeare book in the library....it was still there when he came to find it.