I haven't been taking more stuff out of my storage locker recently, partly because of the rainy days and partly because I can't easily get at more boxes until some other stuff, particularly furniture, is offloaded somewhere. But I have attacked some of the boxes I removed and going at it with a stern rule --- ``Is this something I can't live without? --- have managed to reduce five boxes to ... er ... one. With some stuff laying loose outside because it's things like yearbooks from high school and college, or is magazines. I'm very well-stocked on Starlog just in case there should ever be a time it's hard to find excerpts from Walter Koenig's Chekov's Enterprise, the englightening tale of what it was like making Star Trek: The Motion Picture. Or if I need to type in Speedscript 3.2 from Compute!'s Gazette again.
My stern ``can't live without'' standard didn't really hold up that firmly, but I think I've done fairly well and the garbage men are just going to have to accept that this week. Some of the things I've saved I'm glad I did, particularly things like the newsletter from middle school which I wrote and edited for, since I think it's reasonable to feel affection for some of the earliest words I wrote that other people thought was worth having yet more people reading. (Granted, there were not many people rejected for publication in the middle school newsletter, although I did have one news report suppressed in one of those many incidents that informed my general distrust of authority.) Others are complete mysteries: why would I have multiple copies of the newsletter for a high school I never attended and never set foot in except for a couple weeks one summer when my parents thought I could be gotten in shape if I were left there to work out in the gym for a couple hours?
I have come across a pleasant bundle of cards, though, including one from 
bunny_hugger a dozen years old and with new meaning to us both. I'm always reluctant to throw away cards and I'm glad I have these. I also find very many unclassifiable yet interesting tokens of life which make me think I should give in and take up scrapbooking already. Ticket stubs for a showing of Mouse Hunt I saw with chipuni and this other guy in 1998? Ridiculous to have the next century. Set in a photo album with other ticket stubs? Suddenly it becomes respectable. We shall see.
Trivia: Following the death of Pope Leo X in December 1521, the looting of the Vatican's treasures was thorough enough that the only candles available for lighting his coffin were half-used ones left over from a Cardinal's recent funeral. Source: The March Of Folly: From Troy To Vietnam, Barbara Tuchman.
Currently Reading: For Want Of A Nail: If Burgoyne Had Won At Saratoga, Robert Sobel. Just as with a real history book, I end up more fascinated with the asides in the footnotes. But it does feel like the first century after the American Rebellion was rushed through.