pens returned to car

the cleanup is being extended to the car as well. last night I noticed plenty of repair receipts in the glovebox, going back over a year. so I took them out and brought them inside. I also took out all of the pens as I wanted to test them. all four seem fine, so I returned two of them to the car in the afternoon. no need to have that many pens there, two is enough. and I ran the dust buster in the car while there. I got the lion's share of the residue out. no surprise how most of it was on the driver's side, as I rarely have passengers with me. in the back seat it picked up a peanut. it is a reminder of sometimes I eat in the car. after the dust buster went back inside, I went on a long walk and found 12 cents. I noticed that a vacant fast food outlet, closed two years ago, has been tagged with graffiti again. when this first happened, it was cleaned off.
   test scoring moved right along. we finished one prompt and moved on to another one. I wasn't pleased with how I did in the training set, it was a hard one. but the moderator said we had already qualified so not a big deal. I still need to enter the new bank account information. I was trading emails with HR about it since I didn't recall my password. I like knowing I don't have to present a voided check, as that is what I did when I started two years ago. as long as I get it done by the end of the week, it should be fine. I am still doing cleanup around the home, and at times it is during the lectures about test scoring. In the evening I ran the shredder and filled two more bags. there is more that I can do, as I am aware of how there are plenty of magazines in the closet. I no longer have any subscriptions as I didn't read them enough. of course I still need to do some research about where to get them recycled. sometimes I am mailed this information by the local government.

post-its and staples

in the course of the ongoing cleanup I am still finding plenty of useful things. this includes post-it notes and staples. I know that some of the post-its are from attending a 3M golf tournament many years ago. and now that I am back to test scoring these will get used more than they were. three of them are: a rounded star, a butterfly, and a lady saying she would rather be shopping. as for staples, I figured I was running out since I had been using so many. then I discovered another box, so I still have plenty to use. sometimes there are big gaps between my usage of them. there still might bemore great discoveries to be made. in the evening I ran the shredder and filled two more bags. I am still finding bags to use because I understood that most things were meant to be used. I did move one to the bag of food wrappers from foreign countries, it was from a Canadian drugstore.
   we did get into actual test scoring today, just before midday. I was able to get into our time card system, once I was reminded of what the password was there. it is the typical 'hard to remember' on things I haven't used in a while. or in my case, had hoped I wouldn't be in this role again but the other things I was doing didn't pan out. I did a long walk once the work day was done, and found 3 cents. and I picked up an e-bay order at the post office. odd that I had to go to the window, but it wouldn't fit inside the mailbox even though it was a postcard. then I saw the package and noticed there was cardboard protecting it, so this made more sense.

chip clips and lighters

this was day 2 of test scoring, but still mostly the moderator lecturing. so when working from home I decided to keep up the cleanup. and I found more chip clips, I have four. except I don't use them much. I am used to getting single-serve bags. some were given to me, like at a former job. one was not, as it was from the laura Ingalls wilder museum in walnut grove. so I probably bought that one. I found out I had two lighters as well. I checked both and there is fluid left in both. another item that I don't use much. still finding napkins as well, I know I wrote about this earlier. I think that most of them I am finding I had planned on keeping them as souvenirs of places I traveled to. but they were meant to be used! in the evening I ran the shredder, and two more bags were filled. a few things were added to the shred box today, sometimes just taking off a page here and there such as a Wikipedia article where there was little or nothing on the last page. and I am doing better at grouping things, such as finding more event tickets and getting them into a Ziploc sandwich bag. I have two of those for this purpose. and a third was created for the movie tickets, except those can be harder to read. when I found lines from the movie 'Good will hunting' printed twice, I lucked out and found both movie tickets when seeing it at the theater. and now both pages, and tickets, are in a sheet protector in a binder. two different scenes of lines from the movie- at the construction site, and with skylar when he says he doesn't love her. I keep getting ideas and I want to act on them and have the time to do so. I am also proud of finally re-purposing an item I had just un-earthed recently. it was a small can of pringles chips, a souvenir from visiting great Britain in 2012. it now holds binder clips. I have more of these in play now, due to going through boxes. there was also two articles about the band smashing pumpkins from 1996. I taped up the torn parts of one article and both are now in a sheet protector as well. one was from an award show, another was a review of a concert about a month later. not the one I attended, saw them in moline and it was a review of the ames show.
   there still wasn't much in terms of real work done today, but we did get to the training papers. I was pleased that I scored 9 out of 10 correctly. once the work day was done I did a long walk and found 6 cents. late in the evening I was able to redeem some survey points for airline miles. it was the first time in over 2 months. there was some system problem that didn't allow it on my own computer, so I went to a public one and it worked there. pleased that I tried again, as one never knows when the problem might be fixed. although I have no plans for flying anytime soon. I like seeing baseball games in the summer, but the season is on hold.

zulip chat

and now I am using another online tool I had never heard of until this 'virtual' phenomenon. it is the 'zulip' chat site. this is due to test scoring, which started earlier today. the first day was taking care of 'scripts' and we will get more into 'content training' on Tuesday. I had to call for tech support, then found out it was likely due to missing a letter in the link as to why I wasn't getting in. the moderator kept pointing out every so often how I logged on with video on, but once I was asked to turn it off, and I did right away, I had hoped to have heard the last of it. this was an honest mistake, who wants to keep hearing about it? we also played around with screen sharing, and one note I wrote down was truly how I felt. it means more to me when I am the one doing the task, instead of watching someone else. I signed a security agreement form at lunchtime, we were told the deadline was the end of the day. first time trying working remotely. early on one thing I did was close the blinds. I figured this would help with avoiding distractions.
   this was no doubt a day of transition as I was still doing a little cleanup, ideas I was still getting. in the evening I did run the paper shredder again, after a day off. I filled two more bags. I am still finding a few plastic grocery store bags to use. it helps that I am willing to move a portable CD player to a smaller plastic donut bag. I haven't used this electronics item much lately, so it really doesn't matter what bag I keep it in. I did do a long walk in the late afternoon, shortly after the workday was done, and found 3 cents. along the way I passed by a car repair shop and briefly spoke with the mechanic, who still recognizes me. it was near the end of his workday as well. in the evening I did a virtual open-mic, and as usual it was no problem finding material. some of what is in my set is things from all of these walks I have been on lately. and it was nice to see the flautist perform. we had 10 performers I think. I like how they are giving us a chance to perform, although doing so remotely isn't quite the same. but you do the best you can.

saints stadium art

I deployed more of the sheet protectors today, all about st. paul saints items. one of them was about art at the stadium, this was at their former venue, midway stadium. nice seeing a full-color page showing their art, including of their snoopy statue.
    I made it even farther on the cleanup project around my home. I found an envelope for each item. I still need to take another look at boxes labeled 'writing' as well as 'work' but I have seen all that is in the three that said 'online articles'. so this feels good. many more articles were put in the shred box today, although nothing was shredded. I spent more time reading articles than before, as I was making another pass through some envelopes. such as the one marked 'baseball', needing to make some more assessments about what to keep. and in the end, I didn't keep that many about baseball in d.c. mostly just the article about the expos moving there, and the one about the senators winning the world series in 1924. at first this was a separate envelope from the other baseball articles- be it major or minor league, or college. I would like to think the volume was cut in half in this section. I also looked at the ones marked 'iowa'. started with five, now there is four. baseball, hawkeyes, history, and the university. I combined the two that were 'university'. it was some tough decisions, but in the long run it is worth it when I hadn't looked at most of it in a while. but it was all just thrown into a box, so now it is sorted way better than it was.
   I did a long  walk around the neighborhood in the late afternoon, and picked up 36 cents. it was my only time outside all day as I wanted to do as much cleanup as possible. I took breaks to eat, and not even when I was watching 'the simpsons' did I really stop working on the project. I had to do dishes of course, but by then I was largely finished for the day anyway.

still need a cart

I went to the grocery store in the early evening, less than 30 minutes before closing time. the man in front of me said he needed just one item, and the attendant said he still needed a cart. I said I know I will need one because it is my weekly visit. there was one other time I went out today, it was on a walk to Walgreen to pick up sheet protectors and some tape. I was working on the 'online articles' for most of the day, and I feel it was a productive day. after the late local news I ran the shredder and two more bags were filled. I am at the point where I am fine with looking through an envelope again to get a better look of what is there. and this has led me to get even more in the 'shred bin'. next one would have to be baseball, as it is a thick one. during the walk I picked up 10 cents. I have already deployed 6 of the 10 sheet protectors I bought. no surprise there as I am finding things that belong in the binders. even though I have less to classify, it is harder to know how. also a case of if I keep any of those items. a few of them I read to get an understanding of what it is about and asked myself why I printed it. I also discovered that I had copied some pages from a world book encyclopedia that belongs to my family. guess that is what was around before Wikipedia, and I do have plenty of those articles printed. a few items were printed twice, not sure why. unless I wanted to delete the email and wasn't sure if I had printed it. all I need to do when it is looks familiar- the proverbial 'deja vu' then get them together and compare them to see if they are identical. some of them go back quite a way, before I even moved to Minnesota. some items I want to re-use, such as scratch paper, as I can write down comedy sets on it. I want pages that are blank on both sides though, so not too many fall into this category. but that is fine as I still want to get rid of as much as possible.

paint your wagon movie

i watched a DVD movie on loan from the library this morning, 'paint your wagon'. I recognized lee marvin, clint eastwood, and ray Walston in it. I understand why it was a joke on 'the simpsons' at one point, since it was a musical western. it was a long movie, but kept my interest. except for when they actually had an 'intermission', likely due to the movie being based on a play. I hadn't heard of a 'bear and bull' fight, but there was one in this movie. the lee marvin character was always drinking. the backdrop was the gold rush in California. had to remind myself how a 'parson' is a preacher, and a parson does show up.
  this was an active day, so active that I didn't check email until early evening. but I was fine with that. I wanted to watch the movie before any more time had passed, as I have had it for 6 weeks, checked it out just days before things closed up due to the virus. so my first stop was the post office to mail a letter and pick up 2 e-bay orders. then it was on to the library to return 2 movies, as the manual book drop is available. then to cub foods, as well as Walgreen, for my weekly food order, as this has become an 'errand running day'. I wasn't home for long as I went to a UPS store to do finger printing for a new job. it didn't take long, and I said 'now I can eat'. and some of what had just been bought became lunch. after this I went through more 'online articles'. first was the song lyrics, as I told myself I could merge two envelopes. I had to group them by 'alpha order' to figure out what I really had. it meant some went into the 'shred box' as a few songs were printed twice. I did a walk in the late afternoon, and picked up 14 cents. in the evening it was emails, finally. and completing some surveys, three of the five. then I watched 'blue bloods', then the late local news. after that it was back to the sorting. but this time it was the travel reservations. again, much like the song lyrics, I wanted to merge two envelopes. it meant separating things, as I know what I am like when I travel. but I had the enveloped labeled as 'airline, hotel, rental car' so this took a while. but I also noticed I could take out a few pages that didn't have any relevant information on them, such as the when, where, and how much. I bought some sheet protectors earlier today, and they have all been deployed. much of what was added to the binders was event tickets and sporting event rosters. and I did some shredding in the evening, two bags filled up. I am pleased with how much progress I have made, but there is more to do. half a box still needs to be looked at.