Desk Clearing

     It's not quite like tab clearing, though there are some similarities.  I'm the kind of person whose desk slowly accretes piles of stuff.  At work, it's forms and parts for projects (SP4T PIN-diode RF switch with a relay-diode matrix to go from 24-Volt 1x4 switching to binary at TTL levels?  I've got that, right down to the lunatic SMA connector for the 5 V rail to the PIN-diode switch.  Seriously, who does that?).

     At home, it's bills, printed-out manuscripts and medical stuff* -- doctor bills, mostly.  The bills are marked "PAID" (because they are) and put there awaiting being filed away, which does happen sometimes, but not nearly often enough.  Oh, that's not all: a three-year-old note, thanking me for taking care of the neighbor's cats during her first long time away; a rough floor pan for the Operational areas of the starship Lupine; a rough plan an elevation for a backyard writing shed that comes in just under the city's 10' x 12' limit for not needing a permit; a reminder that Indiana tech writer John T. Frye's "Carl and Jerry" stories from the 1950s and 60s -- about teenaged electronics hobbyists who get up to all manner of instructive hijinks -- were available again (and now they're again mostly not, but a web search will turn up a few); a 3-ounce bottle of teal ink that I barely remember buying; and my Western Electric 300-series desk phone, a gift from the Data Viking many years ago.  And so on.  It's a lot of stuff to sort through, right down to the exact order number for a style of jeans I liked and Carhartt no longer makes.

     Somehow, it's an effective distraction from election worries.  We're well up the first rise of the roller-coaster ride now, click-click-click, and we'll all be yelling and waving our hands in the air soon enough, one way or another.  There's no emergency exit from this ride.

     Tam and I will be taking the bus to vote in an hour or so, and then it's just the waiting.