I would pick up whatever looked good at the gaming store, so there are D&D figures, pikemen, halflings, elves and a few monsters. I've kept them packed in cotton in cigar boxes since the '80s and its time for them to find a good home. I will be putting these up on EBay.

These are the floor mats from my old Corolla.  I don't suppose they are of any use to anyone; they are so worn.  We're going to put them up on Freecycle anyway, just in case.  If no one want them, the'll go out in the trash.

Outgoing item four is a set of juggling pins. At this point I'm getting to useless stuff that has actual sentimental value. B. and I saw The Flying Karamazov Brothers years ago, and I decided that I should learn to juggle. I got to be pretty good with three juggling bags, but the pins hurt my hands and I never worked with them much. I've had these pins for 20 years. It's time to let them go. A bonus item for this week (since it was in the same box as the pins) is a strange puzzle involving holes and rods in a plastic sphere.

This is a stack of books I culled from the "to be read" shelf. After I took the photo, Brenda took back Katie Waitman's book (which is apparently quite notable) and I added a couple of non-fiction books, but this is pretty much the stack that went to the Reston Used bookstore. That was a duplicate copy of Neal Stephenson's book. I kept a copy that was in better shape.

You see, what I really am is a computer programmer.  When I can focus all day on code and not interact with people whose interests are peripheral to solving the problem at hand, well, what could be better?  If I can somehow achieve a Vulcan mind meld with the machine, I have attained nirvana.  I was close at EOB today.  At least I appreciated what I did not know.   Setting bounds on ignorance is a step toward understanding.

Gah!  It is so alien, but so deeply personal. Words cannot express the beauty of the machine.

My words, anyway. David Gelerntner seems to express machine beauty with eloquence that I lack.  He is a really smart guy.

Writing code is like writing poetry.  Every word counts. Every sylable.  Every character and every punctuation mark.  I find that I spend as much time deleting cruft as I spend writing new stuff.  Less is more.  If you have to write long comments to explain what you're doing, you have failed to grasp the Tao of the code.

'NARS' in this picture is the guy's doctoral thesis and key papers. I've given up on keeping the dead-tree representation of any of this material.  I saved the binders and put all the paper out into newspaper recycling.

Freecycle is a network of community groups that give away unwanted items rather than throw them away ("one man's trash is another man's treasure").  I aquired most of the shirts I wear every day to the office on freecycle.  Some fellow was clearing out his closet.  You could tell from the progression of sizes as the styles got older that the poor guy had just grown out of them.  

Why 100?  It's a good round number.  Why a couple years?  That's one thing a week, a good rhythm.  A grocery bag full of stuff counts as one "thing" for these purposes.  Item zero was a bag full of X-Files episodes I recorded on VHS over the years.  Why get rid of things?  I don't want to end up like my in-laws, whom Diana described as leading "stuff-driven lives." 

So Item one is a cat litter box.

We have four cats, but six litter boxes.  This is their least favorite.  We originally got it on freecycle.  It's time to return it to the community.

Brenda added the new potatoes gathered from the front garden into a Soupe au Pistou, a Provençal version of minestrone.  The "pistou" is pared-down version of pesto (just basil, garlic and olive oil).

I had had just served the soup and Brenda was cutting slices of bread, when I stood up to take this picture.  It's amazing how much soup four little potatoes will make if you bulk them out with beans, noodles, and vegetables. 

Kathi and John own their own dewar.  Liquid nitrogen ice cream is as much of the tradition as the BBQ and the water fights.

We stopped at 4 wineries (out of over 30 in the county).  The second one had this wonderful copper door.