. . . and they're made out of ticky-tacky, and they look just the same . . .

Yes, more boxes of books (& other stuff) & more flashbacks, more history, more mixed feelings.

I brought home probably a total of ten boxes over the past two days, & started to come across other things besides books. A couple of the boxes were labeled (not by me) as "CD's, showtunes." Imagine that! A gay man with showtune CD's. Quel surprise! But of course, everything you can imagine, from obscure & little heard of stuff to stuff that makes you wanna go "HUH?" to the ever predictable everything Sondheim has ever done, sometimes in multiple incarnations, like "Assassins," both the workshop version with Patrick Cassidy (screw David & Shawn, what a yummy he was), & the Broadway version with Neil Patrick Harris (now seriously. Did anyone ever question that Doogie Howser was a homo? Really!). And again, of course, "Les Miz", "Phantom" (both London & movie soundtrack; how they made that movie without me in the title role, I will never know), etc. Oh, & a bootleg copy of "Chorus Line."

A couple of the boxes I brought home specifically because they were labeled "Kitchen Stuff." What "stuff" turned out to be was all of the crap in the "utility drawer," you know what I mean. About a gazillion batteries of every possible variety (that's why I keep buying them; heaven knows, no one can EVER have enough batteries); multiple tubes of Crazy-Glue, all unusable, except for those very clever "single-use tubes" that some genius finally figured out was probably the ideal way to package it, I mean, how many times have you stood around the kitchen with the freshly opened tube of Crazy-Glue, looking around desparately for something else to glue, since you just opened it & otherwise you know it's going to go to waste; picture hanging hardware; assorted rolls of type of various varieties, everything from electrical to packing tape; phone cords of various lengths; assorted random tools, which you used once, then put in that g*******mn utility drawer & promptly forgot about it, so you had to buy another one when you really needed it, & then shoved that one into the now bulging to ready to explode utility drawer. . . well, I'm sure you know what I mean.

The books I have begun to catalogue on this very laptop I am currently typing from. I am only at 250 or so volumes, & already I am burnt out. Thank heavens I am not SO anal-retentive that I have to break them down into every possible subgrouping before cataloging them. So far, there are only three basic categories: Fiction (of whatever genre, from poetry to stage plays) with only anthologies split off separately; reference (which of course includes all of my art history books, medical reference books & dictionaries for work), & everything else; which would include all of my books collected in my preteen and teen years, specifically about dollhouses & minatures, which was a great passion of mine in that era.

After encountering about a dozen books in that latter subject, I started thinkng, "What am I to do with these;" I mean, do I have any fantasies at this point of taking this up again as a hobby or what?

The solution that finally came to me was ridiculously simple, & falls in line with the overall goal: Pack them away as a unit, & move on. At least I'll know that this one box has nothing but this stuff in it, so if I decide to dispose of it later, or reopen it, or whatever, at least there'll be a focus of that particular interest.

So, now to move on.