Post a Comment On: A Nod to Nothing

Someone took a picture of some shelf the other day on their blog, and explained how it was rather indicative of their personality...I shall do the same here, but with a picture of half a room. This is my bike room. You can click on it for a much larger picture. What does it say about me? I'll describe everything, and you can make your own assumptions. Those two pictures on the wall - those are from early Tours - the riders are drinking and smoking while they cycle through France. Pooteewheet got them for me as a present. I think it took her a full year to finally get the frames correct. You can't see it, but there's a signed picture of Lance in the room as well, courtesy of my father-in-law and eBay.

There are no less than three Marvin the Martian items on the shelf...make that four - a dog toy, a cup and bowl set, a sippy cup and a pencil box. Eryn has a matching pencil box she keeps her treaures in. Left hand side - two darts sticking out of a dartboard - won it at the American Legion raffle in Monticello, along with some glassware for the kitchen we still use. The bike is there, of course, on a heavy duty stand that holds up to my size. I've had it since at least the early 90s, probably more like 1989. The bike is just as old, a steel frame Bianchi Brava - it's the first bike I really bought completely on my own. It was expensive for me when I had to spend my whole tax rebate on it. The water bottle is from the TCBC bike club. Pile of bills in the corner - my taxes, Pooteewheet's receipts, and receipts for the rental business. You can see Turbotax on the shelf to handle all that junk.

Back to the shelf...two beer steins and a few mugs from the Renaissance festival. I do drink. Two castles - one isn't from my period of study, the other is - if you can't tell the difference, cardinals, like Cardinal Wolsey, whose house was later owned by Henry VIII, wore red. I've been to that castle - met the most attractive French woman I've ever seen on the train, and I've seen more than one. Tells you something about my priorities that I was more concerned about whether I'd be able to hit the National Portrait musem in the same day. Video camera - the digital camera does fine for YouTube videos, but we need something quality as well. That thing cost way too much when I bought it - we were ahead of the curve. It's Eryn's fault for being born too early for cheap video.

Notebooks - to keep track of miles on the trainer. Steel ape bank. I like old steel banks. I like new steel banks, reproductions...they're just as cool, just not as expensive. Video games - war and turn based...I'm too old for that fast crap. Pewter wizards from my friend Dan'l, from our war gaming days when we used to spend weekends drinking and carousing in South Dakota. Lots and lots of books, including history (Rape of Nanking), fiction (Story of Pi, White City), Utopic/Dystopic literature (Communitas), Scifi (Ellison), physics, liberalism (red state criticism), bookcover from a Korean adoptee book, Spanish (which I'm trying to learn), and a book on Saints (I'm not Catholic, but I think religion as literature is interesting). Bookmark from my time reading to the kids at a local elementary school. Unity paperweight for the first big project I did for my current employer, although I was a consultant at the time. Guitar strings for the guitar on the left that Erik gave me that I have a lessons advertisement for on the fridge. Dice bag full of dice from my D&D days. And if you look very carefully on the left, those are the edges of Eryn's Dance Dance Revolution mats, the first thing she ever bought for herself.

Most definitely my room.

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