obsessive and compulsive? moi??

Yeah, that would be an apt description of me these past few days.

Spurred by the thought of perhaps being able to leave for the U.S. within a month or so, I started going through some boxes of my stuff: setting aside stuff I want to bring with me (whether as luggage on plane, or ship via sea mail).

And figured it would be really good if I made a list of the contents of these boxes, since, well, I may not remember in a few years' time, eh?

And since most of the boxes contained books, I started essentially calatoging them.

Author, title, series, ISBN, box #, etc etc.

Kosh was errrr incredulous that I was even listing the ISBN ("listing that number just because it's there is like adding the artist of each Magic card I have" : not *quite* the same thing, right? heehehe! Oh, and that list of Magic cards? I did that, LOL! with the same degree of obsession and compulsion too!).

Ran out of "my" stuff.. and am now going through the other books in the apartment.

And once I'm done, I can spit out all the stats you'd want on the colection of books we have here: how many paperback vs hardcover books. How many by a particular author. How many books were printed in 1978. etc etc etc. Yep, I love Query Tables!

Anyways - I'm betting that the prolific Enid Blyton will win hands down on sheer quantity! And a slightly scary thing is happening: each book of hers I look at, I can kinda remember vaguely the plot. Yes, every Secret Seven, every Famous Five, every Five Find-Outers and Dog.... and I probably last read these books 20 years ago.

THEN.... as if that wasn't bad enough...

I've carried that listing/cataloging moomentum to my Yahoo!AddressBooks.

In the account used mainly for family & St Marians & UIUC-ians, I found I had so many "unfiled" contacts, so I created the appropriate categories for them. Then went though more closely and found many with 2 or 3 addresses, so emailed them to ask which I should keep/delete, etc. I think that one's pretty up do date now.

Today I've moved on to the account mainly for post-1995 folk (i.e. mostly ex-colleagues from the work era, plus blog folks). Again - created categories, organised the addys, then deleted so many of the names of people who haven't contacted me in the 1.5 years I've been outta there.

Once I'm back at the apartment, will continue on with the book cataloging. Have only gone through some of the books ocated upstairs. There are still tons downstairs. PLUS boxes and boxes waiting for me in the other house in PD.

Oh, and speaking about PD - will be there this weekend. The four gals (me, KS, Baby Angel and Rail) are gonna have a blast! or a boozefest. or both. :-) Don't think I'll be doing my cataloging then, though, so I may need to head on back there for another visit all by my lonesome, just to go through them boxes again.

Yes, I happily admit I am a freak :-)

And on that note.. i think i'll get back to that AddressBook and tinker with it a bit more.

Laters!!