randomwisdom.com

I went out and bought a piece of furniture for my apartment, a red faux-leather couch to replace the aging lumpy piece of crap the previous person had left behind. Disposing of that particular relic was simply disgusting. My goal was to separate the burnable from the non-burnable pieces (i.e. the metal frame). I had to rip out chunks of packed insulation foam and fit them in bags; this itself wasn't too difficult. Then it came to ripping the other cushions apart with scissors to find shredded fiberglass insulation. The toxic carcinogenic itchy stuff, which the maker of aforementioned crap couch had decided to put in the cushions in massive quantities. Nothing I couldn't handle with a shop-vac. (A Japanese person: "A shop-vac? Industrial-strength large vacuum cleaner? What's that?") Obviously a shop-vac wasn't an option. At that time I decided the garbage crew was better equipped to handle this crap, and threw the rest of everything in the garbage disposal area. Let them screw with it. It was never my couch to begin with.

But the replacement couch made it all worthwhile.

I figured since I'll be spending another year and a half here, I might as well start to make the place my own. It also gave me an excuse to clean out my living room a bit. Most of it was piled up old mail. I can't believe how much crap both JET and the local municipality keep sending me. I get this pile of papers every month or so, in every imaginable size OTHER than A4. Most of the stuff from JET just shouldn't be in the national newsletter at all. (Did you know that if you're a high school ALT from Australia, there's a conference in Kyushu next week?) Therefore, most of it went in the trash, and most of them in the future will go directly to trash, do not pass Jeff, do not collect 20 minutes of time.

More later. I should probably go "teach" my class right now.