Workspace Meme

Saw this over at Stuart Neville's blog and thought it looked like fun.

From Stuart's site:

So, here's my idea for a Meme, which I will now inaugurate as Workspace Wednesday. It's inspired by a fascinating article at the Guardian Books website, highlighted by Josie. The article is a gallery of well-known writers' offices and workspaces, with a note from each author on the things scattered around them. Anyway, I thought us less well-known writers could have a bash.

There are only a few guidelines:

1) You must take a photo of your workspace and post it to your blog.

2) You must provide a few words about it.

3) You must NOT tidy, clean or otherwise stage the workspace - it must be EXACTLY as it usually is (you can see that I followed this rule
religiously).

4) (Optional) You can nominate as many or as few others as you wish.

So here's my workspace.

I staked my territory in the second bedroom of our rented condo. It sure as hell beat being wedged into a corner of the living room like I had been at the small apartment by the railraod tracks.

This is standing in the doorway. Yes, I have TWO desks, both about 6 feet long. I inherited one from my older bother-- I mean, brother, yeah-- and the other from hubby's sister. It's still not enough desk space. Between the desk and the corner of the wall is my pile 'o boxes. Don't know what I'm saving them for, but I am. It matches the pile in the living room...

So, this is where I sit. This is actually looking pretty clean-- no, I didn't violate the terms of the meme. Last week, I picked up because I wasn't quite done putting off grading.

I do have two computers. Usually the laptop just goes to school with me where I use it for grades or to check my email with a poached Wi-fi signal from the neighbor. When I'm working on something that requires a lot of wait time from my main computer, I pull up the laptop and put those few minutes of wait time to good use. No wasted minutes allowed. ;-)

The keyboard on the desk is over 12 years old by now. It works perfectly. It's my lifelong goal to type a keyboard to death. No luck. But I did scroll a mouse to death.

The big binder is my collection of print outs of Bo Fexler short stories. Everytime one comes out, there's a big little ceremony to print a copy, update my spreadsheet of published stories, and do a little happy dance.

On the other side of my office is where I collect old assignments from teaching. I don't have my own classroom, so I just cart the stuff back home at the end of the term. Occaisionally, I go through it and get rid of (recycle) outdated things or assignments that were modified for less whining.

Next to my CD rack is my wooden Crayola factory box. As a Crayola kid (if you scroll back up, you'll see I have a 64 box of crayons on my desk) I HAD to get this box when we went to Easton, Penn to the Crayola factory. I would have given my left leg for the box-- they let me take it home for only a trio of tens.

Because I'm such an organized person, I have boxes to toss things into by activity. The top is writing. The middle is Real Estate, and the bottom is Grad School. I pretend I'm going to sort them later. After I learn to fly.

You can see above the boxes that I have a couple shelves of little guys. Their Star Wars Galactic Heroes (aka Squatty Guys). I collect them.

Like, all of them. =)

This pic also shows the little chair in the corner of my office. It's primarily where I pile my sweaters, but hubby sits there when he comes to chat with me in my lair. Oh, wait. No, we left the chair there to give hubby a place to sit. I just toss my sweaters there. And everywhere else. Hubby just sits on them. He's really tolerant. Good thing...

I love my office. It's like a porcupine burrow where I can hang out. I have everything I need.

And surprisingly, I get all my work done in here.

And if anyone else wants to play, consider yourself tagged.

Except Patti. I'm tagging you for all the times you got me. =D

Oh, yeah, r2, I don't have your email so I can't send you anything. Send me an email at socalledauthor AT yahoo dot com.