Confessions of a collector

Inveterate collectors have certain things in common. Most of us like items that have these traits:

• Valuable - I collect stuff I like a lot, like original Southwestern art, New England antiques, books and photographs. I like to look at my stuff. I like fine things, but I do not collect fine jewelry. I do not collect stuff with which to adorn myself, so others would look at me.
• Not valuable - And I collect stuff that I like even a little bit, like socks. Sometimes I discard the stuff I don't like much like empty jars; but I procrastinate with getting rid of that stuff. I have a drawer-full. Because I am retired since 2002, much of my clothes collection now has rotten elastic. But I can't throw it away. So it will be cut up for "plant ties" - later. That collection will then be stored in the shed.
• Cheap - Sometimes I have clipped newspaper coupons; most of those in my current collection are out of date. That's another procrastination thing. But the Sunday paper is coming, so there'll be more freebies to cut out (neatly-because I am a bit obsessive).
• Free - I collect free stuff. I am not quite a "dumpster diver," but at times I get close. My "I-with spots" graphic above was downloaded from a free clipart site called Freeze.com. It is stored in the "My Photos" Windows category of the Start button. Incidentally, I never figured out the thinking behind pressing "Start" to stop working with my computer.
• In categories and containers -

I am also a "squirrel" who sorts and stores her stuff in anticipation of some unknown "winter." I have a coupon holder with separators for categories, including "Miscellaneous," (or "Misc." for short), my favorites. I am the Queen of Categories. My all-time best accomplishment was the set of Master Alphabetic Categories for files, browser favorites and my planner. It begins with At Home, Being a Friend, etc. and ends with Yard and Zodiac.

Miniature - I have lots of my stuff stored in a small box that plugs in and opens up (called a Dell Inspiron 9100). I have quite a vast virtual collection consisting of 1's and 0's, with 1.96 GB of available virtual memory.

Multiples - I have two aggregators that collect headlines for me. One, Bloglines, is my "homepage" on my IE web browser. Today I have a choice of 967 "feed" headlines sorted into 7 categories. The other, Newsgator, is my "homepage" on my SBC web browser. It has collected 487 headlines for me this morning.

Here are some of my favorites in today's Bloglines headline collection:
From Yahoo!News - Understatement of the year: Latest Abu Ghraib pictures threaten to inflame anger in Iraq
From CNN.com - Best pun: Apple users may find a worm
From AMERICAblog - Big bad news: Bush admin. stymies Congressional inquiries on domestic spying
From Talking Points Memo - Best teaser: Justice Department investigating...
From Happy News - Biggest heart: Marsalis hopes to help revive New Orleans
From Slate Magazine - Biggest Pessimist: Twilight of the Bogs
From BBC News - Biggest Optimist: US says has "inoculation" strategy to curb Chavez (Reuters)
I have to confess that this is probably TMI as far as my obsessions go. Also, I recommend you not add anything from above to your own collections except perhaps the free stuff link and those to the aggregators. Each of the news aggregators is different and each offers varied features. For now I am still loving my stuff.
Tags: collecting current events In the News