Journal: News & Comment

Light it up

Permalinks to this entry: individual page or in monthly context. For more material from my journal, visit my home page or the archive.

My side of the family has severe pack-rat tendencies, keeping and storing suff that has questionable or no value whatsoever (what use would my grade 9 math notes be to anyone?). My wonderful wife has helped disabuse me of that inheritance, and recently I took my own initiative to clean out my office.

The latest phase of that operation was to buy a nice tall four-drawer metal filing cabinet, and start sorting through the old papers, so I can keep what's good in it, and get rid of what's irrelevant. Today was chilly, so I used a whole stack of old bills as fuel for the fireplace, and it was amusing to note that not only were they all too old (more than seven years) for me to need them for tax records or anything, but many of them came from organizations that no longer even exist, or no longer do business where I live. Those include paid bills from:

• Eaton's (bankrupt in 1999) credit cards
• Unitel/AT&T Canada (taken over and renamed years ago)
• Clearnet cell phone service (bought by Telus, which was formerly BC Tel, whose old bills I also burned)
• Rogers Cable (sold its cable TV business in my region to Shaw several years back)

There were also records from cars long gone, jobs long over, and business relationships long forgotten. They're all ash now. Burning them was quite satisfying. The Eaton's bills flamed out with particular poignancy, like the once-dominant Canadian retailer that sent them to me at the tail end of its long slide into irrelevance.

 |