Photo-A-Day #526 09/16/06

Buttons. Allison loves buttons, she has a button purse and a bunch of vintage buttons that she got from her grandmother. I always feel lie I have too many buttons. Shirts for work come with some extra buttons, pants too. By the time I wear out a shirt enough for a button to be lost it is past the point of no return. Apparently saving buttons was a huge thing long ago. And so we have tons of buttons. I’m not saying it is a bad thing, I collect transformers and don’t open the boxes. They take up alot of space and do nothing. I understand that. I have always been a collector of things. When is it time to give something up, however? When is it time to thin things out? How much is too much? Do you always need the newest thing? Stuff to ponder.

Today I helped my Dad at the Attleboro house. He’s been doing tons of work there. New floors, new paint, new bathrooms. He’s put in alot of time and hard work. And it looks really nice over there. But there is still so much stuff. It gets overwhelming. It is so hard to part with stuff and we continue to accumulate more of it. How much is enough? I don’t know. Eventually you’re going to have all this stuff that is going to end up in a mason jar like the one above and it won’t be useful for anything really except to look at. How can I break this attachment to stuff? I have no answers, just questions.

Mike Birbiglia

Mike Birbiglia is probably one of the funniest comedians I enjoy listening to. Mike keeps a Secret Public Journal online that anyone can read and the journal entries are hilarious. Mike is doing a stand up tour across the country and he has a few CD’s for sale too. You can check him out on MySpace as well as on his videos from YouTube. Mike has a great skit about being afraid of bears. He recently came very close to a grizzly in Alaska, I guess that he may finally get over that fear of bears. Here are a couple of Mike’s CD’s that you can get from Amazon.com.

One Family's Adventures in the World