BrockLi Soup

The DMV office near me is open from 8 to noon on Saturdays, and I need a Virginia license (still), so I reserved a ZipCar, got up real early, and headed over there a little after 8.

Then I spent ten minutes doing a super-slow lap around their tiny, packed parking lot, along with a dozen other people. I can’t imagine things were looking better inside, but I wouldn’t know because I resolved to get up earlier next week and headed off to the shopping plaza.

Staples had a $15-after-rebate cross-cut shredder, so I’ve spent the past hour or so shredding old bank and loan documents. I also got the same fire box that Jym has. I was looking at a bigger, more expensive one because it was rated for CD media, but they didn’t have any there. The box for the 1160 says “Fire protection for digital media” on it, but the manual doesn’t sound so optimistic, so I’m really not sure if my DVD backups will survive a fire. But, for $35, it’s better than nothing, and it will protect important papers (and, more importantly, I’ll know where to find said papers when I need them).

And, in a move that surprised absolutely no one (except for Frank Thompson of Lambert, Oklahoma), Hillary announced her bid for presidency today. Go git ‘em, sister.

I just found my Social Security Card AND my Selective Service Card! I made the rookie mistake of putting them somewhere safe.

I think I might be getting to the point in my life where I should start looking into a fire-proof safe. Jym has a briefcase-sized one and graciously allowed me to store the one thing that I knew needed fire-proof protection: a DVD backup of my photos, college classwork, and some other files. But now that I think about it, I should really be more worried about my Social Security Card, birth certificate, diploma, transcripts, medical records - that sort of stuff. A quick glance at Google shows that small safes aren’t nearly as expensive as I thought.

This is the sort of thing that’s really easy to put off - when everything is going fine, you don’t worry about making backups and you don’t worry about what you’ll save in a fire. So far this year, I’ve been pretty good about my spending, but I think I can make an exception for this, because I may regret it if I don’t

I’m also going to get a paper shredder, because they seem more practical than the duct-taped wad of sensitive documents that I burn every year or so. Plus, they’re fun.