you would think i was going somewhere

In a somewhat successful attempt to do something productive to keep my mind off the jobless, J.D. factor, I set the following list for myself today:

1. Open a checking account at the bank my parents use so that when I'm overseas they can wire me money from it.
2. Buy sturdy zipper lock bags into which to put things that go together that I will want to bring overseas (computer cables, mobile office, etc.).
3. Unpack the box marked "desk drawers" that I brought back full of random stuff thrown at various times into my desk drawers in New York.

(check, check, and check)

So I've done these three things, and now I've moved on to even more productive things like laundry and organizing bunches o' crap that I brought back from New York with me. This has been a more interesting endeavor than I anticipated. I have come across the following relatively interesting things, in addition to many uninteresting things:

• A bag of Kenya shillings (notes and coins) mixed with business cards of Kenya-related people, such as that taxi driver who drove me out from JKI out to the guest house in November of 2003. I also found a bag of Kenya shilling coins, which I decanted into the bag of mixed shillings. The 20 shilling coins, which look like Canada's two-nies, reminded me of the pool table at the Kibuye Guest House in Rwanda, where you had to purchase "tokens" for the pool table at something like 50 cents each. When I discovered that the "tokens" were actually 20 Kenya shilling coins, however, I saved myself some money by collecting 20 shilling coins in Kenya (worth about 27 cents at the time) and using those for the pool table in Rwanda.
• About 25 pristine one hundred franc bills from Rwanda, which I intended to send to the kids in my mom's second grade class and then... didn't. These are now the old version of the Franc Rwandais, so I can't use them anymore at all. Also various denominations of Rwandese francs from each printing since the 1950s (?). I bought these from a souvenir seller. And a bunch of large current bills. Which I should have used or given away, really. I have about $50 in there (more than 25,000 FRw).
  
• Business cards of approximately every person I met in Rwanda and Liberia, as well as everyone I met in law school who had a business card and/or wrote their email address on a little piece of paper so I could keep them up to date on where in the world I end up.
• All my various electrical adaptor devices, which include, but are not limited to, the following: any plug to European two-prong (used in Rwanda, sometimes in Liberia) x 2, any plug to UK three-prong (used in Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania) x 2, any plug to US two-prong (used most of the time in Liberia), any plug to whatever-the-other-slanted-one-is, European two-prong or US polarized two-prong to US unpolarized two-prong x 2, US three-prong to US two-prong. And yes, I've used all of them at one time or another, except the one that changes things to the slanted prongs, which I think is Australia. But that one came in a set that folds all together tightly, so I carry it anyway.
  

I have also started to assemble my zipper bags of things. I love these zipper bags. You can use them for transport and then use them for food when you get to your destination to keep out the critters (the bug critters, anyway). My particular favorite is the mobile office, which is a zipper bag filled with a tiny stapler, paper clips, some sticky notes, a pen or two, a couple of pencils, a pencil sharpener, a scissors, a fold-up ruler, markers, sharpies, and whatever else I can think of. I live out of that bag when I don't have a steady office. Which, come to think of, I only had in Tanzania. Otherwise I've always had dashing-about jobs. I think that's one of the reasons I loved my jobs in Rwanda and Liberia. I have too much ADD to sit at one desk all day every day. Also why I don't work at a LAW FIRM. Ick.

It’s not quite like getting a job, this organizing, but who knows how fast I’ll have to move once a job comes through.