Surplus!

I've been slowly trying to clean up my space and make it my own here in the office. That meant getting rid of one file cabinet and a gargantuan bookcase. However, now I have need for a smaller bookcase and a bulletin board. So, I decided to take a fieldtrip... to surplus! Surplus, the fabled land where computers and office furniture goes to die, but gets one last chance to be claimed by employees like me looking to repurpose it. I had decided in my brain that surplus was going to be beyond my wildest dreams, filled with awesome furniture, random campus extras and things that would generally make me happy. Well, guess what. It's not. It's not filled with fun things. It's just a bunch of dead desks and filing cabinets and a giant computer graveyard. It's a very sad place, actually, filled with the smell of office carnage and an aura of "all washed up". The feeling of glory days gone by and a longing for former usefulness was almost palpable. I wanted to save them all. I wanted to tell every computer that it had done a good job, that it did the best it could with the limited ram and memory it was given, that we were proud of it, but I knew that the next truck to the state auction was really the best place for it. And, so, I came away empty handed, leaving behind the computers, the chairs, the televisions to go on to their next life.