I took some time off between Christmas and January 4th with plans to complete a few things I could never seem to get to while I was working. By the way I love it when you tell people you’re going on vacation and a good 80 percent will ask you. “Oh great, you deserve a little time off. Where are you going?” Ah…nowhere. There are times when you just want to get things done around the house. Those things that you’ve been meaning to do for a long time and you finally tell yourself ‘This is it.”

Well I just about got it all done. I’m a packrat! If there was a “Packrat’s Anonymous” I would have been the first to confess my collecting crap sins. First of all it was paper. I keep everything even if my filing system is confusing to most, it’s not to me. So I bought a cross-cut shredder and away I went. I made a couple of calls to banks and the IRS and even an attorney to find out how far back I should keep papers. The banks varied from one to two years. The IRS, said three years for individual taxpayers, and the attorney said court documents might have to be kept “forever” depending on the situation. Consult your attorney before you shred anything. Now, did I take care of all of it? The answer is no. But do you realize what 48 pounds of shredded paper looks like? The trunk and back seat of my car was full, plus one bag in the passenger front seat. And 48 lbs. at two cents per pound didn’t make me a millionaire but it felt good to get rid of it.

I had six of these totes full of things and told myself that I was going to toss stuff and get it down to three. This was a huge success and next year maybe I’ll get it down to one.

Oh and that chair I was going to fix that had the broken leg. The heck with it, I tossed it. It was around for many years but when you got to go, you got to go!

Movies were high on my list. I went to a total of four. “The Interview”, the one that was causing such a stir with North Korea. It was better than I thought it was going to be, but really not worth all the hype. Then came “Wild” with Reese Witherspoon. Don’t be surprised if she gets an Oscar nomination on this one. “Unbroken” was a wonderful WWII epic of an Olympic athlete in a Japanese prison camp. And finally, Michael Keaton in “Birdman”. A good film that will require your thinking cap when you see it.

I have to bring this up. I went to a weekday matinee for “The Interview” at the Fargo Theatre. How does one go to a two hour film at 11:30 in the morning in downtown Fargo where you can only park for 90 minutes in front of the theatre? I guess that’s why you don’t see many matinee offerings at the Fargo Theatre. I ended up parking in front of Fargo Cass Public Health where it’s a four hour zone for parking. The walk did me good though.

While going through boxes I found my old “Vikings” transistor radio autographed by three Minnesota Vikings Legends. Jim Marshall, Carl Eller and Bill “Boom Boom” Brown. It still works by the way. I also found an old ashtray that was never used, and advertised my Grandparents café in Holt Minnesota from the mid 1960’s.

Then there was television. My sister told me to come on over during the weekend and watch season two of “House of Cards” on Netflix. I got all 13 hour-long episodes in during my vacation.

I got my car fixed and by golly the extended warranty finally paid off, plus it gave me a car rental for two days.

Of course karaoke was on the list. But most important being the fun times with family, especially my son.

So there you go, you don’t have to leave town for vacation. But Stay-cations can be a lot of work.