I received notice that my Amazon order shipped on Saturday. When I came home this evening, the box was on my desk. This is with the cheap 5-9 day shipping option. Whee!

Giving those new books a home proved trickier than expected. When I tried to put them into on my desk, I knocked over The Pile. The Pile, which grew for at least two months unchecked, contained most of the junk mail, book catalogs, paid bills that I received. It also contained many pages of scribbled intermediate computations, which I may once have found deeply meaningful. The Pile and I form an agreement during the periods when I'm busy: if it doesn't disturb me (e.g. by falling over at the slightest provocation), I won't disturb it (e.g. by discarding most of its contents).

So. The Pile is now again just the pile, an inoffensive stack of blessedly non-urgent business. Once I'd cut The Pile down to size, it made sense to straighten the rest of my room. I can be a packrat, but I'm a tidy packrat, so there was little enough mess outside the confines of my desk. I straightened my covers, put away a nail clipper and a coaster, and scooped some scattered loose pennies into a jar. And then I stowed my books, which was the whole point of the endeavour.

Time flies when I'm procrastinating. But since my room is clean, I have groceries, and my homework sets for the week are finished, I suppose I've no more good excuses.

• Currently drinking: Black tea with unidentifiable spice bits