I had my teeth cleaned yesterday and they are really bothering me today. (Tooth issues share the stage with reading glasses as one of the joys of aging - not!) Three guesses why this made them hurt worse. Here's a hint. It isn't the nausea-inducing smugness of the comedy routine. Oh, the irony.

Added: I have to give credit where it is due (even more so in this case). In another life, I worked for a man whose favorite line was "it makes my teeth hurt" whenever there was a problem.

Unrelated: I'm sifting out items in my office reorganization that I've had in here for a long time and don't want in the room any longer. It's a tiny room and some of this stuff has been stored in it for over 20 years. Some of it is good stuff, I just don't use it and also don't have any space for it. It's either me or the junk at this point. My mother has told me that sometimes she tells my father, one day she will walk into his garage workshop and find him tangled in a spider web, there are so many lurking among all his treasures. It's kind of the same thing in my office.

One thing that is taking up the area under my computer table is The Writer magazine. I loved that magazine. I subscribed for years and saved every copy. Then they sold (I think), moved from Boston and changed the format - result was that the new version sucked. I subscribed for a while to give it a chance, then dropped it. I also subscribed to Writer's Digest, although not for as long as The Writer.

Anyway, the old magazines take up a lot of space and I doubt I will ever look at them again. I can't stand having a yardsale, so I have been reviewing craigslist, ebay and freecycle to see if any of those would work for the type of stuff I have. Most of what I have to get rid of are books (publishers send me all sorts of review copies to consider assigning in my classes), magazines, and office supplies. I have tons of gently used notebooks, from when I assigned a paper journal to students.

I was surprised to see that the secondary market for The Writer might be more than I knew. I don't go to ebay as much as I once did (remember when that was the website everyone was always on, sort of like facebook now? We were in love with buying and selling stuff on our online yardsale). It seems The Writer and other magazines are items on ebay that are mainly sold in buy-it-now extended listings from used bookstores.There are very few auctions of bulk lots of the magazine, one I saw was $40 for 41 magazines.

The stores are using ebay sort of like a sales database. So it may take a while to sell the magazines, but they charge $7-$10 each. I'm not interested in selling individual magazines, don't care to become a long term ebay e-seller, but that they have more value than I figured is forcing me to carefully consider how to go about getting rid of them. Nothing is ever easy!

As for the other stuff, Bob says it is OK to throw good things away. I say it isn't. Not a surprise really, he was always pretty anti-recycling in the days when it was being debated and was optional and at first he endlessly complained about having to "wash garbage." But I will find a home for them, not to worry. Last resort, people will take just about anything out of a "free" box on the sidewalk.