Some days, my mind is like the worst disorganized junk drawer you�ve ever tried to pry open. There are bits and pieces of a little of everything in there, all crammed together in rather cramped quarters.

In one corner of my mind there�s the punch line to what I�m told is an old joke that I received by email a year or two ago: "It�s a knicknack, Patti Whack, give the frog a loan, his old man�s a Rolling Stone."

Hidden in another corner is a reminder that putting a split coconut in the oven for a few minutes dries it enough to easily get the meat out.

Buried deep down below that, almost obscured by the memory that Girl Scouts was founded on March 12, 1912 by Juliette Gordon Low, is this thought: "All quadratics equal zero."

I remember writing this a hundred times during my junior high algebra class. I can�t do algebra to save my life now, but I�ll always remember my astonishment at getting a 96 on the Regents exam. This was all thanks to the drills and repetitions of Mr. McCurry who, as he handed out the test calmed us down by saying in his monotone voice, "Remember, it�s the same old crap we�ve been doing." And he was right.

Then there are my attention-deficient days when my mind is like a butterfly flitting around, checking out everything but landing on nothing in particular for very long. It�s like living with a two-year-old who asks a million questions in rapid fire order, without waiting for complete answers to any of them.

To use a food analogy, my mind is like a stew, with all sorts of otherwise unrelated things thrown in together. The recipe to my mother-in-law�s banana bread mixes with the words to "The Barney Song," as well as lines of dialog from Monty Python, and the fact that Mel Blanc, the voice of Bugs Bunny, was allergic to carrots.

In addition to these odd facts filling my brain, I find I have some very odd ways of getting from one subject to another.

For example, seeing something about Ben Franklin might remind me of his lobbying for the turkey as the national bird. This might lead me to think that the last time I had a turkey club I was with my mother, which reminds me that her birthday is coming up soon and I should make plans to take her out for dinner.

October 31^st is not only Halloween, it�s also a major holiday in Nevada as the day that state was admitted into the Union. And speaking of states, the beginning sequence in your Social Security number identifies the state it was issued.

I sometimes wish I could select certain facts and thoughts and erase them to make room for new ones. Like on my computer, when I put something in the recycle bin then empty it and it�s gone.

Except, it�s not exactly so tidy. Through years of use, computer hard drives get filled with junk and data written in many different locations. Even with regular usage of "defragmenting" utilities to make things more efficient, a lot of junk clogs up the works. Errors are introduced and the only way to completely restore the system is to delete everything and start over again from scratch.

I�ve written previously about the quirks and of my six-year-old computer, which has now been handed down to my ten-year-old child. Before I did so, I decided to take the opportunity to copy as much information as I needed and get rid of everything else�from pass� programs to forgotten files.

This is called wiping the hard drive, or "paving" it. It�s the way to clean the slate and start over.

I was a little nervous about doing this. It wasn�t that I was worried about erasing something I�d need later; our computers are networked I was able to copy everything I wanted to save to my "new" PC, then put it on a CD. I was much more concerned about getting all the software and drivers reinstalled and making sure it all to worked again.

Actually, this computer had two hard drives because we added extra space a couple years after buying it. The main hard drive turned out to have too many errors to fix. Luckily, the second drive was not only newer and in better shape, it was also bigger.

I followed some directions I found on the Internet. Like many things involving computers, it took me a few tries to go from written instructions to actual procedure. When I finished and everything was completely erased and reformatted, I felt so relieved. It was like throwing out a whole cupboard full of half-empty bottles and expired jars to make room for new groceries.

It was like gaining a whole new computer.

I reloaded in the software. With a minimum of hassles and tweaking (I didn�t expect it to go perfectly) the computer was up and running again. Better than ever. Like an organ transplant, except that, as yet, human brains can�t be upgraded. We�re stuck with the system we started out with, with whatever limited memory capacity we were originally issued and whatever operator errors we�ve introduced.

Did I mention that all quadratics equal zero?