Excavation

The guys are coming to start refinishing the floors tomorrow and they want all of the heavy stuff emptied out of the furniture, mostly the remaining "small" bookcases. We are endeavoring to oblige, although we have concluded that any more boxes of stuff that are packed out of the upstairs are going to be stored in the bathroom, partly because many of them are full of heavy, lovely, clay-coated paper stock. (Mostly songbooks and high-quality comic reprints.)

In the process, I have found a great many things. I have found the Wolfman/Perez Teen Titans graphic novel, "Games", which I bought many years ago, misfiled, and never read. (I have now started reading it.) I found my father's typhoon journals. I found two copies of the same Crosby, Stills, and Nash songbook.

I have found a huge stack of comics semi-pro zines such as Alter Ego and Backissue which I have never gotten around to reading. I am out of magazine-sized boxes. *sigh*

And photographs. I have found photographs, including a color laser-printed image of my mom and dad holding one of my nieces and nephews as a tiny baby. All of those nieces and nephews are in or through with college at this point.

More stuff for recycling too, mostly old convention program books and manuals for equipment that we no longer own. ("Oh, look! That garage opener broke down five years ago.")

On the other hand, the manual for our Sleep Number bed may come in handy when we move it tomorrow...

Ingress Is More Fun Than Packing

Hearing that I was a bit short on gear, Peter Heltzer invited me up to an Ingress farming session in Vernon Hills. I brought Katie and Julie along and they had a fine time playing with the Heltzer boys (for the most part -- any interaction between young children is subject to sudden change :) ). And I have a great deal more gear.

We grilled steaks and had them with baked potatoes and sweet corn for dinner to celebrate the end of summer vacation. Then we went out to Dairy Queen for the same reason and I used some of the newly acquired gear to take out a portal next door...

Now, we are trying to get little girls to bed. And finish packing everything up. Foolishly, I thought I could get all of the files in the office into four bankers boxes. This might have worked, except the large filing cabinet is full of legal-sized files.

Ah, well. There are more boxes in the basement...