Things

Cleaning out in the loft this morning, I was getting rid of old magazines that had accumulated in a rack that my mother had. I found this at the bottom. I lived there for most of my youth and college. We moved there in 1956. Mom left it in 2004.

It was an old return sticker for an envelope. You remember envelopes, don't you? It's how we used to get letters.

Spent part of the day filing papers that should have been filed or cleaned out long, long ago. The last hour I have been prepping for tomorrow's book group meeting. Looking forward to it. I'll spend some time hopefully on that tomorrow. 

It's getting hard to write each day when so much other stuff needs to be done for the move. 

Bye for now.

Moving 2

Short post, have too much to do. Been busy all day working in the garage making room for boxes to move as well as selecting what could be sold at a yard sale. Not promising yet. The few large items we may put on a site that sells things like that. I forget the name, but our middle daughter suggested it.

Photos of the garage this morning:

I'll update as I can. 

I did spend yesterday attending the Jackson Symposium at VMI. It was very interesting. The ladies at the SJH did a fantastic job. My favorite presentation, though all were good, was about Jackson's books, given by Robert Krick (the senior). He talked about which ones he wrote in and where they were. 

The only thing I didn't like was a quote from someone (I forget who it was) that Krick said to be very suspicious of a man who hasn't read all his books. I told Professor Krick during a break that it described me. He laughed and said "Me too!"

The following inscription is in a bible that Jackson bought for his sister Laura. We have this bible under glass at the museum.

Well, back to work. I have a book group meeting Tuesday and need to look over the discussions one more time.

Moving

I thought I remembered reading somewhere that moving was very high of the stresses of life list. Looked it up today on the Holmes and Rahe Stress Scale and it wasn't even in the top ten. I had to look further down the list and found it at number 32 (if the list continued in stress order so to speak). Right now, I would put it in my top five for sure.

Had a mover estimator come this afternoon to look around. He will work up an estimate and send it to us in a day or so. He estimated we would pack about 40 boxes and they would pack about 90, mostly books in both cases. I think that's right.

And the books keep going back on both sides of the picture. This doesn't include the books in the living room and downstairs bedroom. And we won't talk about the garage.

We're going to have a yard sale, but initially, we were concentrating on stuff that we haven't used for a long time, or in many cases since we moved to Virginia. I was going to include some books, but now have to revise my thinking. Possibly a trip to a local used bookstore in town to ask them to come and give me a quote. The problem is that the books are nowhere close to being segregated as to which to keep and which to sell.

And I don't have a place to put the ones I want to sell yet because I am cleaning that area for things to go towards the yard sale.

I think "change of residence" should be rated higher than 32.

Varia

I got my results back from the ultrasound on my lower leg where the bee stung me. Since it had swollen my doctor wanted to rule any blood clot. Since the swelling had gone done by the time the scan was done, I figured as much. At least I got a check on both legs (they did the left thigh for comparison)!

This morning I cleaned out my bathroom drawers and threw away all of the old powders, hotel shampoos, soaps, expired suntan lotions, and other things taking up space. Now it is ready to move.

Took the old littler box, with litter and furnace filters to the dump this morning.

Trying to read a library book "Educated", by Tara Westover; a memoir about her growing up in Idaho by a survivalist dad who believed in the End of Days and prepared for it. She goes on to Harvard, Cambridge, ends up with a Ph.D. after being only homeschooled until age 17. It's interesting, but not a fast read.

Five in a Row!

 Well, we won again. That makes it Five straight! There were only six teams,  but two of them were very strong competitors.  Bad Table Matters was finally at full strength and came in second with 24 points. The third-place team, The Gatekeepers, were two points back. Both of these teams have won in the past.

Since there was no sponsoring brewery, we had to rely on Taps to give us anything - cheapy give-aways like bottle openers and this wind chime.

I forgot to take a picture of our team.

Volunteering and Moving and Skyping

Today was spent doing several things that took me into the past, the present, and the future.

First, the past. This morning I had that Skype call with the high school student in Pennsylvania (Did I tell you about that?). She is a rising junior and doing a paper on Vietnam for her AP History course. Actually, the whole class is doing the same thing. How I got involved was that the student went to her librarian for help. The librarian happened to be a childhood friend of my oldest daughter, Kim. So she called Kim, and Kim called me, and Melissa called me to set it up.

The student called from the school's library resource room. She had a list of questions that the librarian, Melissa, had very generally gone over with me beforehand so I could prepare. I think it went well enough; the student seemed very happy. 

But I think she would have done better with an enlisted veteran who was drafted and got out of the military after his Vietnam tour was over. I couldn't give the right perspective to her on those questions, and there were several. Anyhow, I hope she writes it up from a different perspective from what she originally wanted.

Next, the future. Later this morning I spent time on the phone arranging for moving companies to come to look at our stuff and give us an estimate. I've contacted two and may call one more.

Last, the present. I went to the library this afternoon for my weekly volunteering. I worked on the CREW (Continous Review Evaluating and Weeding) process, identifying books that will get pulled from the shelves. I did take some time to go into the back room and see how bad it looked - I had heard we had gotten inundated with donations earlier.

And you can't see all of them! We have a monthly book sale beginning this Thursday, but these books will not make it through the process in time. It always gets bad this time of year.

It seems everyone is moving right now. Like us...

First Purchase for our New Home & Skype Calls

This afternoon we drove up to Staunton to buy a sleeper sofa for our living room.

We're doing this simply because we will only have two bedrooms and one of them will become my library. In the eight years since we have lived here, we have had less than ten persons visiting us. And no one in the last two years. So I will share my library with Lisa's two fitness machines.

We still need to get into the new house and do some measuring so we can make some decisions regarding where certain will or can go, as well as deciding whether or not to take other things.

It's going to be a very busy month and a half.

Good news on the health front - my renal ultrasound came back clear. Whatever cyst was there before has disappeared just as my urologist expected it to. My bee sting is gone and my swollen foot and ankle appear to be all healed as well.

I have a Skype call tomorrow morning with a high school student for a paper she is doing for her AP History course. I'll give more details later.

And sometime this week I need to tell you about my Skype call with my little brother (3 years younger). It was amazing!

June is Here

June is here and already I can see that it will be difficult to keep this blog current. I think I might try to write very early in the morning. It will mean re-scheduling some things and most of the entries will be about either what happened about yesterday and what is expected to be coming that day. We'll see.

The big news is that we have found a new house to move to in July. It is a one-floor townhouse with a one-car garage, a large open living room, a large area for a dining room setup. The kitchen is good-size and opens to the living room over an eating island. There two large bedrooms and two full baths. I believe I can have my library back together.

It's going to be a very busy month and a half. Here are two pictures of the front; ours is the narrow entrance in the center. I will post pictures of the inside as I take them

It is in Stuarts Draft, about 40 minutes north of Lexington, in a very nice and relatively new development. For the present, I intend on traveling back to Lexington to do my Monday and Friday volunteering at the library and the Jackson House. I will also commute for the once a month book group meeting.

We will have to see how the Trivia nights at Brew Ridge Taps work out.