6 Weeks to Move

First Tapes For Memory Lab No, not to improve my memory, although that would be a good thing. Wait, did I already post that? Today was my first session at the  Broward County Library’s Memory Lab where one can transfer VHS 📼 tapes to digital. After an orientation class on Saturday, I was good to go. I just grabbed a bunch of old tapes and started in. Five hours later (2 2-hour sessions back to back with a little overage), and I’d pretty much saved what I wanted and wore myself out. In a way, it was fun looking at random filming from the 1980's when not everyone had a recorder. It was still new and exciting. On the other hand, 30 minutes of friends, my ex and me learning to windsurf definitely needs editing to a minute or two. Can't loose it all: I did look good in a bikini back in the day. I’m having my doubts whether it’s worth my time, however, I’ve signed up for another session next week. I might have to consider Grant's suggestion to triage tapes at home. T...

Cleared Coffee Table With Just A Couple of Magazines Plus My Bullet Journal  That is Keeping Me Somewhat Sane I admit I will never get caught up on the magazines. This morning I cleared the coffee table by recycling most, yes, unread, and never to be read. Four  National Geographic  will go to the library. Others are going straight to the bin. The 2 latest issues, plus an  Atlantic and Living Bird , are all that's left. What are the odds that new ones arrive in the mail today? * In the mean time, I am glorying in being able to set down my coffee cup without fear of a tower of paper would send it hurling to the ground. Three Cups with Harrison, Maine Logos Speaking of coffee cups, I found these 3 little cuties while clearing out the china buffet. They are from my mother's home town. What to do with them? Right now they are on the buffet, and I'm enjoy looking at them. Still, I do not think they will travel to our new home. *Sigh, a new National Geograph...

I can actually get my car into our garage! I bought my Ford Escape in October, 2013, and it had never spent one minute in the garage since I've owned it. All of this clearing out is paying off. Sunrise From Our Dock Monday morning, when I went to Spin, my car smelled like yeast was growing in the back seat. Had someone dumped a beer in there while we were celebrating St. Patrick's Day this weekend? Everyone swore no, and I really don't think any beer was spilled. We are much too careful of beer. However when I felt under the seat, I found a place that was damp. Yuck. A while back, one of my girlfriends had an onion roll out of a shopping bag and land under her driver's seat. A couple of days in the Florida sun, and her car stank of rotting onion. Not pleasant. I pulled my car into the garage and put a fan blowing on the wet area overnight. Still smelled in the morning, so I did it again last night. Much better. I looked carefully with a flashlight and didn...

My Mother’s American Flyer Train Set Making Room For Peace was the sermon topic at our UU congregation yesterday. Our lay speaker focused on the spiritual side of living with less and on the joy received when we share our possessions with others. Donning that moral armor, I tackled another box and was halted in my tracks: my mother's American Flyer train set. All I was able to do was repack it in a plastic box. Maybe another day I can let it go. This setback, if it was one, inspired me to box up and move on a bunch of our glassware. I also put into use a couple of glass coffee cups I'd won as prizes at the now-defunct Broward Fern Society's shows for my ferns. Ditto for the owl cup I bought on my birding trip to Serbia a couple of winters ago. If these get broken from use, so be it. Better than being tucked back in a cupboard and forgotten. Most of my psychic energy this weekend was used up with taking our sweet cat Annie to the emergency vet Friday night. ...

The Before  All of the boxes of nostalgia, pictures, potential scrapbook pages and things an ancestor touched, well, almost all of the last, have been moved into the northwest bedroom. Goal is to empty/organize 1/day until done. Open, sort, toss, repeat. I started with a small one of odds and ends, and am giving myself a big pat on the back plus time off for getting it done. Hey, nothing wrong with going for low hanging fruit. There will be plenty of time for the harder ones. I labeled a box for each child so I can just pitch their stuff right in as I come across it. One Finished Now I know why my father always had a cardboard box of stuff for me when I visited. Some of the time the things weren’t even mine. When I protested an item belonged to one of  my sisters, he’d tell me to pass it along the next time I saw her. Cagey old fox never took anything back. Now I know why. I am also tackling the 2-drawer file cabinet. Manuals for appliances we got rid of years ago...

Toastmasters Speech Contest 3rd Place The good news is that I do not need an implant. Since having a cold, then sinus infection back in December, my upper right molars have ached. Ignoring the pain did not seem to cure it. Perhaps because it was due to the cavity and bad crown which the dentist pointed out on my x-ray. He wouldn't know if I would need an implant or could get by with another crown until he removed the current one. At my second visit, with much drilling, he got the old crown off and deemed the remaining tooth good enough for another crown. After questioning of the dentist and debating with myself, I've decided to replace it with a gold one. It adds $300-$400 to the $600 bill, but may last the rest of my life, unlike the 7-10 years for other types.  I've had a gold bridge since 1970, back when gold was $35/ounce. Avoiding the process of changing out a crown even once would actually save me money in the long run. And I certainly hope I'm still in li...

Another carload of bric-a-brac dropped off at Poverello House. It is getting easier and easier to let go of things. Looking back, I think 2 circumstances have helped me let go of objects I would have sworn I absolutely needed. First was 2018, my year of buying nothing with the exception of food and household supplies. In December, 2017, I read Ann Patchett's New York Times article about her venture into the no-shopping  year regime. How hard could that be? At times, pretty hard. It got easier as I practiced. I also decided to see what I could pass along. Reflecting on my list of purchases, I did fairly will with the exception of earrings at Assisi (Why?) and a cookbook that I've used for a few recipes (Meh). I did buy a pick-pocket-proof purse and a multi-colored skirt for our trip to Italy. Even most of my Christmas presents came from things I already owned, include aprons for each child and my 8-year-old granddaughter I made from fabric in my stash. A nephew's wedd...

Not having such a short deadline made me somewhat complacent over the weekend, plus we had congregational meetings about a new home on Friday evening, again Saturday morning and  then afternoon. Saturday night we were default-hosts of an auction wine tasting when the originator ended up in the hospital for a longer stay than he hoped.  Now it's time to get back on track. The project today is to drag all the boxes of nostalgia into my empty room. Pictures, slides, bric-a-brac, and who-knows what-all. My first pass is to sort the boxes, not the contents. Then probably lie down with a cold compress on my head. Visiting a friend this morning, I had a chance to look at a picture book her daughter-in-law designed from the hundreds (thousands) of photos my friend gave her. Twenty years of my friend's married life distilled into about 20 pages. A delight to look at. Hmmm, maybe my d-i-l would like to do that. No, I like her too much to try to foist off a project like that. I...

The girls are ready for St Patrick’s Day As if I needed one more bit of stress, I got a bill from a credit card I had not applied for with a charge of $5,585 at Best Buy. I guess someone got a nice TV to watch the Super Bowl. After a long call to the fraud department of the card, I think this will be resolved with not much work on my part. Back to moving: Lee and Corey from   Poverello House picked up 3 book cases, a twin bed and trundle with their mattresses, its nightstand, an old school desk with its chair, an end table, a mid-century recliner, etc. plus 6 boxes of miscellaneous this and that. They too passed on the hide-a-bed sofa. Looks like that will go to bulk pickup, but not this month. Now I have an entirely empty room that I'm going to use as a staging area for sorting. Marvelous. Plus, I figured out how to dispose of our hazardous waste, i.e. paint. My city has a cooperative agreement with some surrounding cities which allows us to drop off HZ at least once a m...