I am writing this on Sunday, Nov 17. You can see the pics at www.quarkleaf.com.

Rebecca and Pete clowning around

This week was a concerted effort to finish Bud’s move. Danita and I spent all day Friday and Saturday at Bud’s house. Danita sorted through stuff, deciding what to keep and what to get rid of. (With healthy input from Bud, of course.) I moved stuff around. I didn’t do as much as I wanted, because my back was bothering me quite a bit. Thursday, I stuffed my car with the last of Bud’s stuff. I had the trunk, back seat, and passenger seat completely packed. I drove over to his new apartment. It took 4 trips with a cart to get it all moved into the apartment.

Rebecca and Suzanne

Sunday, all the Schmauses — in descending age order: Bud, me, Danita, Ed, Lynne (Ed’s wife), Lynn (Danita’s sister), Joe, Tonie (Joe’s girl friend), Pete, Rebecca, Suzanne, and Addi — went to Leona’s anniversary Mass, then we went out for an excellent breakfast. After that, we all went to Bud’s house. Ed and Lynne rented a truck. Pete and Joe both had stuff stored in the basement, which was moved to the truck. Ed had a few tools in the basement. Several family members took some things they wanted. All the junk furniture was taken out to the curb for bulk pickup, metal recycling, regular recycling, or trash pickup. All of this is on Monday. By the end of the day tomorrow, all of this stuff should be gone, gone, gone. Rebecca took a group picture. If I get a copy, I’ll update the blog and let you all know.

This leaves quite a bit of decent furniture and lots of “stuff” in the house. Riderwood recommended some haulers, who take everything left in the house, donate what they can, and throw the rest away. The haulers work with four charitable organizations, including Habitat of Northern Virginia. That makes it a lot easier to let the stuff go. I’ll go over to Bud’s house one last time at 9:00 Wednesday to let the haulers in. That will be just in time to let the painters go to work starting Friday.

Suzanne and Addi playing on the bulk trash pile

A few other things happened earlier in the week. My neighborhood has a list of frequent visitors. These are people placed on file so they can visit after 8 PM without the guard having to call the family to get permission to let them in. I learned that they didn’t have a good way to generate a usable list for the guard. I suggested adding it to our database. They agreed. I got that coded up. I’ll be installing it next week.

I tried riding a little bit. I only got 4 miles. My back is in too bad a shape to permit riding. Hopefully, now that all this moving stuff is done, I’ll be able to get back to riding in a week or so.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.