Ta Da!

After three days, I finally finished painting one wall. (In fairness, that required removing all books, videos, vinyls, and etc. from the bookcase, then unassembling and moving the extremely heavy and large bookcase, then painting the wall, then moving back and reassembling the extremely heavy and large bookcase, then replacing all books, vides, vinyls, and etc. on the bookcase.)

Now I can take a picture of the bookcase. . . .

Before

After

                 












The wall is not green, BTW, that's just what digital pictures do. But at least you can see the bookcase. Before, the bookcase just kind of blended into the wall. (Living room painted same color as MBR, Behr Abalone Shell .)

Excavating The Garage

It's been a couple of weeks since I've been able to do anything with my Five Year Plan. Life got in the way.

I finally got back to the garage yesterday. I went through two large boxes of documents. One box was almost completely toss-and-shredable. Mostly old research on special education or other disability issues from the 90s. The other box was genealogy research I did back around 2000-2002. That box had some valuable papers -- copies of old birth and death certificates, wills, etc. But I did toss a lot of copies of genealogy website dox on random people, some I couldn't even identify. As if I were following a lead that led to a possibly related person that led to another lead. Today, 15 years later, I doubt I could even figure out my train of thought on those leads if I tried. So, I managed to lighten the genealogy load by more than half.

I tossed old "hornbooks" from law school, too. I had kept those way too long -- they were a significant investment and resource when I bought them, but they are of no use today. If I ever were to have a question about antitrust or evidence, I'd have no business consulting a 40-year old law book.

That left me with enough shelf space to get some boxes off the garage floor. Moving around space! Tomorrow I will start painting just one wall of the living room. I don't want to paint the entire living room until next summer, but one wall is a wine color, accent wall. Against that wall is a large bookshelf/hutch I want to sell. I can't even take a picture of it right now, because the color of the bookcase just fades into the color of the wall! So I have to paint the one wall.

Tossing the books got me to thinking about books I have that I want to take back to the east coast. I think the U.S. Post Office's Media Mail may be the least expensive way to ship books across country. You can ship up to 70 lbs for under $36. However, I saw some on-line reviews warning against shipping too much in one box: the heavier the box, the more risk of damage to the books. They also suggested labeling the boxes, Fragile. What I should do now is start sorting my books into those to sell at a garage sale and those I want to keep. Of the keepers, if I don't foresee using them over the next couple of years, I could start boxing them for shipment ahead of time.

Reading through all those old files -- IDEA and 504 complaints on behalf of my son, pro bono cases, old law school books, the genealogy research -- It's like I'm an archeologist, digging through my life. "As a culture, Humanis Deffensis was unique in its unusual attention to the rights of the disabled, coupled with an  obsessive and, quite frankly, incomprehensible interest in familial origins, and a passing interest in laws."

Staging A Home

So I did a little research on staging a home. It doesn't have to be super expensive, even if you use professional services. Here are some tips for staging a home I found from various websites. If I see or hear any other good ideas, I'll add them to the list.

Back To The Back 40 (Inches)

Finally, it's cool enough to do some outside work, starting with the Back 40 (Inches). I did a lot of new planting this past spring, now I'm checking what survived the summer, weeding, and pulling some of the ground cover away from other plants and bushes.

Because the plants were new and needed space to grow -- especially the ground covers -- I couldn't use mulch. So, over the summer, the ground cover (campanula) got a bit outta control, surrounding some azaleas and ferns. I spent much of the past couple of days removing fencing*, trimming the campanula back, and adding mulch around the azaleas and ferns. There's still a lot of that to go.

Today I spent nearly two hours pulling centipede grass stems out of a small gazania patch (not shown). My dogs like to munch on centipede grass, so, once I removed the fencing, I had to get rid of the grass to keep them from walking all over the gazanias.

* Temporary fencing was all around the new plants in the Back 40 (Inches), including the gazanias (front), to keep dogs out until the plants could take root.

Old Lady's Grandfather Goes To War

Among the papers I rescued yesterday was a copy of my grandfather's memoir, and a letter I wrote 10 years ago to Citibank about it. (I never got an answer from Citibank.)

My grandfather was a World War I flyboy. In his memoir, he tells of how he and his fellow Americans were shipped to Europe, without notice, without pay, and without provisioning. That was about late 1917. They were moved around England, and then:

After a few days we were moved to Paris. We were taken to some French barracks in some run down part of the city. We were told we could stay there free or could find quarters where we pleased. But we were ordered to report back there at ten A. M. three

days later. The barracks were vermin infested, dirty, with straw to sleep on. The blankets revolted us. We told the officer in charge we had not been paid and asked what to do. He said that was beyond his province. He himself had been a cadet up to a few months previously.

There we were, practically broke, and no provision made for us. Some of the fellows were flat broke. I had a few dollars. Fortunately for me the Western Union man had cashed Roberts' money order. Roberts said he would advance expenses until pay day, whenever that would be, for me and another of our friends. . . .

The next day Roberts, another boy and I were walking down one of the streets. We ran into another group of our contingent and one of the fellows said he had met a friend of his who worked in the Paris branch of a New York bank. I think the name of the bank was the Farmers and Mechanics Bank, but am not sure now. He told us his friend, after hearing our dilemma, said he might be able to help and to have all the fellows he could contact be at the bank that afternoon at a certain hour. Our two officers, who had been commissioned just before we left the states, were to be there also. About fifty or more of us were at the bank at the time set.

An official of the bank said the bank, because of the unusual circumstances, would lend us two hundred and fifty francs apiece, slightly under fifty dollars at the then rate of exchange, provided the officers would endorse our notes. The officers promptly demurred, for which I did not blame them. But they did say they would identify us. After a conference between the bank people present this was agreed to. We signed notes and got the money then and there. While it was no great sum we were solvent. I have always been grateful to this bank and still am. . . .

We got paid, finally, just before Christmas. [By this time, the contingent had been moved  from Paris to Foggia, Italy.] . . . .

Before we went on leave with several other fellows I went to the Banco d'Italia in Foggia to send the bank in Paris the money I had borrowed. Nothing had been mentioned about interest so I added about six percent interest and then to make sure added a few more francs. It was my first introduction to Italian banking. Every bookkeeping process involved was performed before a check was given to me. It took at least a half hour to pay in my money and get the draft in return. On my return I found a letter from the Paris bank advising I had sent too much and they had deposited the balance to my account. I still have a deposit in the Paris bank if it is still there. 

My grandfather probably dictated his memoir to my grandmother, who typed it up for him. It was probably written in the early to mid 1950s (he died 1958). His memory was pretty damn good -- I don't think I can recall events from my early 20s with that level of detail. Still, I think he may have gotten the Paris bank's name wrong.

Around 2007, I wrote Citibank asking if they had any records of these loans. According to the letter, I had found a bank directory from that time that listed a Farmers' Loan & Trust Company with an office at 41 Boulevard Haussman, Paris, 1917. That was the only bank with Farmers or Mechanics in its name. And according to Citibank's website, its predecessor, City Bank, merged with Farmers' Loan & Trust Company in 1929. (An unfortunate year. It certainly doesn't bode well for my grandfather's bank account!)

I'm going to try to contact Citibank again. I just addressed the 2007 letter generally, to "Customer Service". I need to find the right contact person. It's a great story, if they were the ones who rescued my grandfather and his squadron.

Random Garage Stuff, Including Recipes!

You know how you set aside copies of funny emails, miscellaneous flyers, old Christmas cards, obsolete technology manuals, notes, and whatnot, together with some really important papers: It's all in some stacks, and you know you have to go through it one day, because you can't throw away the important documents and keepsakes, but you need to get rid of almost everything else? Well, that was my day today. I spent about three hours sorting through boxes and stacks of papers from the garage. I threw away or shredded about two boxes worth of unimportant papers, and kept a 4-inch stack of important documents.

In the stacks: Printouts of a 1997 Compuserve Forum chat between me and a Brazilian woman. She was giving me recipes:

Bacalhau a Bras

"I have a simple way to make this Portuguese dish. Cook the salted cod in plenty of water . . AFTER you have soaked it for about 3 days. After it's cooked, shred into pieces and set aside.

"Cut potatoes into cubes (small ones) and fry . . set aside . .

"Saute onions and garlic in olive oil . . saute until the onions are soft and transparent . . . set aside.

"Put it all together . . . in one big serving dish (all hot of course) . . usually I add just a touch of vinegar to the sauteed onions at this point . . just a touch. Some families will serve this with hardboiled eggs cut into slices . . I don't.

"Warm bread . . Vinho Verde . . . e PRONTO :-)

"Abracos,
Anne"

Brazilian Barbecued Chicken & Bahian  Cookery

"Hi Clare . .

"The sauce you put on chicken?? I use lemon, oil, garlic and some soy. Not sure if that's what you meant. [It was.]

"The Bahian food is also easy. Take some shrimp (any shell fish) and saute with garlic, onion, bay leaf, olive oil . . sauteed all together. Add some Cilantro . . 'Azete de Dende' (palm tree oil) . . let cook to mix flavors. Add coconut milk at the end and blend and simmer. Serve over plain white rice. The aroma comes from the coconut milk and dende oil.

"Don't forget the 'batidas' LOL

"Abracos
Anne"

(Some spelling errors corrected, but I kept the idiosyncratic punctuation.) I really want to try these! And now it's here, I can toss those papers, too!