Back in New York

In case anyone was wondering why I haven't posted anything in the last few days, I was off in Cleveland, meeting with the lawyer and accountant for my mom's estate, and helping my siblings dispose of her stuff. Aside from getting her clothes together for donation, we divided up her costume jewelry (I got a few nice things I'll be able to use). We also shipped a carton of books back home, mostly things that caught my wife's eye.

We cleaned out a dozen huge drawers that sort of served as the house's attic. There was all kinds of old stuff, such my father's course materials from the training he got when he became an IRS agent when he returned from WWII, bank statements from the 50's, and thousands of photos. These were from both sides of my family, going way back to when my father was a young man in the late 30's, and when my mother was a baby in the 20's. And some, from my mother's family, were certainly older than that. My sister was lamenting at the pictures of our grandmother, whom she resembles greatly. She wasn't really happy at how she might look in a few years.

But outside of the pictures of my grandparents and their descendents, we were only guessing at who we were looking at. There's no one left to identify the people pictured. It's a shame, but we threw almost all of those out. We did keep the souvenir documents and photos my grandfather brought back from WWI.

There were also tons of pictures of me as a baby and a small child--I was my parents' first. There were some of my sister, 2½ years younger, and only a few of my brother. I brought back an assortment.

So now I'm home, getting caught up with e-mail, snail mail, paying bills, etc. The transmitter for my wife's internet connection seems to have died. Later I'll go out and get a wi-fi one, since her new notebook computer is equipped for that.