Sep. 22nd, 2009

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It wasn't Galina's day for keys. First, she misplaced the keys to the Infiniti, requiring the backup set to be dug out of just-in-case box I took along from Pagosa. Later in the day, she left the keys to the house inside, on the kitchen counter, effectively locking us out. This required a call to a real-estate colleague to come and open the key lockbox that's been on the garage side door knob since about forever. The situation did not entirely result in a loss, however, as after gaining entrance with the retrieved key, we all sat down and broke bread (and poured some wine) and did a little catching up.

The translation was, indeed, a walk in the park, and was sent by early afternoon. I have another project for tomorrow (MS Word, this time).

* * *
I ran across a typed note of my late mother's today, which about quintupled my knowledge of her father, my grandfather. Though I knew he had worked doing menial labor at the National Biscuit Company, I had not known that he tried his hand at many lines of work when he could not find a job commensurate with his education.

"He tried diamond setting," wrote my mother, "and was an armored guard in a truck. He tried selling real estate on Long Island, and should have bought some land in Massapequa, which was a field of flowers when I saw it with Mother when he took us along."

He opened a batik studio that eventually failed, and applied to be a postal worker, but the "veteran's preference" he had been promised never came through. Eventually, with the advent of the Second World War, he did get an engineering job at the Brooklyn Navy Yard.

"He was a very POSITIVE person," wrote my mother. He liked opera, and he liked my mother's singing. He collected stamps and did not like going to doctors.

* * *
Speaking of stamps, it occurs to me that my 2009 Yvert & Tellier catalog of French stamps is among a bunch of stuff left in Pagosa that I had intended to bring along to Seabrook. Said stuff also includes a Russian-language remote keyboard I had intended to bring along to use with the Aspire (although I touch-type using a Cyrillic keyboard, Galina does not).

Apropos of which - in an opposite sort of way - is the realization that there is a huge upside to having everything in your immediate possession fit into a Ford SUV, with room to spare for a dog and a cat. Is owning all that other stuff worth the hassle, really?

That thought (and question) will have to stew for a while to have any long-term impact.

My, is it really after 11 pm? It's time to go examine the inside of my eyelids again!

Cheers...

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