Rusty's Ramblings

[Rusty Edge]

My travels took me to South Carolina this year. I'd never set foot there before, only rolled through on the train, some of that during the night.  Flew to Jacksonville, FL, drove to Hilton Head Island, SC, stayed a few nights, drove to Charleston, SC, stayed a week, then back to Hilton Head for Valentine's Day, drove to Orlando, hit the parks and flew home.

Sure the polar vortex sort of followed us, but it was refreshingly milder than Wisconsin. Spring-like to us.

Anyway, this is about South Carolina and Charleston. I would say the number of American flags and battle flags were about equal.

Took a city tour/ Fort Sumter tour / went to the slave market museum. Shopped and dined, mostly. Learned something, or maybe re-learned something I forgot. Carolina is Latin for Charles  ( just as Charlemagne's empire was called the Carolinian which I did know). The Carolinas were a land grant in gratitude to the nobles who helped to re-instate Charles as king of England after Cromwell's heir bungled the governance. It wasn't named for some queen, as I previously thought. So there were some nobles living there. Charleston was a good harbor which could be defended against Indians, Spanish, slave revolts, etc. Sort of a combined sense of class privilege, militarism and siege mentality. The Citadel military academy grew out of that. They were a walled city. They kept slaves shackled in their homes at night, to keep other slaves from setting them alight while they slept.

The costal plains are marshy, and excellent for producing rice, while the tidal flats were great for shellfish. This productivity supported a high population. They brought in a lot of slaves to produce rice. It made the plantations rich. The richest city in America, and of the plantations holding 500 slaves or more, the majority were in SC.

When slave imports were banned, they made money breeding and auctioning slaves.

Modern day Charleston has beautiful mansions, delicious fresh seafood, and charming people. But based on my interactions with the locals, reading plaques at the historical sites, and the tour guide slipping up and saying "when our nation seceded from the United States..Oops. ", I was picking up what I thought of as a "Texas vibe", as if they thought themselves superior to, and apart from, the USA on some level. 

Yeah, I know, SC is patriotic, with a high participation in the armed services, and a home to many retired veterans.

Is it just me, or do Charlestonians give off a "Texas vibe" ?

[Buster's Uncle]

You don't want to get me started again on South Carolina...

[Rusty Edge]

CONTEXT-
These days I'm suffering from a sort of Domino effect. My mother -in-law moved into an assisted living facility. Which means stuff has to get removed from her house, and some of it stuffed in my car and hauled home, or to good will, or to assisted living. My house is already full and in need of cleaning, but my wife needs to make most of the determinations on the stuff in our home. She's busy doing taxes for the extended family, which tends to add to the sprawl and clutter.

Many times, before I can unload my car, or put something away, I have to clear space somewhere else, such as  a closet or basement, or in the garage. The downside to this is that cleared space is a sort of vacuum. I have plans for shifting and re-organizing and consolidating stuff, but other stuff fills the void. Example- I'm trying to make space to move a freezer into my basement. That not only means space, but a pathway wide enough to get furniture out, and a freezer in.  But My wife and resident niece develop grander plans for a basement beauty salon and now a sewing area. Make room for more furniture!

POINT-
The tasks seem rather daunting. So I wishing that I could either be restored to my youth, able to work faster, with better balance, more stamina, and a back that holds up under a move, OR That I could clone myself and have an extra set of arms and legs for moving furniture, boxes, and big stuff. etc.

When I explained this to my wife she said that if I were younger I wouldn't have the time, I'd be working until dark every night, and then some. You're retired. You've got time that's your advantage. Use it.

[Unorthodox]

You have a local boy scouts troop?  They're always looking for 'service projects', and helping a fellow move crap around is an easy one.  Couple pizzas and an army of teenagers can move a lot of stuff. 

We're in the same kind of pattern right now, though.  Need to move megacraptons of stuff to make room for demolition but I need to make room for the stuff before I can move it.  My resignation to packing away all the Halloween stuff was just the start.  More coming this weekend. 

[Rusty Edge]

I'm so glad you said that!
I forgot about the Food Drive on Saturday. I need to prioritize cleaning our pantry. Which will make space for the kitchen table and chairs swap my wife wanted to do with her mother...

I'll have to contemplate the use of a scout troop, or 2 men and a truck as I work on this stuff. I need to do more organization before I need more help.

I have a trip to the home to see about setting up a DVR and getting the phone working right today.

Today I am suffering from dust overload.

[Buster's Uncle]

I automatically get sick as a dog doing any housework but completely dust-free tasks like some of the kitchen stuff.

[Unorthodox]

If it were Utah, I'd suggest asking who the elder's quorum leader is... 

The local 2 men and a truck moved a safe and piano from hEt's parents to our place and did an admirable job of it, though I was forced to lend assistance with the safe.   Scouts would be cheaper, though, if you don't need the vehicle.

[Rusty Edge]

I'm sitting down because I'm worn out, but it's coming together.

While I was working I was thinking about the organization I'd need before I could even apply help. Cleared the ledge on the stairs, so that crap wouldn't avalanche  on them while bigger stuff was being moved out.  Shifted a file cabinet on a hand truck  from the living room to the kitchen. Broadened the path in the basement and carried up an overstuffed chair to the living room. Then a plan started to come together....

Arranged for my nephew and his pick-up truck for a day this weekend.  I used a sawzall and a leatherman to bisect the matching couch and stacked the pieces. That will save moving the freezer at the bottom of the stairs. That gave me more room to sort.

We'll get the couch out and disposed of. Then there is the freezer from my MiL's basement to move to mine, and a dresser with vanity to move from my Brother-in-law's basement to mine. And the dinette set swap between my house and MiL's. I need to check my straps and bungees. Moved the portable greenhouse to my bedroom, it will go to the balcony when it's warmer and less windy.

Had the resident niece in the space deciding where stuff will go... I just gotta keep putting in the time with the paper and small stuff, sorting into trash, recycle and keep. It's not that most of it can't go, it's that there are the odd items that are valuable or sentimental/irreplaceable, and I'm not sure where in the basement they are any more.

[Rusty Edge]

TOPIC-
This was one of the reasons I decided to start this thread. What do you think happens to stuff that disappears in a move. Broken? Mislabeled? Consolidated?
Accidentally disposed of? I lost a handful of uncut garnets once.

I should have a handbook and a set of spurs ( acquired in different decades ) which belonged to my grandfather who was once a professional gamecock fighter. Apparently he was pretty good, because he was invited to the nationals in Tampa before he found Jesus and became a preacher. But that  stuff goes back 4 residences or so.

DO you have anything odd that got displaced in a move, or an attic or something?

[Buster's Uncle]

I'm still waiting for some key mask-making supplies to turn up.  It's really irritating, though I haven't actually needed them yet.

[Rusty Edge]

The nephew brought his pick-up and a friend over.  My wife negotiated pizza and pumpkin pie as payment. 

We got the bisected couch out of the basement and onto the back porch, I moved the chair to join it ( to be removed later), completed the dinette set swap, got the freezer and contents moved to my house and freezing again. Turns out the vanity was neither empty nor accessible, so that's a move for another day.

Now I have a little more room to sort and shift stuff.

[Buster's Uncle]

[Valka]

TOPIC-
This was one of the reasons I decided to start this thread. What do you think happens to stuff that disappears in a move. Broken? Mislabeled? Consolidated?
Accidentally disposed of? I lost a handful of uncut garnets once.

I should have a handbook and a set of spurs ( acquired in different decades ) which belonged to my grandfather who was once a professional gamecock fighter. Apparently he was pretty good, because he was invited to the nationals in Tampa before he found Jesus and became a preacher. But that  stuff goes back 4 residences or so.

DO you have anything odd that got displaced in a move, or an attic or something?

I know some stuff got thrown out, because I found the evidence. For some reason they decided I didn't really need that brand new, still in the box DVD shelf, so threw it out - where it got warped from being out in the rain (discovered when I retrieved it and tried to put it together). I also found a suitcase of convention costumes, some of which were ruined. I managed to salvage the money I'd tucked away as an emergency stash (I always kept an emergency fund in case the hotel expenses ran higher than planned or I needed to take the Greyhound home).

And then there's the matter of the stuff that was stolen. I'm really not happy that my "Five Doctors" painting and another fantasy-themed painting were stolen, and I can't fathom why anyone would want my Amiga monitor but not the rest of it. Maybe because the rest of it needed a special screwdriver to remove it from the desk...

In this last move I'm just lucky I got my purse back intact. One of the movers put my purse on the moving truck - at the very back, which led to all kinds of <fuddle-duddling drama> when I tried to move in here. The manager wouldn't let me have the keys until I paid for the early move ($300) and I couldn't pay until I got my purse. The head of the movers took cash out of his wallet, but the manager wouldn't take cash. So I told her I had no other way to pay her besides plastic - and my cards were in my purse, which was in the truck, so she'd have to allow them to unload.

She "graciously" let them unload in the hallway between the elevator and my suite and finally the purse was found. All this added a couple of hours to the bill, of course. That's one moving company I will never use again, and in fact I warn people away from them.

[Buster's Uncle]

You have ALL the luck, don't you?

[Valka]

I hope I'll never have to move again. When we have a decent manager here (the current one treats me pretty well), things are okay. But I still have most of my packing boxes (the kind that fold up) just in case. I also have the business card for the last company I used, to bring my stuff here from the storage place where I'd had some of it... now they did a good job. They were prompt, careful, and put everything where I told them to.