Strange Trash

I was over my dad's house with my brother. We were cleaning the place out. There was a container of what seemed to be some oil on the counter. I was going to throw it out. But I wanted to get rid of the oil first. Decided to dump it out in compost pile.


Went to the back yard. Had a tough time opening the gate on the back fence. The gate must be settling down. Behind the fence I found a large compost. There was a concrete wall erected to keep the compost away from the fence.


While I was out in the back yard, I took a look around. The path to the dual sheds back there was narrow. Behind the shed I saw some strange things. There looked to be old rusted coffee and paint cans thrown about.


I asked my brother about this. He suspected my dad might have left them there and forget about them. Today we went to clean that mess up. We found the cans. We also found an old black plastic trash bag that came apart. Inside the bag were old batteries, clay pots, and other stuff.


We worked diligently and filled a couple trash bags of the rubbish. That stuff should have been thrown out a long time ago. We went inside the house, filled a couple more trash bags, grabbed some recyclables, then went to lunch.


The road ahead is going to be long getting this house cleaned up. There is 40+ years of stuff in there.

Clearing out the House

My brother seems to be settling into my house nicely. I will give him some time. But I suspect he will live with me for the future. That means we will probably sell my dad's house. There is over 40 years worth of stuff in there.


I initially figured my brother and I could spend a few hours each week going through the stuff. Going to throw out a lot of trash. Keep some treasures. This week our initial task was to clean out the secondary fridge and freezer. Last week we took out the food and shut off the power. This week I scrubbed down the insides.


After that, we went through two cardboard boxes of dad's belongings. I sorted them into items we could throw out, items we needed to shred, and items we should keep. Tax info gets shredded. Most letters and school stuff got dumped. I saw a bunch of letters my mom wrote dad almost 50 years ago.


I did run into some problems cleaning up. A glass lamp shade fell down and shattered on the floor. Then I tried bagging some flowers that I thought were fake. Nope. Turned out to be real. They leaked some type of fluid everywhere that needed to be cleaned up.

The Job Search

I have been working on a project at work for a really long time. Talking 15+ years here. The system seems to finally be getting replaced. I was part of the first round of downsizing on the project. My boss told me he had a position doing analysis for one of the systems that is replacing my old system.


Now I love doing programming. Analysis not so much. But hey. I need work. So I transitioned over into the next project. It was slow to start. But I started figuring things out. Then the customer changed direction and said they no longer wanted analysis. And like that, my position was eliminated.


My boss told me I could go back to my old job. I started working on some old tasks. Then I got word from my boss that my old project did not have the funds to cover me. LOL wut? I had previously identified another cool project to move to. But they have a long onboarding process. Might take another year before all the background work is done to start that task.


Right now I am "on the bench". That means I am still employed by my company. I just don't have any projects to work on (and thus I am not making my company any money). This is not a good position to be in. I am trying to find another project at work. This is an uphill battle.

Party Time

Kit Kat came home for the weekend. Momoko's friend from work was hosting a party. And Kit Kat was invited too. It was a bring your own beer type of party. Momoko and Kit Kat went shopping before the party to pick up some liquor.


They had me drive them to the party. I was the designated driver. Or maybe you could say I was the Uber driver. When we got close to Momoko's friend's house, Kit Kat recognized the neighborhood. It was near where her friend from community college lives.


I had a tough time finding the actual house. The house numbers were dark. There were a lot of houses in the neighborhood. Eventually we found the place. I dropped off Kit Kat and Momoko. Then I returned home.


Eventually Kit Kat texted me. This time I was able to find the house quickly. They drank most of the booze they brought. Apparently they played adult card games. This was the first time Momoko had been to the house. Good times.

Furniture Retrieval

My brother moved into my house last month. He said his current clothes dresser broke down. Therefore we shopped for a new one. We saw a few that were adequate. My brother chose one that did not cost too much, and seemed to have all the feature required.


We opted to go pick up the dresser ourselves. I don't like waiting around while delivery guys come to my house. The salesman said it might take up to two months for the furniture to be ready. My brother got a call the week after he bought the dresser. It was in their warehouse already.


Unfortunately it snowed. We had to delay our trip to get the dresser. Finally it was the night before we planned to pick up the dresser. I helped my brother disconnect the cover on the back of his truck. That was treacherous. We cleaned out his truck bed.


I woke up early and we got on the road. Forgot we were going through some toll roads. We arrived at the warehouse. The guys on the dock told us to check into the other side of the building. Some old guy at the front desk reminded us that the snow we got was nothing like the old days. Ha ha.


We waited around 30 minutes at the dock. Good thing we came early. Lots of vehicles came after us looking for our furniture. The box containing the dresser fit snug in the back of the truck. No need to tie it down. My GPS went bonkers on the way home. Luckily I had printed directions and an idea where to go.


At home Momoko opened the doors as we carried the dresser down into the basement. The thing was stapled to the packaging box. It also was secured to a pallet on the bottom. The box and pallet added to our trash. The finish of the dresser looked good in my brother's new room.