Keeping my head above water

Our house looks like a bomb (more like several bombs) went off inside. The necessary task of sorting through all my dad's paperwork, accumulated through 67 tremendously productive and efficient years, has provided us with the impetus to clean house in more ways than one. It is a very bittersweet undertaking: I keep finding 'gems', cards from people telling him how much they appreciated him/things we had given to him as little kids that he kept/letters to my mom, and also mountains of data from his 35 years with Bechtel, that only he would even have any interest in. So the vast majority is going away and it is somewhat hard to make the distinction between throwing out his old things and throwing away his memory. It feels so illogical to even write that, but I keep catching myself with that in mind. With my brother's upcoming wedding added to the mix, it is a wonder we are not more frazzled. Surprisingly, things are moving along quite well.

I have moved half of my things to my new room, which will be easier to close off while on my extended travels and also affords my brother's soon-to-be-new family the entire lower level of the house. We are also moving forward with some much needed repair work to the exterior of the house - long overdue painting and stucco repair.

I took some time to do a few other things this weekend. I was asked to do some projections/visuals for a benefit for the St. Helena Teen Center. There were five bands (mostly/all? local) playing at the Tucker Farm center, including Tear It Down, Sam Vega, and 33. I haven't done visuals in a while and it was fun. I enjoyed the music, although it was getting too loud for me by the time TID was finishing. Our location for projecting was great and the screen well positioned. I appreciated the positive comments I had while running stuff like Appleseed/Rivers&Tides/The Great Dictator/skating videos/Fragile Machine/others. Sunday I ran a load of recyclable paper to CloverFlat, listened to the final Giants game of the year (and Lincecum's bid for the Cy Young for which he has to be a strong contender and I hope he wins), picked up the pottery I bought last weekend at Nikki and Will's OPEN STUDIO (I'll post pictures), and hung out with good people at an Oktoberfest celebration in St. Helena. The weather was perfect to be sitting around outside and it was fun to spend time with new acquaintances/former and current coworkers/bocce teammates. I will miss many of those people when I'm on my trip.

And, just because I like unusual things, here is a picture of the woman with the longest legs and the shortest man from the Guinness people....