National Getting Out Of My Own Way Day.

I'm told that today was also National Bowtie Day, National Cherry Turnover Day, and Honey Boo Boo's ninth birthday. Those, pretty much, also set the tone on the local end.

For the second time this week, I headed to Points East in suit and tie and ended the trip in shorts and tee. This morning's early court was a deposition that witnesses typically do not show up for. For tl;dr reasons, it had to be scheduled for Genesee County, where I do not have an office, so the custom is to use a designated courtroom for the purpose.

I got to it maybe a minute past the scheduled 11:00 notice time; nobody was in the courtroom. The Old Courthouse is a typical granite-faced beast with 300 steps leading up on one side and a ground-level access on the other with an elevator to the top floor. You'll never guess which one of those I picked. After a few minutes, I walked down to the in-between floor (where the 300 steps lead to), just to be sure nobody was waiting down there, then returned for what I thought was a reasonable wait for a no-show.

Just before leaving, though, I saw an office just outside the door to the 300 steps, with a real-life person in it. Perchance had she seen anybody wandering around looking for a deposition?

Yeah.... he went upstairs, nobody was there, so he left.

So he must've taken the elevator up at the exact second I was walking down the stairs to look for him, and was gone the same way by the time I walked back up. Only I can screw things up with such Olympic precision.

It's not fatal to the case, and I didn't mind getting out a little sooner than I would have otherwise, but sheesh.

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Then I got to play Musical Apartments for the rest of the day.

The kids made their major move two days ago, but much was left behind. I knew Emily had made a return trip after we unloaded my car and the rental truck two days ago, but my plan today was to bring another load out from Old to New. All I was lacking was a key to the gorram Old; I'd forgotten to ask for it, and/or assumed one of them would be back there today.

Neither was, and it would've been time-consuming and frustrating to drive 30 miles just to pick up a key, so I resolved to finagle my way into Old without either actual tenant being there. Ultimately, I succeeded, but it took an Alexander Graham Bellian fire drill of phone calls among me, Emily, the property manager (at an undisclosed secure location) and their on-site maintenance guy (native Scandinavian, Russian or possibly both) to get the place open.

Loading my car with As Much As Possible took about an hour. Worrying about the remaining condition of the place? Most of the rest of the afternoon. So after getting the key to the new place at Emily's office (ultimately exchanging it for one of their spare Old keys) and doing the offload, I headed back to Old, mainly to pack some stuff and begin some semblance of cleaning it.

"Cleaning," under these conditions, basically meant "not leave it looking so horrid that Mom will code when she walks in the door Sunday to help cleaning the place." Or at least now it will be just a one-alarm code. I swept carpets of a ton of change, socks, bottlecaps, and other vacuum-clogging detritis before doing a quick hoovering of the place. I also got most of the remaining stuff organized into some loosely defined bomb craters around the flat: electronic parts here, paperwork there, kitchen stuff mostly in the kitchen, and so forth.

I also visited their dumpster. One advantage to NOT doing this on Sunday aka the last day of the month? There was actual room in it and in the recycling bins.

So now I get a day to work from here and a day to recharge before we help with the final push on that Sunday. At least some stuff will likely come home with us until it can be sold, and I'm going to encourage them to sort carefully through what they DO move to cut down on the useless items before they become entrenched again.

With luck, I won't trip over anything in the final effort. Including myself.