Post Tom: Day Three

I headed north again to work on Tom's place some more.

• Finished sorting his trains, a sort of advanced level version of Concentration as I would pick up a box, look at the description, and try to match one of the loose cars or locomotives. I did pretty well - there were probably 20-30 pieces at the end with no matching boxes (not bad for a collection that exceeded 800 pieces).
  
  Packed up in five boxes (including some accessories, some old copies of train magazines, a power supply, and a large cache of unopened accessories and parts. We trashed a small track layout, anything that was opened or loose, paint, solvents, brushes, etc. Still, an impressive collection. 
  
  These will come home with me next trip, I'll set up a spreadsheet to document what we have, and send to a few dealers to quote the whole pile.
  
• Packed away a dozen or so small match-box / corgi type metal cars. Not sure if they are worth much, but could not hurt to check.
  
• Packed away a handful of beer steins and beer mugs. Again, no idea of value, but worth checking out. I was (pleasantly) surprised that my own stein collection (long gone, but I thought Tom might have taken them) was nowhere to be found.
   
• Filed all of his musical CDs - found that many of the boxes we'd packed the other day were empty, and found 4 CD folders containing the disks. Another game of advanced concentration matching those up. Threw out the unmatched disks and cases.
   
• Piled four boxes of DVDs (perhaps 300 or 350) in my cart and brought home. I've made contact with an organization that facilitates DVD donation for troops deployed troops, have three names / addresses to ship them to, and ordered some special boxes designed to hold 25 DVDs per box. Will cost a bit to send them (USPS Media Rate, discounted to APO addresses) but worth it; Tom was a big supporter of the troops. Will put a little note about Tom in the boxes. 

Once I arrived home, gave Elo some lovings and attention, I ended up pulling everything out of the living room (all but the entertainment cabinet) and vacuuming (2x, plus edges / corners) and then using the new carpet shampoo machine (2x wash / dry, 1x rinse / dry, 1x dry only) - it did a pretty remarkable job considering the run is at least 10 years old, heavily traffic'd, and the place Elo has his accidents. I'm sure the pad is also dirty, but the top is clean, and I'll keep at it. I'm almost ready for visitors. 

Once Elo moves on I'm gonna get some laminate flooring for the kitchen and living room....