Minivan Woes

We had hoped to go retrieve the minivan from the air conditioning shop on Friday, but at 4:30 they called to tell me that it was not coming together as quickly as they expected. I didn't want to do it, but said that Monday would work, albeit that it would be very inconvenient. They were massively relieved.

Lisa and I went to Reno anyway because there was pre-Worldcon shopping we needed to do. We first stopped at the Alamo struck stop in Sparks to have dinner at the Iron Skillet, which has a reasonably priced seafood buffet on Friday. It's Hot August Nights in the Reno/Sparks area, so one will see all sorts of odd vehicles in town.

( This one, for example )

After dinner, we did the various shopping trips for things we want for Worldcon. Normally we stay out of Reno/Sparks during Hot August Nights because the traffic is so bad, but it wasn't too awful last night.

This weekend we get to pack, except we don't have a vehicle yet in which to pack things. Monday night/Tuesday morning is apt to be a bit hectic. Our original plan to drive part-way to San Jose and use my free-night-anywhere-in-IHG offer to say somewhere along the way is pretty much scrapped now.

Scanners Don't Live in Vain

I have just spend a goodly chunk of this afternoon scanning every title document related to my grandparents' house in Challenge, which documents the chain of title from 1946 to the person who sold it to my grandparents in 1960 (for a nominal $10 if you go by the exact words on the document, although the actual amount appears to have been more like $1500 from the related deed of trust; I think the $10 was a token down payment and the loan was underwritten by the town postmaster, for whom my grandmother was the postal clerk in a two-person post office), to when my grandmother died in 1996 and the joint tenancy reverted to single tenancy to my grandfather, to his death in 2011 when he willed it to my mother (who didn't really want it), to her re-conveying the title to me in 2018 so that I can sell it to a willing buyer. Here's hoping the title company will be satisfied by this chain of documents and agree to issue title insurance.

I'm amused that one of the documents in that chain was recorded in 1962 in the Yuba County Recorder's office "at the request of Mary Reynolds," who was my grandfather's brother's wife. Aunt Mary was not at all coincidentally deputy county clerk of Yuba County.