I’m just home after four days spent with my dad, working on decluttering the house where we lived during my high school years.

It was a good trip. I forget between times what a good model my dad provides for working: focused sessions of work, interspersed with breaks for exercise, snacks, and caffeinated beverages. I tend to focus too long when the work is interesting and not long enough when the work is tedious. My dad is better at that than I am.

Slightly related to breaks and snacks, we also got to restaurants in both Scotts and Vicksburg. As best I can recall, Scotts had no restaurant when I lived there. Now it has two. I remember ever eating in Vicksburg one time, so they must have had a restaurant; I barely remember it and don’t remember any others. Now they have multiple restaurants—you could eat lunch there every day.

Good trip up and back on Amtrak—I always enjoy traveling by train. A vast improvement over the nightmare that air travel has become.

My visit turned out to serve as a catalyst for additional decluttering efforts. My dad’s wife did a bunch of work getting stuff taken to the dump and Jackie did a bunch of work decluttering the study at home. So, three households have made significant decluttering progress, all thanks to my trip. I’m so proud.

Oh, and we saw a Pileated Woodpecker! They’ve apparently almost gotten common around Kalamazoo.