The Family Meeting down among the BayAryans at the old ancestral abode was a success, with a lot of work accomplished and various family objects taken away by the remaining survivors. We finished boxing up all the old financial documents, donated clothing and canned goods (that were not expired!), and had partial success with the Bank because we had Documents(!) – just not all of them, yet.
The drive back was incident free and fast, missing the usual choke-points and sailing along at a good clip under warm fair skies with a few spotty-fluffy clouds – until this morning. Rain and cold. 
I assembled the family Christmas tree today, it’s something that Dad made back around 1950-ish, either while at City College getting his degree or overseas as a project while as Principal at the Technical School, because in that hot tropical country Christmas Trees were not to be found. Plus is disassembles and packs easily with just twelve screws.
It’s rather Alexander Calder modern and Mechano too, based on a series of triangles affixed to other triangles, suspended by a string spaced with knots, with a rather Sputnik star at the top.
The garden urns that had been handed down from Dad’s Mom went up on the front steps to help mark the entry-point better and make it more obvious.
Not Clauswitz 
Glad it went well, and yes, very neat Christmas tree!
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Sounds like a success, as much as these bittersweet things can be. Banks can be a pain. And brokerages if that’s an issue too. My sister and I discovered that you cannot get anyone (except an intern who will only take a message) from the legal departments to do ANYTHING between Thanksgiving and New Years. Must be nice to be a corporate lawyer.
As for the tree… I do love Midcentury Modern.
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I’m hinting to a friend with a milling machine that he ought to make a copy of the tree out of aluminum… ?
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Good think we’re not in a great hurry to get the money-ball rolling, as you mention and I recall (in a University job I once had that dealt with Estates and such_, nothing happenes at all between Thanksgiving and New Years unless there is a special tax-break that a donor-class client/person needed.
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You might get a little snow tomorrow.
The tree is …..different.
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So far just a lot of rain, but…hey, you totally could have been an Epsilon Pi Tau guy, and Thud too! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epsilon_Pi_Tau
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Sounds like a success all the way round. Love Dad’s way cool Christmas tree, what a treasure.
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He was quite a guy and touched a lot of lives, including births, weddings, and funerals…
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Some neat heirlooms there, my friend. Nothing like stuff that was actually fashioned by hand, out of someone’s imagination, to remember them by…
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Dad never talked about something if it made him sound like he was bragging, so I learned some stuff going through his papers and memorabilia that he and some of his industrial arts buddies at City College (with the support of a few academic staff), started the San Jose State “Rho” chapter of Epsilon Pi Tau, “The International Honorary Professional Fraternity in Industrial Arts and Industrial Vocational Education” – of which he was the chapter President… One fellow was a master printer and did all the notices and various programs on special paper, another was a master photographer who shot pictures of the ceremonies and attendees. It was a big deal at the time.
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