Pete's wife is moving to Chicago. Apparently her office is transferring her. Pete, however, is not moving with her. As I understand it, the duration of the move is up in the air, but we're talking a few years at least. It might be a permanent move. Pete seems unconcerned about it. The only issue he's complained about is the division and relocation of a section of the jointly owned feline population.

    Pete's PtB-shard talked about the other day and she seemed more panicked about that Pete.
    Pete: "Well, we were apart a lot when we were engaged. This is no big deal."
    PtB-lette: "Are you kidding? This is . . . This is her Iraq!"
    Pete: "Um, I don't know about that."
    Proud of herself, PtB: "This is her Iraq."
    Pete: "Then let's hope that there's like less, you know, killing."

    The PtB fragment walked away and left Pat standing in the cube de sac. Ollie spoke up: "She's an idiot."
    Pete: "Maybe she thinks my wife's like a paid killer or mercenary or something."

Drinks

    After work, met up with Dan at Milady's in SoHo. Ordered our beers and asked the kitchen staff to microwave a plate of their finest vittles for us. Shot the shit about our respective work places, talked about the coming move – Dan, he of the crazy divorce, will be my new boss when I make the scene with the new gig.

    When we'd exhausted professional chit-chat, we moved on to our personal lives. Regular readers might remember that one of Dan's uncles recently died and left behind a plot of sixteen grave sites somewhere out in Ohio. Though initially considered nothing more than a weird minor annoyance by the family, it turned out until they sold off all the sites – and, in the act, determining their monetary value – the rest of the estate couldn't be divided up. I don't pretend to understand it, but that's what Dan says happened. Anyway, Dan had already taken a stab at selling them over eBay, but there were no takers.
    There was talk about giving them back to the graveyard, but for some reason I can no longer recall, this turned out to be a royal pain in the ass too.
    As Dan tried to cook up another scheme to unload these gravesites, one of his cousins, a lawyer by trade and inclination, came up with this out. Through a series of legalistic slights of hand, he somehow got the graves to be considered "valueless." I'm not going to be able to properly explain what happened, but the upshot of the whole thing was the sites would no longer be considered to have value and would not need to be considered in the division of the estate.

    Dan's parents and the surviving aunts and uncles descended on the deceased's home to clear it out and ready it for sale. Thinking that Dan might be interested in them, the 'rents sent him a large box contain some of the artifacts unearthed in the home. Among these odds and ends were several items Dan's uncle brought back from World War II.
    This included, but was not limited to, several unspent .50 cal anti-aircraft rounds and one ominously large unexploded mortar shell.

    Convinced that he needed specialists to take care of his stuff, he walked down to the local PD station (Dan lives like a block from the station house). After waiting some 15 minutes, Dan got to meet with two officers, one of which was apparently on some transfer program from Philly.
    He said the meeting got off to a rocky start: "So, I have several pieces of live military ordinance in my apartment and I thought you should know."
    The officers nearly arrested him. Dan managed, however, to talk everybody down and eventually they decided that Dan wasn't the threat here. In fact, they didn't see any threat at all. Amazingly, after they realized that Dan was not some mad-bomber type bent on setting off this crap in downtown Jersey City, they seem to have lost all interest in the explosives.
    They gave Dan the number of the Emergency Response Squad (the SWAT dudes) and sent him on his way.

    Dan hasn't used the number yet. He's worried that, over the phone, he won't be able to convince the SWAT guys that he is planning to use the stuff, he just wants it out of his home.

Home

    I told May that I'd secured us two burial plots, estimated retail value $500, in a lovely cemetery in historic and beautiful Ohio, for nothing. Free. Zip. Zilch. Freesville, you dig? Gratis. Nada.
    She seemed unenthused.
    I explained that I'd saved us approximately $1,000.
    She was unimpressed.