This week was mostly all about taking care of unfinished business. Laura and I have been going round and round with the MVD in Arizona to get the title for Mom and Dad’s Prius, and they have been spectacularly unhelpful. The last straws were last week when our agent in Phoenix (Mary from the estate sale managers) couldn’t get a replacement title for the car because you can’t use a POA to designate another POA. Then Mom wouldn’t sign a specific POA document for them. So we were left with the only option being one of us has to go. Laura couldn’t go until the week of Thanksgiving, so I went. Even though I was not positive that MVD wouldn’t pull another fast one on us when I was actually there. Anyway Monday night I made the reservations for a Tuesday afternoon flight. Laura overnighted a package to a UPS Store with a notarized letter saying she couldn’t go to help pass the POA responsibility to me. I brought the original POA and death certificate, as well as a copy of Mom’s diagnosis; neither Laura nor I could think of anything else we should need. Tuesday afternoon I headed down to Indy and caught a flight (and by the way, I had kept Dad’s American Airlines credit card open just in case I might find the air points useful, in just such a situation, but I found out they are not transferrable except to another AA points member, and only if the other account has been open for more than 30 days. So it seems they deliberately set the rules of the air points program to hose me) to Phoenix. I stopped and changed planes in Las Vegas, which by appearances does not have an airport so much as a casino with flights. I got to Sky Harbor around 8:30, picked up the cheapest rental car I could find (Payless…I got a teensy Ford Fiesta in which I kept closing my foot in the door when I got in) and headed to an AirBnB. First time for that. I joined when I booked the flight, and found a spare room in someone’s house that I could stay in for about 30 bucks a night. Close to the airport and everything. (It did feel weird just walking into someone’s house though. After one of the guys met me when I arrived, I just let myself in when I got there for the rest of the time, whether they were there or not. I didn’t know if I should knock, or just go in. I just went in.) Wednesday morning I was ready and waiting at the UPS Store so I could pounce as soon as their morning shipments came in, so I had Laura’s package by 10:00 and headed from there to the MVD in Tempe. The lady checking people in was all set to tell me why I couldn’t do that, but I had an answer to everything so she just sent me to a line. After that it was anticlimactic. I had the title within 20 minutes of arriving at the MVD. I did have to go back through the line again to get the title re-issued in my name so I could just sign the thing and make the transfer cleaner, but I had that done, the title signed and notarized, and handed off to Mary within an hour. And with that, I was done with what needed to be done in Phoenix. So, I spent the next couple hours driving around anywhere I could think of something that needed to be done. I went to the BBVA branch and closed the checking account. I went to the State Farm office and cancelled the Prius insurance. I drove by Mom and Dad’s house, not sure why. Got lunch at Manuel’s, a Mexican place Mom and Dad liked. Then killed the afternoon geocaching in South Mountain Park, using the entrance by the house Mom and Dad used to live in. I even ran into another couple of guys who were geocachers. They spotted me pulling an ammo box out from behind some rocks from atop the next hill over and found it themselves, then we searched for the next one together before parting ways. So two finds for me, then came up empty on the next two. I left when it started getting late enough I got worried about it getting dark while I was out in the park, which would be bad. I got dinner at Village Inn for old time’s sake. The a flight back to Indy the next morning.

Alex was at ICYC this weekend. Since he was, the girls and I all went to see "Murder on the Orient Express," since we figured he wouldn't be all that interested. I liked it, but it seemed to me to be more of a TV movie than a movie movie.