It is almost finished.

The actual moving about of boxes and furniture is almost completed. We have a few items like a bookshelf, table or two that friends are purhcasing. We threw out a ton of stuff. Almost literally. All day long in the pouring rain this garbage-picking lady and her son were loading crap into her bike-trailer and hauling it away down the street. She didn't look like a poor person or homeless person. And yet here she was, with her son, literally emptying our giant trash cans which included copious quantities of dog poop in plastic bags, some opened, some not. One man's trash is another man's treasure, and one man's treasure is a used spatula with dog poop on it.

It's 8:00 now. We are waiting for a return trip from our friends Michael and Jimbo -- then two other parties who are claiming some furniture odds and ends. Somewhere in there we have to get something to eat.

What an exhausting week. Every day immersed in enormous saths of bubble wrap. Last night, the abyss beckoned: it became clear that not everything would fit on the truck. Massive scrambling to devise plan B proved unnecessary when our excellent hired hands managed to fit everything but one IKEA bookcase. Secured with two Kryptonite locks, a one inch thick steel cable, and a steel-plated Master lock, the Budget rental truck is parked nearby awaiting to massage my buttocks with its undulations all the way to LA.

Tomorrow we do some final tidying up, squeeze a couple of last items on the truck, and head off to stay at the House of Blues Hotel in the Loop for our last night in Chicago.

Jimbo and Butz just arrived . . . and now to unload some furniture.