yard sales, jan. 23

Whoops! I was supposed to post this Sunday, but I didn't. Why? Because I didn't write it until yesterday and I didn’t take the pictures until this evening.

Saturday yard sales were cut tragically short this week due to band practice. However, I still managed to pick up a few things. For one thing, this mess of kitchen utensils. To be honest, I bought this for the 3 soup spoons inside. I mean, there are several other things in there that I can use: wooden spoons, whisks (one battery-powered), a nutcracker, lots of silverware unrelated to soup. But really, I've been wanting some soup spoons. Now I have three. The lot was $3, negotiated down from $5. I like buying things in lots, partly for the good deals, and partly for the time I spend digging through it to see what I got.

This particular lot also included a set of dry measuring cups. Josh thinks that there is no measuring cup that I won't buy. I never seem to have enough of these. Maybe I'm just terribly inefficient, but one cooking session will find my dishwasher full of only measuring cups. I have to do another load for the dishes. That's not true at all, but I still think it will be a long time before I decide I have too many. Of course, I have ones that I like more than others, and some which are better suited to certain measuring tasks than others. I could never explain all of that to Josh. The only measuring cup he uses is his hand. Some people have no respect for precision.

Also included: these, uh, things.

At first, I thought they were for cake decorating, but the tips do not have holes in them, so you couldn't squirt icing through them. The only identifier they had on them was a patent number, which I used to find this page. So now I know that they are corn holders. I don't really care for corn holders - part of the fun is getting a little messy while you pretend you're a special kind of typewriter that eats hot, buttery, salty corn. Nibble nibble nibble nibble ka-ching! Nibble nibble nibble nibble ka-ching!

But it is neat that I was able to identify these mysterious objects. Before the internet, I would have kept these in a drawer forever, bringing them out only to ask guests if they could fathom their use. And then no one would visit me anymore. Now that I know what they are, I know that I don't want them and I can chuck them into the Goodwill box. After taking a few arty pictures of them, of course.

Corn holders, soup spoons and measuring cups aside, I'm really excited about this baby. This is an orbital sander, which means that if you throw it up high enough, it will go around and around the Earth. Actually, that’s probably true of non-orbital sanders, too. I assume that “orbital” means it sands in circles.

I've been reading blogs where they take pieces of ugly thrift store furniture and turn them into beautiful heirlooms. These blogs are very deceptive. They make it seem easy. After all, here's the before and scroll scroll, here's the after. The whole project took like five seconds, tops. So I tried to do that to something with an unfortunate paint job. The object in question is now sitting in my kitchen with half an unfortunate paint job. I even took the easy way out and used a chemical paint stripper. I'd looked at power sanders at Lowes, but the price point was too high for something I was likely to lose interest in anyway. However, I am willing to spend $5 for a rarely-used power tool.

Yard sales: the gateway to abandoned projects and hobbies.

At about that point in the day, Josh's drummer called and told him about practice, so we had to go home. I guess it's not a huge deal at this time of year, but just let him try that crap in May.