yard sales, nov. 7.

Yard sale vodka! 

Not really.  I have had yard sale wine, though.  One time, we came up to a sale after it was over, and the guy was just throwing everything in a free pile on his curb.  He must have been some sort of wine rep, because he had a lot of vino paraphernalia, including about twelve one-serving bottles of White Zinfandel.  I felt like pointing out that he could seriously get arrested for just leaving booze out on the curb for any unsuspecting six year old to get into, but he didn’t seem real eager to talk to the kind of people who paw through free piles.  Instead, I did the responsible thing and took all the wine for myself so no kids would get into it.

There is no vodka in this box.  However, I really like the way the company used the Metric system as a selling point.  New!  The Metric System!  It’s European! 

No, this box contained greeting cards.  Because throw a bunch of cards in a box, and I will buy it.  What’s worse, my sister told me this week that she will take my card rejects for her scrapbooking projects.  I don’t need more justification to buy cards.  What I need is a bigger container to hold the ones I have.  Do you know what I’m using to store my cards now?  A dresser. 

These appear to be mostly Christmas cards.  Some of them even come pre-signed.  From Bruce and Margaret!  There are also a lot of notelets with pictures of fruit and recipes for mountain home cookin’.  Every recipe has the word “Appalachian” in the title, so now I know how to make Appalachian Apple Pie, Appalachian Pear Relish, and Appalachian Mango Salsa (just kidding on the last one).  Out of the box, I ended up keeping 31 cards and about a hundred assorted envelopes.

So coming your way at Thanksgiving, dear sister:  a couple hundred old greeting cards, sent with love from me, Bruce, Margaret, and the Appalachian Fruit Council.

This little table was at a church sale, and it is a darn good thing that someone got there before 8:30 to buy it.  I can barely resist buying every 50s dinette set I see, and I already have one.  I wish I had a house with fifty dining rooms so I could have a different dinette set in each and every one.  So there is no way that I could have resisted a tiny one, especially for only $5.  FIVE DOLLARS.  Think of the TEA PARTIES!  And then I would have brought it home, and Josh would have gotten all freaked out, because one week his girlfriend turns twenty-seven, and then the next thing he knows she’s buying miniature furniture.  How would I explain to him that I don’t want actual children, I just want to buy them tiny retro kitchen pieces?

I spent two dollars on a picture at an estate sale, and I felt like I was splurging.  Once, my sister-in-law complimented a purse of mine, and was oddly happy to hear that I had bought it retail.  Of course, I felt ashamed to admit that I had spent $7 on a brand new purse because I’m supposed to be some sort of frugal zealot, but she thought it was great.  She was glad to hear that I was spending money on myself.  I think that’s nuts, because all I do is spend money on myself.  My hobby is to buy useless crap for myself.  I write long blog posts about all the self-indulgent spending I do. 

Anyway, she’ll be happy to find that I bought this for myself, just because I like it, which is the basic reasoning behind anything that I buy.  In case you can’t tell, it’s a picture of birds.  However, the frame has a birdcage painted on the glass, so it looks like you’ve got sweet little pet birdies.  It’s got a little old lady flavor about it, but I bet I could put an updated print of birds in there that would make it look hip and modern.  Or, I could put a picture of Josh in there when I am angry at him.  The bottom is a mirror.  Either that or a portal to another universe where there lives a girl who owns a camera just like mine.

 

Here is something at that same sale which I did not splurge on.  Is $25 a reasonable price for something that makes me shudder every time I look at it?  How do you even factor in something like that?

I felt sort of obligated to buy this Pac-Mac puzzle, because the nostalgia value is so very high, but it’s actually pretty cool.  I love the pixelated graphics.  Remember back in the 80s, when everything was really blocky?  It’s “over 500 pieces” and measures 18” x 23” when fully completed.  I was planning on giving it away to some other child of the 80s, but I might end up keeping it.  It was $.50 at a church sale.  I do not yet know whether all the pieces are present and accounted for.  If I keep it, I’m going to want to apply that puzzle glue stuff and then hang it up.  And I hate to admit that I am the kind of person that would ever display a completed puzzle, because the only thing dorkier than enjoying doing jigsaw puzzles is using them as artwork.  I also hate to admit that I’m even self-conscious about something like that, so I have this back and forth turmoil where I want to hang up a puzzle, yet I’m embarrassed to, which makes me want to hang it up all the more so I can get over myself.

The solution, of course, is to write about it on the internet.  Internet, I own puzzle glue.

Enough about my struggles with my inner dork, and back to the yard sales.  I like to make grab-bag type purchases, as you can see with the box full of cards (and the box of cards from last week and the week before that).  Aside from feeding my raging stationery habit, it’s also a great way to accumulate sewing and crafty things.  I am not particularly crafty, but I do sort of want to be.  Particularly when I look at other thrifty blogs and people have taken crap they bought for a quarter and made it awesome with some glue and rickrack.  The cigar box is full of rickrack and bias tape and was fifty cents.  The bank bag is full of sewing odds and ends, including elastic thread, which sounds sort of exciting.  There are various oddly-shaped needles for very-specific, unknown-to-me tasks, and lots of labels that say things like “Homemade by Mom” and “Hand Knitted with love.”  It also contained 42 crochet needles.  I am not exaggerating.  I counted.  42. 

I also just like the bank bag.  The Colorado Bank and Trust Company is still around, which is saying something these days.  However,  their Delta branch appears to be closed.  The whole bag was a buck, which is 2.38 cents per needle.  There is also a little golf pencil in there which says “Readers Digest 1,000,000 Winners.”  That works out to be $23,809 per needle.

I bought a mysterious piece of stereo equipment for Josh.  He was in Florida yesterday morning, and the bum did not even stop at a Florida yard sale to buy me a present.  Wouldn’t that be neat?  To have something from a Florida yard sale?  But no, nothing.  That’s it, he’s going in the bird cage. 

The trouble with going to sales without him is that I see things that I think he would like.  But I’m not sure that he would like it, but then it’s really cheap and I feel guilty if I don’t spend the money to find out if he would want it.  So I picked this thing up and examined it about three times, hoping the seller would tell me what it was or how much he wanted for it, before finally asking.  It was a dollar, which as it happens, was my upper limit for buying electrical equipment that I don’t understand.  A little Googling told me that this item sold for $40…in 1972.

These trays are pretty silly.  They’re like the old trays you used to carry your lunch in elementary school, except way more hippie-ish.  Maybe they were used at one of those experimental schools where they don’t give out grades.  The brand is SiLite, which seems very appropriate.  I mean, if you had to guess what SiLite made, wouldn’t you think of something like these goofy trays? 

Like many of the things I buy, I am half-hoping that someone I know will happen to tell me that they have been desperately seeking this exact item, so I can give it away and not have to figure out what to do with it.  Then I look like a good person to know.  I got the pair for $1.  Does anyone need some trays?  Or maybe some crochet needles?

At the same sale, they were also selling this.

As it happens, I did not need one.  Well, at the time, my morning coffee was kicking in and I could have used one, but I didn’t need to buy one, not even a very patriotic one.  And you know what?  This is not the first yard sale toilet I’ve seen.  I’m just guessing that you, my reading public, have never seen a yard sale toilet, so I’m bringing that image to you.  I tried to be very sneaky about taking the picture.  It’s some kind of weirdo that sells a toilet at a yard sale, but it’s mega-ultra-super-weirdo who takes a picture of it.  By the way the people were standing around and whispering immediately after my little photo shoot, I suspect they saw me.  Or maybe I was just being paranoid about having taken a picture of a toilet on someone’s lawn.  Things I am self-conscious about:  1.) Owning puzzle glue, 2.) Taking pictures of lawn toilets.

I have saved the best for last, my friends.  And oh my GOODNESS, I am so excited about this next item.  It is better than a three-dimensional bird picture, it is better than a vodka box of cards, it is…as good as a tiny dinette set.  You could also call it a splurge, even though we’ve already established that everything is a splurge, because I need exactly none of it. 

For several months, I’ve really been wanting an electric ice cream maker.  I’ve seen all these neat recipes for homemade ice cream on the web.  I see ice cream makers at yard sales all the time, but they are usually the old ones that look like bathroom trash cans from the 70s.  I went so far to look on Amazon to see how much they cost new, because I hadn’t found a good one used.  I came very, very close to asking my mom to buy me this one for my birthday.  And then today, I found that exact machine at a yard sale – new in the box.  A lot of people will tell you that the thing they’re trying to sell you has never been used, but this thing was still packed in styrofoam.  It was marked $15, but I paid $10, and I was happy to do so.  I immediately stopped feeling guilty about buying the little bird picture, because this machine had cost five times as much, which was still less than 25% of what it would cost new.  That there was a lot of math, so I hope you’re keeping up.  This will be the kind of thing I’ll mention when I’m trying to sell yard saling to the skeptics, because I do feel like a bit of a yard sale evangelist sometimes.  They don’t care how many great ugly lamps I bought or how cheap used stationery can be, but they will be impressed by spanking-new Cuisinart.

And that was yesterday.  It was splurge-ful.

fall into november.

I was driving along on this gorgeous fall day, and I have to say: November, I never knew you had it in you. Sixty degrees, blue skies, and multi-colored leaves? This is a November I can get on board with.

I passed an intersection, where a row of cards was waiting to turn right. I noticed that they were all convertibles, Mazda Miatas in fact. In a neat little row of color, they all pulled out behind me, one, two, three, four, five. They were flashy colors. I mean, my car is RED, but it's hatchback red. These were sports car colors. Some of the cars were red, some were blue, some were white, all of them shiny clean. The tops were down, as the passengers let November rush through their hair.

And wait, what's this? In front of me, one, two, three, four, five, six! Six Miatas in front of me. I was in the middle of some kind of mid-life crisis parade, and it made me laugh and laugh and laugh. It was the kind of day where a hatchback in the middle of a convertible procession was the funniest thing in the world.

Another mile down the road, and the head Miata signalled a left turn. Eleven turn signals, and as I headed straight, I stuck my arm out the window and waved. I wondered if they even noticed me, or if anyone we passed along the way thought it odd at all. Maybe it was just me or maybe I was drunk on November or maybe it's not so odd to find such joy in eleven Mazda Miatas and one Honda Fit.

connoisseurs.

Six bottles of bourbon sat on the kitchen island.

I respect bourbon, though I don't care to drink it. Josh does, and his brand is Jim Beam. My ex-boyfriend drank it, too, but he preferred Maker's Mark. A few years ago, I joined the Maker's Mark Ambassadors, which is just a free club for bourbon enthusiasts. I joined it for him so that I could give him the free stuff that comes along with membership. We broke up before the complimentary glasses and stirring sticks came in the mail. Now, I get a free gift every Christmas and somewhere in Kentucky is a barrel of bourbon with a plaque bearing my name. I even have a certificate. And all because I used to date a guy who liked bourbon.

Now I date a different guy who still likes bourbon, and I bought him a Jim Beam mirror a couple of birthdays ago. I found it at the Goodwill in Clemmons for $6. It's a nice mirror, like the kind you see hanging in bars. I gave it to him knowing full well that it might someday end up at my house. I don't generally care for the use of alcohol in decor. It reminds me of college, where empty liquor bottles sat like trophies on top of mantles and bookshelves. I associate it with excess, with people who think that finishing a bottle of Old Granddad is an accomplishment of some sort. I am a stick in the mud.

But I excused the mirror, because it was nice, because it was a great price, because it was his brand, because it sat serendipitously in the Goodwill waiting for me. How can I resist secondhand fate?

Back to the kitchen island. We were at this guy's house. He was a friend of the band who had asked them to come play at an outdoor bar for his birthday, but the night had gotten rained out. We were going to go to the Farmhouse later, but until then, he wanted us to taste his bourbon. He was an older guy, maybe mid to late thirties, and he'd recently become a connoisseur. Did you know there was such a thing as a bourbon connoisseur? To be completely honest, I didn't realize it either, but it makes sense. After all, there is good wine and good beer and people who know the difference, so why shouldn't the same apply to liquor? Despite the brown bag connotations, there is science in the creation of spirits. You take some plant matter, let it ferment, distill it, and you have a different product based on the plant and the methods and even the barrel used to age the stuff. Maybe people wouldn't find it so interesting if it didn't make you feel better about life for a while; after all, I don't know any milk connoisseurs.

He brought out the bottles and talked about touring the distillery. He set out six bar glasses with ice and poured a ounce or so in each glass. Glasses were passed around (I waved one away, saying I would sip out of Josh's), and five non-connoisseurs swirled, smelled, and sipped. They talked about bourbon.

There was a kid there, who I didn't know but had already decided that I didn't much care for. Everything he said was full of bravado, his ballcap carefully turned to just the right angle, seven degrees askew. He interrupted conversations to turn them back around to him with unrelated statements like "I'm having an affair with my boss." He assumed some sort of familiarity with the band, though Josh didn't know his name. The band always has these hangers-on, people who happen to be at the bar where they're playing, decide to come to the after-party, and then the next time they show up and act like old pals. They're like band barnacles. They come up to Josh and give him the thug handshake and hug combo, but later, when I ask who the heck they are, he shrugs and tells me that he has no idea.

For all the glamour of being a rock star, it sure does seem to involve a lot of pretending you know complete strangers.

This kid was trying to talk about bourbon. So as the connoisseur described each bottle, comparing it to other liquors, the Barnacle would say, "Oh yeah, man, that's like 80 proof." He did this for each brand that came up in the conversation. I have no idea if he was right, and no one corrected him.

Back in college, when I was first being introduced to the world of alcohol, the proof of a liquor was interesting to me. At that time, that seemed to be the only difference. They all tasted bad, but some of them got you more drunk than others. As I got older, I realized that there were differences - in taste, in smell, in mouthfeel. But also, the idea of getting drunk sort of lost its novelty. I don't care what will get me drunk the quickest. Efficiency is not the goal here. This kid was clearly still in that stage, where drinking high proof alcohol was a statement of manhood. He probably had some empty bottles on his mantle. There was a certain plea in his statements, though, as if he was offering us the only contribution to the conversation that he could come up with. If I hadn't already been sick of him, I might have felt sorry for him. But then I looked at his cap, seven degrees askew, and rolled my eyes.

The rest of us sipped. I thought I could tell the difference between various types, but maybe I was just imagining. If someone gives you a glass of wine and tells you it has hints of vanilla, you might think you taste them, whether they are there or not. I could tell that one bourbon was different from another, but I couldn't tell why. It was like when I used to go to wine-tasting class, and I felt the disconnect between what I was experiencing and how to describe it.

And we talked about ninjas. That was the Connoisseur's way of describing the kick that straight liquor gives you. You sip it, you taste the flavor, and then BAM! You realize that you're drinking poison. Those were the ninjas; they sneak up on you. A drink with a strong punch had a lot of ninjas. The Barnacle was surprised to find that it was not all about proof. Most of the talk was about ninjas or comparing this drink with the last. Some of the guys restated what the Connoisseur had told us, probably feeling like me in that if they were told some flavor was there, they could find it.

But Josh, ah my sweet, that man has a way with words. He described the flavor, he described the way it felt in your mouth, he described the whole experience. It was beautiful, and listening to him made me want to try each one again, so I could have the experience he painted for us. The Connoisseur lapped it up. He was sharing his expensive special liquor with a bunch of people who didn't get it, but it was probably worth it just to hear Josh talk. He got it, Josh got it, they bonded. This was the guy's birthday present. If you have never met someone who can make a conversation seem like a gift, then you are missing out on one of life's best free highs. Call me a connoisseur of conversation.

Afterwards, the men went out to smoke, and I was left standing in the kitchen with the Connoisseur's wife. It was too cold to go outside if you don't even smoke. I was very brave and bold and talked with a stranger, because I wanted to prove to myself and the world that I don't have to be aloof and I can be a fun and interesting person, even if I am a stick in the mud.

Why is this so hard for me? I struggle with the kind of talk that happens when you first meet someone. It's like there are rules I don't know or a script that I don't have a copy of. And it seems like nothing is ever said. I've cultivated that view for so long that if someone does not impress me within a few sentences, I have written them off. That sounds like more of a conversation snob than a connoisseur, and actually just a terrible snot of a human being. Having finally recognized this tendency, I am trying to make myself talk to strangers. There is always an opportunity to glean something worthwhile in a conversation, to learn something from someone else's experience. The white Zinfandel may be too sweet and the Chardonnay too acidic, but they can still have their charms. The woman was pleasant, and she worked in a fertility clinic, which was fascinating, so after a while, I didn't even feel like I was making myself do something for the betterment of my character.

The men filtered back in, though Josh stayed outside with the Barnacle. I could tell from Josh's pacing and gesturing that he was in lecture mode. Please know that I mean it affectionately.

I went outside, mostly to selfishly drag Josh back inside (so I could be with him and warm), but also partly to see what he found to talk about with this obnoxious person. Remember, I know intellectually that the kid has value, but in real life, I just want to straighten his hat and tell him to shut up. Josh was explaining something about the way the world works, and it would contribute a lot of good detail to this story if I could remember what. Maybe it was about the economy, maybe it was about bourbon, maybe it was about God, I'm sorry, but I don't know. The Barnacle was nodding slowly and thoughtfully as he listened, periodically saying "Yeah, I see what you're saying." Again I could see that sad sort of earnestness in his stance, that person inside him who just wanted to be accepted and thought making a jerk of himself was the way to go. It was clear to me that the kid had made some statement, probably off-handed that he thought was clever or bold, and Josh had calmly and patiently and completely taken him down. I can recognize that state, having been on the receiving end of many of Josh's lectures. He's good at telling you that you are wrong without you resenting him for it. In fact, you end up respecting him.

I do not have this gift. If I bother to argue with you, meaning I haven't just dismissed you and your stupid point of view, I may not convince you that you are wrong, but I will convince you that I think you're an idiot. I promise I don't just go around calling people morons to their faces, but somehow that message gets through, even when I don't even think that. The old me would retort that people shouldn't be so sensitive. But having witnessed Josh in action, I can see that there is a way to disagree without conveying disdain. I wouldn't even have bothered talking to this guy; I had been done with him a couple of hours ago. And I know for a fact that Josh thought the Barnacle was kind of a tool, but he still took the time to have a discussion with him.

In many ways, Josh is a better person than I am. It's very irritating.

We left soon after to go continue the party at the Farmhouse. I girded my loins, preparing for the onslaught of happy drunken strangers who would soon want me to be happy and drunk with them. I felt bolstered by the bourbon, by the successful conversational navigation I had done with the Connoisser's wife, by the knowledge that most people just want to be liked. Alone in the car, my last few minutes alone with the only person I would want to talk to at the Farmhouse anyway, we talked about the Barnacle, about ninjas, about bourbon.

forced woo-ing.

When I was a junior in high school, I was a part of a terrible play. It was not the fault of the playwright, but that of the players. We didn't know our lines. Each scene was punctuated with long dead silences as those on stage looked blankly at each other. A performance that should have taken up no more than ninety minutes of anyone's life stole nearly three hours of time from each poor soul who was foolish enough to buy a ticket.

Before you start to feel sorry for those devoted patrons of the arts, realize that they were only our parents. Yes, they were miserable, but it was for a good cause. They had to be miserable. That's what parenting is all about, right?

During the third night or so of our run, a friend of mine told me that her dad had been laughing very loudly on purpose during the previous night's show. It was a sweet gesture. There really were some genuinely funny moments in the script. They were just hard to catch, what with us mumbling the wrong lines all the time. But he knew the story and was trying to help. He laughed to encourage the other bored theatre-goers, and he laughed to encourage us. Maybe it would have worked if our problem was low self-confidence rather than a lack of preparation.

Now, I had heard of this sort of thing before. Someone had told me that there were planted audience members even on Broadway. The director or maybe the producers would hire someone to go to a show and laugh, guffaw, and slap their knee. The theory was that other, non-paid viewers would catch on to this laughter and enjoyment, giving the impression that this was actually a good show after all.

Surely that doesn't work, right? I mean, people can't possibly be that stupid. Besides, that seems wrong somehow. It was dishonest, that's what it was. Cheating, even.

And then my friend's dad did the same thing. True, he wasn't paid to do it. He wasn't trying to increase the producer's profit or the director's reviews. He felt sorry for us, even though we had brought it upon ourselves. It wasn't cheating, it was charity. I doubt it worked, because the show was just so bad. Everyone probably just thought he was crazy.

I don't do all that much at Josh's shows. I carry some equipment, I help break down the drums. But I don't sell merchandise, and I don't walk around with the email list, bullying people to sign up to receive free mp3s and tour information. However, I am very active in crowd encouragement.

Every show is different, of course, but sometimes the people need to be told when to clap. They haven't been paying attention and those jerks didn't even notice that the song was over. So I clap, and I go woo. And then they suddenly notice the woo-ing and they give the required clapping and half-hearting woo-ing. An unenthusiastic cheer is not much, but it is better than indifferent silence.

Sometimes the audience, at least part of it, is paying attention. Not only are they hearing the music, they are listening to it. They are noticing the melody, they are trying to make out the words. They might even be looking at the band! They know when to clap and woo. I still clap and woo with them, because every voice counts. In this situation, I will even woo in the middle of songs when one of the guys has a solo. Sometimes other audience members get in on it, and sometimes they don't.

And I dance, if you can call swaying and toe-tapping and head-bopping dancing. It's nothing much, but I try to be positioned towards the front. This encourages others to come up and dance. People are self-conscious about being at the front of the room, even if there are three guys on a raised platform with lights pointed at them making a ton of noise who are most certainly even more at the center of attention. By getting over myself and being in front of them, even though I'm frequently by myself, I give them confidence to come let go a little bit too. I suspect that this move has extra power because of my femaleness. Men in bars like it when girls dance, even when they're tall, goofy girls like me. They don't hit on me, they don't even talk to me, but somehow by grooving in my own awkward way, I make the party more fun. They come up closer to the stage, they pay more attention to the music, they do their own swaying and toe-tapping and head-bopping. When this scheme of mine works, I feel like a freaking saint. Perhaps this is setting the feminist movement back a few years. What's worse, I'm doing it out of love for a man.

It doesn't feel like cheating and it doesn't feel dishonest. I'm not paid to do it, like those Broadway guffawers, and I am genuinely enjoying the music, as opposed to my friend's poor stout-hearted and faithful father. I'm just bridging the gap between performer and audience. When no connection is made, it seems like charity, like a stubbornly optimistic cheerleader on the sidelines of a blowout. But when someone does come around, I feel like I'm helping, like I'm earning my share of the free beer. Maybe it has nothing to do with me, and those people would connect to the band anyway. It never hurts to try.

yard sales, oct 31.

There were a lot of strikes against us yesterday.  It was drizzling, it was a holiday weekend, and the season is starting to die down.  I wasn't sure whether there would even be any sales happening at all.  While Halloween is not a huge sale breaker, it is the sort of distraction that would prevent people from having a sale.  And of course, the trouble with rain is that many yard sales are...in the yard.  We ended up following signs to several invisible yard sales.  I guess people put out their signs optomistically and then forgot to take them down once they decided not to have the sale after all.

But we did go out and we did get a few things.  I grabbed a couple pairs of earrings at an estate sale.  One is just a pair of silver old lady hoops, and the other is amber, I think.  I'm not wild about the settings, but I do like amber stuff quite a bit.  I’d just love to show you a great, in-focus shot of those earrings, but my career as a jewelry photographer is in dire trouble.  I also picked up  this set of C.S. Lewis books at the same sale.  The case is in sad shape, but the books are pristine.  One book is missing, Mere Christianity.  Luckily, I happen to already have it.  I haven't read any of these, including the one I already have, though I have read A Grief Observed, which he wrote after the death of his wife.  And hopefully I will someday get to reading all of these books that I have but haven't ever read.  I give Josh a hard time about collecting books, but truth be told, I've got a little bit of a habit myself.

We only hit one church sale today, where I got an old timey dress (which ended up not fitting, so I didn’t take a picture of it) and a pack of note cards.  The cards are pretty nice and include lined envelopes.  The label on the box said “Notelets $2.”  I only paid $1, and the learning of the word “notelet” was absolutely free.  The notelets feature pictures of flowers and some French words.  After a bit of Googling, I discovered that they’re vintage labels from some old French soaps made by a fella named Victor Vaissier.  They’re sort of generically girly and European, but I know some people who appreciate that sort of thing, and a couple who might even know something about old French soap. 

Josh bought an old trunk, because he likes things you can put other things inside.  I think he picked it up in the first place with the hope that there would be a musical instrument inside, but no dice. 

But enough of all that crap, let's get down to the real find we had yesterday.  We stopped at a sort of sad and sagging little house in a neighborhood full of such places.  Have of the stuff was covered up with clear plastic bags, and the rest of it was just wet.  There was a lot of baby stuff, some Confederate memorabilia, a couple of old DirecTV boxes, some watches, and then this.

I'll just tell you what that is.  It's a dummy cartridge used to teach newbies how to load the big guns.  We found several on the internet.  They don't appear to be particularly valuable - looks like you can pick on up for less than $50 - but they are pretty neat.  The top cone comes off and there is a compartment inside, I guess for explosives.  Or you could hide the key to your safe deposit box in there, I suppose.

We were marveling at it, and the woman said her husband had found it.  He's an electrician, and it was just hanging around in the crawlspace of a house where he was working.  Seems like there were a few details missing, like whose house it was and whether they knew he was taking military relics from them.  But he brought it home to sit in their living room.  Now they were finally coming to terms that they had no real use for it, and so they intended to sell it to someone else who had a living room that needed a giant bullet to complete its decor.  You know, someone like us.

A neighbor lady was there to help cover the rest of the stuff with more plastic bags, and she said, "Have y'all ever seen Pawn?"  She then started explaining the show, which apparently sounds a bit like Antiques Roadshow or something, where people bring crap lying around in their crawlspaces in the hopes that they can sell it for enough dough to quit their jobs.  The only reason this conversation was in any way remarkable is because of the lady's accent.  With the way she talked, it sounded like she was asking, "Have y'all ever seen porn?" which seemed like a non-sequitur at best.  The show is actually called Pawn Stars, which indicates that the producers know that members of its audience have thick country accents.

Anyway, we ended up with the cartridge in exchange for a mere $4.  I was concerned it would be more, because the lady's other stuff was overpriced, and what with the conversation about porn Pawn, she might think it was actually worth a whole bunch.  Luckily, some older man came out and told her to price it at four or five dollars.  We picked four.

And that was it.  Short day, not much of a haul, but a fun morning anyway.

usurpers.

Josh had been talking about me making potato rolls for a while. He talked about it for so long that he eventually switched over to talking about doing it himself, which meant that he was tired of waiting on me. It's not that I didn't want to bake him delicious bread treats, it's that all the recipes called for potato flakes. I don't use potato flakes for mashed potatoes, so why should I use them for potato bread?

I made the dough the night before my car died. It was supposed to sit in the fridge overnight or up to five days. I was planning on making the dough that very next night, but I spent the weekend at my sister's instead, letting her drive me around to car dealerships so they could tell me that they didn't have any cars. Josh was out of town, down in Florida with the band. My sister dropped me off at my house on Sunday night, and I made the rolls. I didn't want to, because I was tired and stressed at the prospect of being vehicle-less for a while. My motivation was that Josh was coming home that night, and wouldn't he like some nice warm potato rolls? Plus, I was worried about the dough. Sure, the recipe said five days, but I did not want to push it.

Frankly, it was lucky I hadn't scrapped the dough entirely the previous Thursday night. I had finally found a recipe that used real, live potato-y potatoes. I peeled, boiled, and mashed them just like I would if I were going to slather them in milk and butter and garlic (and sour cream and more butter and more garlic and is anyone else hungry right now?). Then I mixed them in with the flour and eggs and butter. Only when I pulled the dough out of my mixer did I notice that there were lumps. I felt like such a doofus. Lumps are great in mashed potatoes, but they are not what you want in potato rolls. One thing I don't trust about potato flakes is the lack of lumps, but in this situation it was starting to seem like an advantage.

But the dough was mixed and there was nothing to do about it but let it rise anyway. I would let it rise for a day, then make the rolls Friday night. If they turned out lumpy and weird, I could just make another batch Friday or Saturday, and no one would ever be the wiser. This was the plan.

My car did not respect my plan.

Sunday night, I was rolling out the dough in big circles, just like the directions said. As I worked the dough, I noticed no lumps. I gave those doughy mounds a thorough exam, just like the OB/GYN told me to do to my breasts every month: no lumps. I can only assume that the yeasties ate them. Yeasties know good mashed potatoes when they see them, and good mashed potatoes have lumps.

The rolls were supposed to be crescent shaped, and in a couple of cases, you could tell what they were supposed to look like. Mostly they looked like fattened envelopes. I figured I could get better at that part with practice. They were resting, still warm, on the stove when Josh came in. I proudly showed them to him and invited him to admire the fresh-baked smell, the delicious potato flavor, but not the dumpy shape. He told me he had just had some Bojangles and wasn't hungry.

Sigh.

I was watching TV in the living room, and he disappeared into the kitchen to get something to drink. He came back with two and a half potato rolls in his hands, the missing half in his mouth. He began to sing the praises of the potato roll, crescent-shaped or not. I basked in his admiration.

"You should take these to Thanksgiving," he continued enthusiastically. I froze.

"I can't do that. We always have BFYRs*."

"These are better."

"Maybe, but that's...that's...no, we can't do it. I can't usurp BFYRs."

"It could be the new tradition."

"We can't do that."

"Well, alright. But take them to your family sometime. They'll see."

Colleen's Potato Crescent Rolls
Note: I use butter instead of shortening. I am also experimenting with how many slices to cut the dough circle to get the best crescents. So far, I like cutting three circles into 12 slices better than cutting two circles into 16 slices. I still get mostly misshapen rolls, but I think that might be my own problem.

*Big Fat Yeast Rolls

read my lips: no more snoopy.

When I had my first boyfriend in middle school, he used to buy me stuffed animals. It was a logical move on his part – I was a fourteen-year-old girl, after all, and that’s what the other guys bought their teenage girlfriends. After about the third such animal, I realized that I was going to keep getting those things until I drowned in them. I told him that I was not really into such things. They were nice, I appreciated them, but they were taking up space and I was not that type of girl. I was really nervous about telling him, because I didn’t want to hurt his feelings. Honestly, he seemed relieved. After that, he only bought me one stuff animal ever again, a little bean bag Snoopy, which I loved and kept on my bed. I still have it, as opposed to those first few bears with hearts on their tummies, which have long ago been given to Goodwill to be bought by other young puppy lovers.

While I was not a plush toy kind of girl, I was definitely a Peanuts fan. For a while, I had quite the Snoopy collection. My mother, sister, and I all collected the stuff. When I started thrifting and yard saling, I found lots of opportunities to expand my collection. My boyfriend, happy to find something easy he could get me, gave me Snoopy jewelry. Once our relationship became serious enough that I began receiving presents from his family, his mom got in on it, too. She herself was a huge Wizard of Oz fan, and her house was littered with figurines and books and more Dorothy-related objects than you even knew existed. I think she liked the idea of another collector, and she gave me some really nice Peanuts stuff at Christmas, expensive things that I never would have bought for myself. I was afraid to take some of it out of the boxes, because they were meant to be collector’s items. And I had that familiar feeling of unease again, where I could see that if I didn’t take action, I was going to have a house full of cartoon characters and not much else. I didn't want to have a bunch of stuff that I had to leave in the box. It seemed so pointless. But if you think it’s hard to tell your sixteen-year-old boyfriend to ease up on the stuffed animals, then imagine how much harder it would be to tell his mother that you’re not ready for Snoopy to take over your life. I had a really good relationship with her, too, and I didn't want to ruin it. To be fair, she never told me not to take the stuff out of the box. In fact, she would have sat on the floor and played with them with me.

I chickened out and mentioned my dilemma to the boyfriend instead, hoping he would drop the hint. He didn’t seem very thrilled about the idea, though he understood where I was coming from. As it happens, we broke up, which indirectly solved the problem. Maybe he did end up telling her, because if I remember correctly, she gave me a nice set of wine glasses at my last Christmas at their house. I still have those glasses and I still use them, well, except for those three that I broke. The ironic thing is that while I keep four in the cupboard, the rest stay in the original box, waiting and hoping for the day that I break another one.

What was I talking about?

Anyway, the point is, I used to have a lot of Snoopy stuff and I used to be actively seeking more and more. But I’ve cut back a lot. I have some items, but if you only saw one or two rooms in my house, you might not notice. I still periodically buy more at yard sales, but I am much more selective than Sandra of years past. Lots of people like Peanuts and have a mug or a pair of socks. Sure, if you listed everything I have, it would seem excessive. If I died tomorrow and you went to my estate sale, there would be a small but thriving Snoopy section. But scattered throughout the house the way it is, I think I have it in check. It doesn’t look like the Peanuts gang is the only thing in my life. I also have Muppets in my life, and books, and bad movies, and a musician, and funky lamps. Mine would be a great estate sale. I'd love to go to it, if I weren't dead.

A friend from high school visited me a few months ago, and she mentioned that I obviously still had something of a collection going on. She remembered the Sandra who never met a Charles Schultz item she didn't want. I felt like defending myself and telling her that it could be much, much worse. But I let it go. I just didn’t let her play with the Snoopy bean bag, the last stuffed animal ever given to me by a boy.

yard sales, oct. 24.

Yesterday, we yard saled to the limit.  I know the season is almost over and I am giving it all while I still can.  Josh had a show last night, so I got to bed at 4 AM.  Yet my body knows when it’s Saturday, and I woke up at 8:05, immediately alert.  Monday thru Friday, I hit the snooze button half a dozen times before I can drag myself out of bed.  I don’t even set the alarm on Saturdays.  If I could go to yard sales for a living, I would never go back to the cube farm. 

I’m going to go in chronological order of our day, so you can see how the car got fuller and the wallets got emptier. 

First, this puzzle.  This is the second Peanuts item I’ve shown you this year, and I intend to address why a twenty-six-year-old has so much Snoopy.  This reminded me of the puzzles in the nursery at my old church.  I’m sure some small child has chewed on Charlie Brown’s head.  I was thinking of just using the pieces to make something to hang on the wall.  It was fifty cents.

We hit an estate sale downtown, which was very good, but made me sad.  These people were selling lovely heirlooms.  While I am happy to buy beautiful old things, I would hate the idea of selling my family heirlooms.  If I had any, that is.  All my heirlooms are from other people’s families.  If I had a German grandmother who hand-made a huge tablecloth, I would probably hold on to it.  But maybe these people didn’t have any use for it.  I hope someone bought it and loves it.  I seem to hope that a lot on Saturdays.

As it happens, I bought a trash container instead.  It used to be a taters and onyuns container,  but the people had been using it to keep their trash.  They explained it to me, and I was completely sold on the idea of it.  Now, it needs a little work.  I could redo the paint job, though I’m sort of interested in what might be underneath the paint.  This was $10, which is kind of on the high end, but the people were so nice that I didn’t mind it.

A place for my trash	Detail of the door – ducks!	The gaping maw of my new trash receptacle – I always wanted something with a gaping maw!

We pulled up to the next estate sale, and I saw a big metal cabinet from the 50s from the road.  I went, “ooooooooh” and nearly hit their mailbox.  Once we got in the driveway, we also saw a beautiful solid wood dresser that had already been sold.  Again, I was sad that I didn’t get it, but okay with the idea that someone else got a really fantastic deal on an amazing piece of furniture.   Based on the prices of the other things, it probably was very reasonable.

In fact, the oooooooooh-worth cabinet was only $5.  Just when I thought I didn’t have any more room in my house for furniture, I go and bring home this.  Since I anthropomorphize everything I own, I imagine my house heaving a big sigh everytime it sees me pull in the driveway on Saturday afternoons.  Then it sort of girds its loins and prepares for my new treasure.

Like the trash container, the cabinet needs a good, thorough cleaning.  I’ve left it outside until I can give it one.  I sprayed some 409 on it and the grime just started running down the side in streams.  I have yet to decide whether to put it in the pantry to store canned goods or perhaps in the living room to contain movies.  Or maybe some yet un-thought of use.  I just love those handles.

Once I decided to buy it, I started discussing with the seller how I might get it home.  I was going to try my darnedest to put it in the car, but I recognized the possibility that it might not happen.  After all, the cabinet was easily five and a half feet tall.

“What are you driving?”

“It’s a small car, a Honda Fit.”

“Oh, I’ve got one of those.  It’ll fit in there.”  His confidence and status as a fellow Fit fan boosted my motivation.  We were going to get this thing in my hatchback.

And by gum, we did.  We had to push the front passenger seat up, so Josh would have to ride in the back, but it went in there, and we could close the hatch and everything.  We still had the trash bin in the back, too.  Once we got it in there, we joked that the Honda people could have been filming us and used the footage for a commercial.  Assuming they weren’t actually doing that, here’s my official endorsement:  People, if you want a great yard saling car, get a Honda Fit.  This message has been approved by me, Josh, and that guy who sold me a cabinet.

Again, these people were terribly nice and helpful.  They also had a pair of gorgeous and sweet-natured English pointers.  I frequently see pets at yard sales, and I’m pretty good at resisting the urge to fawn all over them.  In fact, depending on the animal, sometimes it’s more of an effort to resist kicking them.  But I went ahead and gave each dog a good pat on the head and scratch on the ears.  They were pretty, pretty dogs.  I’m only guessing at the breed based on web pictures, since I didn’t actually see them point at anything, nor could I determine if they had British barks.  I wonder if you could train a pointer to find good yard sale deals for you.

The next sale on my list was one I had been excited about for ages.  The Korean Methodist church in Cary had been advertising their sale on CraigsList for six weeks.  In fact, one time I went to it, after finding the ad but not verifying the date.  I assume if you advertise during the week, then your sale is on the upcoming Saturday.  And that’s how I end up in empty church parking lots, wondering where all the stuff is.  I’ve been much better about checking dates after several of these incidents.  Anyway, the long-awaited Korean yard sale was finally happening.  I am always excited about church sales, but after our last Korean church sale, I didn’t even care about what stuff we might find.  I was just looking forward to the food.  We didn’t buy any of the clothes or mugs or whatever they were selling, but we did buy sushi and spring rolls.  As we left, we wondered whether you could, I dunno, steal a little old Asian lady and have her cook for you.  I could take out the shelves of my new metal cabinet and she could live inside there.  That would be awesome.  I am enamored of the idea of homemade exotic foreign food.  It makes me wonder if the people who eat at the KFC in Seoul would like to try some Sunday dinner fried chicken.

Check it out, I brought my camera so I could show you why you should always go to a Korean church yard sale.

 

As we drove to the next sale on the list, Josh said, “I wish I had talked you out of buying this cabinet thing.”

“What?”  This is not what I want to hear.  Five dollars or not, I don’t need buyer’s remorse.  He had seemed enthusiastic enough at the time.

“I just don’t like sitting back here.  I wish we hadn’t bought it because it’s inconvenient for me right now.”  Well, at least he’s honest.  I like having him next to me so I can reach out and touch him, though he looked awfully cute in the rearview.  I know you’re supposed to check your rearview every few seconds or so, but I think I was checking it more frequently than usual.

As it was, we only had one more sale on the list that was close.  I had several more written down, but they were in Durham, and it was about 11:00.  Most days, that wouldn’t stop us, but we had already bought quite a bit, and I could easily be talked into packing it in early.  Plus, the Durham sales hadn’t sounded particularly interesting.  They didn’t even have any sushi.

We went to the last sale.  Josh reminded me that we could only buy very small things, because the car was absolutely full.  It was a pretty standard church sale – big room full of tables covered in stuff, divided by sections.  Josh immediately went over to the electronics table, while I headed for the tables.  Here’s something I did not buy, because fake hair creeps me out.  I’ve probably seen wigs at sales before, but it’s a fairly rare item.

I was examining some bags of mismatched greeting cards, when Josh came up behind me and mentioned the stereo.  We see old stereo equipment all the time, some of which he has bought.  He mentioned once that he wanted some huge honkin’ speakers.  I made a face as I imagined my future home, being overtaken by speakers.  I mean, they make really good tiny speakers now.  Why can’t he use those little marvels of modernity? 

“Big ones?”

“They sound the best.” <Insert long dreamy speech about how good unnecessarily large speakers sound.>

“But where will we put the baby?”

“What baby?”

The conversation got sort of side-tracked after that.  Anyway, my future with this man apparently will feature giant speakers, just like his future with me will be well-lit with many ridiculous lamps.  Life is full of surprises, n’est-ce pas?  He has a stereo, of course, but he’s been looking for a nice, new (to him) one, and had a very specific idea in his head of what he wanted, down to the color and kind of buttons.  But the one in the corner was apparently what he’d been looking for.  It had big, though maybe not quite honkin’, speakers.  The problem was that it was marked $50.

“It’s worth that, too.  Well, not to me.”  I felt a little proud to hear him say that - a true yard saler, that one.  I have trained him so well. 

“Would you pay $25?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, they will probably mark things down or have a bag sale at some point.”  We went to the cashier to inquire about the schedule.  I don’t really like to do this, just because some people seem to find it rude.  I assume these are people whose only yard sale experience is volunteering at the ones their church holds.

Church sales are my favorite of all yard sales.  They draw from lots of different people, so there is a lot of stuff, with good variety.  Their prices are generally cheap, because at least one of the volunteers knows what the market is like.  They are often indoors, and therefore can happen even in inclement weather.  Church people are generally pretty friendly.  And usually, there is a giant slashing of prices towards the end of the day.  Sometimes they simply do half off, and sometimes they give you a bag and tell you to stuff it (the bag, I mean) for a dollar.  Maybe I miss out on the good stuff by not waiting in line for the doors to open, but I love to hit a church sale just when they’re starting to hand out bags.  Sometimes if we hit a church sale early in the day and decide that it’s a good one, we’ll come back later just for the mad rush of the bag sale.

The cashiers told me that starting at noon, we could fill a paper grocery bag for $3.  Honestly, I would prefer $1 to fill a plastic grocery bag, but you take what you can get.  They seemed a bit put-off to be asked and I felt like they were looking down on me for even trying to get a better deal.  Ah.  One of those kind of sales.

Once, we went to a gigantic church sale in Chapel Hill.  It was afternoon, so it was prime bag-stuffing time.  This sale was divided up into sections in the education building – women’s clothes in one classroom, toys in another, and so on.  Each individual room had its own volunteers and cashiers, which made the pricing inconsistent.  The electronics might have been marked down by half at 9:30, while next door in children’s clothes, a bag sale starting at 11.  One room was labeled “boutique,” which meant nice women’s clothes and accessories.  This room was run by a pair of uptight old ladies.  I was browsing the racks, when a woman came in and asked if there was any special pricing.  The cashier said yes, priced as marked.  I immediately stopped looking so I could listen.  After all, I wasn’t going to pay a full $5 for a dress, even a really nice one, when in every other room around me, people were stuffing bags to their heart’s content.  The customer left, and the lady sniffed to her co-cashier, “I think the prices are plenty low already.”

That made me mad, and I walked out of the room without buying anything.  I wanted to report the incident to someone, as if there was a Yard Sale Council that regulated everything (I would love to be on the Yard Sale Council).  I went to the “White Elephant” room instead, where I was handed a paper grocery bag.  I could see to the other side of the room, where Josh was carrying a giant (no, really, GIANT) box full of books.  As I stuffed any item that looked even vaguely interesting in my bag, I thought about all the things I’d like to tell that old woman, but since I’m not that confrontational, I’ll tell you instead.

Look, lady, this sale is going to be over in an hour.  It’s been going on for two days now and you still have 50 feet of racks stuffed with clothes, some of which are very nice, but most are nothing special.  In an hour, when you have to close the doors to your swarming public, you are going to have to take all these clothes, pack them up, and drive them all down to the thrift store.  Not only will you not get $5 apiece for them, you won’t get anything at all but a tax write-off and a smile.  The more you sell, the less work you have to do later, and the more money your church gets. 

So yeah, I tend to get a little miffed by workers who don’t understand the yard sale scene.  Back to yesterday and the stereo dilemma:  Josh and I discussed our options.  It was still 55 minutes until the bag sale began.  The stereo was not going to fit in a bag anyway, so it was possible there would be special pricing for large items.  I didn’t think he was going to be able to negotiate for it, not after the cashiers had been semi-snippy.  As we talked, I continued to poke through bags full of cards.  Unless the price per card is very low, I like to look through each card to decide if buying the bag is worth it.  These bags were marked $2 apiece and each contained 10 to 15 cards.  Most of them were ho-hum, though there were a couple featuring Norman Rockwell paintings and some with drawings of fruit on thick card-stock.  I didn’t necessarily want to wait an hour to get the cards for cheap, though if Josh wanted the stereo, we might be hanging out anyway.  He was nervous, as various other interested men examined the stereo, pushing buttons, checking out the speakers, standing back and scratching their chins.

A volunteer, a fluffy-looking lady with black bushy hair, walked up and offered to mark the bags of cards down.  I hadn’t sought her out or even looked at her, she just knew what was up and was looking to make some deals.  Ding!  This was the lady we needed to be talking to.  As she remarked the bags, I gave Josh a meaningful glance, then asked her how pricing would work on items that were too large for bags.  She said she didn’t know, but mentioned that they probably would not mark down the antique sewing machine (priced at $300).  I pointed out the stereo.

“Oh, that I don’t know about.”

“It’s marked $50 right now,” Josh said.

“Really?  I thought it was more like $30,” she replied.

“I’ll give you $25,” he answered, my sweet yard sale champ.  Men who can negotiate are hot.

“I’ll have to ask.”  She went and talked to someone else and then came back to say our deal had been accepted.  Score.*  This goes to show that the cashier is not always the only person you can talk to.  Pick a volunteer, ask them.  If they aren’t willing to make you a deal, try again with a different one.  Look around to see if anyone is randomly marking down prices for greeting card enthusiasts.  Thus ends your yard sale lesson of the day.

Our total, with the stereo, three bags of cards, and three books, was $29.75.  After emptying our wallets, dumping out all our change, and raiding my car for my secret cash stash, we had exactly enough.  If we had stopped for a soda earlier, which we sometimes do, we wouldn’t have had enough.  Then, we went outside and somehow managed to fit the receiver and two giant speakers into the Fit.  Empty wallets, full car, we called it a day.  Went home, ate sushi and spring rolls, took a snuggly nap.  Perfect Saturday.

 

* I priced the stereo online when I got home.  People have been able to sell the speakers for $150 - $200, while the stereo receiver seems to be going for $100 - $170.  Maybe big speakers aren’t so bad after all.

lobster ravioli.

My code wasn't working, and I didn't know why.

I'd gone over the easy stuff. Nine times out of ten, or even some higher, less often used percentage, the reason code doesn't work is some stupid thing. I know you're not all programmers, so I'll try to explain. It would be like if your email wouldn't send if you had a typo, or if it got delivered to the wrong person if your grammar wasn't quite right. Is that a good analogy for the non-programmers among you? I don't know. I don't remember how to think like a regular person.

If it wasn't something easy and obvious, it was something mysterious. My code was calling other people's code, and there was some secret in that other code that was making my code not work. Like if you were forwarding an email with a spelling mistake in it, and that mistake caused your email to send itself 300 times. I'm just confusing everybody with these bad analogies here.

In college, we had a class where we spent the entire semester on one program. Rumors of this class scared the pants off the underclassmen. Up until that point, we wrote programs in two week cycles. They did things like draw geometric shapes. The program would ask you for a number and a letter, and then draw you a square. For extra credit, you could program it to give you the option of drawing a triangle.

# shapes.exe

Please enter a letter: b

Please enter a number: 3

Would you like a square (s) or a triangle (t)? w

Bad Input. Would you like a square (s) or a triangle (t)? t

b
bb
bbb

#

Does that look like extra credit work to you?

To go from that to writing an interpreter for the PDP-11, well, it was a jump. Not as big of a jump as going from writing small programs from scratch in college to maintaining someone else's decade-old code in the real world, but a jump nonetheless. Some of you don't know what a PDP-11 is, and that's okay, we didn't either.

We were given weekly assignments, each one adding new features to our program. My partner and I were doing great. We'd kept up with the assignment and it spit out the correct response when we fed it the test data. But during the last week, the very last assignment, we hit a wall, a heuristic fence post. The last feature did not give the right answer. It was an additional dozen lines of code. We looked at it, messed with it, played with it. It would not work. We despaired. We had run into a truly mysterious bug, the first of many in my life.

I was thinking of that project this afternoon, when a dozen lines of code were giving me fits. So I was trying things. I was changing how the code did what it did, hoping that I would somehow circumvent the mysteriousness. The regular people among you are probably a little frightened at the guesswork in it. If something doesn't work, shouldn't I be able to tell why? Do people really go about taking shots in the dark?

You poor, poor people. Your computer has bugs, every piece of software you have ever used has bugs. There will always be bugs. It's not that the computer is not totally logical, it's that sometimes the picture is bigger than we can see. There is logic, but heck if we can find it sometimes. It is an odd thing, this modern faith.

I knew my code wasn't working because I got emails that told me so. Isn't that nice? Rather than my code just spitting out the wrong thing or crashing the application, an outside force sent me reminders that I still hadn't found the answer. My code was sending a message to some other computer using different code. The other computer's code sent me emails that said "FAILURE" or "ERROR" or "GEEZ, YOU SUCK." It was expecting the messages from my code to look a certain way and say a certain thing, and my code stubbornly refused to be accommodating. I had a failure email from 1:59 PM, 2:03 PM, 2:04 PM, and 2:07 PM. Each one represented a new try. The first one I changed this line, the second one I changed another.

The email I received at 2:25 PM said "Holy Lobster, Batman! It works!"

I did not write that email message. The system administrator did. He's as weird as any techy person, but the whole lobster thing, well, it's my fault. During some other semester of my college programming days, I had to write test data for a program. I'm not the kind of girl who can just use "Mary Smith 123 Main Street." I like to inject some creativity into my programs, because otherwise the right side of my brain cries at night. This way I can convince myself that it wasn't a mistake to become a well-paid soulless code monkey instead of a pure and starving writer. And so I used "Lobster Ravioli" somewhere in my data, probably because that had been the special we'd been serving at the restaurant that week. The words "lobster" and "ravioli" are inherently funny, like "underpants" or "macadamia". And this week, when I had to come up with some test data for my code to send to the other computer's code, Lobster Ravioli came through for me again.

I had not anticipated the system administrator to a.) see it, and b.) mention it every time he saw me.

Regardless of the silly way that the 2:25 PM email said it, it did say that my code now worked. It was sending the right message. The trouble was, I didn't remember what I did. If it's upsetting to think that sometimes the computer mysteriously doesn't work, is it even scarier to think that sometimes it mysteriously does? And at that point, the programmer slowly and quietly steps away from the keyboard, afraid to touch anything lest she disrupt whatever cosmic force fixed the problem?

Back to that semester-long project, that almost correct PDP-11 interpreter. We gave up on fixing the bug. Even as young and naive students, we were prepared to accept that sometimes the computer, in all its infinite wisdom, works in mysterious ways. To make up for the bug, I was going through the working code and adding comments. I never used comments in college except when the program was broken. It was my way of sucking up. I was also doing a little clean-up. Like when you read back through your email and add a couple of carriage returns for readability.

I finished up and ran the program with all the test data again to make sure I hadn't broken some new thing. And suddenly, it worked. I had changed some little thing in a completely unrelated piece of code that we had written months ago, which had never given us any problems. And suddenly the thing that hadn't worked before did. Holy Lobster, Batman.

yard sales, oct. 17.

Sometimes I think that I should start taking my camera to yard sales so that I can snap pictures of interesting things I see, but do not buy.  Given the amount of stuff that I've been putting on display the past few weeks, you might be surprised to find that there are things I actually leave for other people.  But it's true.  You can find lots of things at yard sales that are not lamps, Star Trek movies, or wicker soldier helmets.  But then I think about how I would have to carry around my camera all the time, and I sorta kinda on purpose forget my camera every Saturday morning.

I wish I had not remembered to forget my camera this morning, because there was something awesome, and I did not buy it.  Why didn't I buy it?  Because I can't even play the freaking accordian, that's why, and $125 is too much for an instrument that I don't play.  Now, $50 would have been mighty tempting.  If it had been $50, I would have looked longingly at it for a long time, carefully examining the felt-lined case, caressing the cherry red finish, and then offered $30.  Sometimes it is a blessing that things cost too much money, because otherwise I would buy them.  And then I would have to store it in the closet next to my unicycle. 

The people who had the accordian had lots of other cool things, most of which I did not buy.  I only bought a book and a purse.  I didn't even buy the giraffe-shaped teapot.  You guys should be so proud of me for resisting the teapot, especially considering that my resolve was so weakened after not buying the accordian.  Only at a yard sale will you ever think the thought "Well, I didn't buy the accordian, so I can treat myself and buy this giraffe teapot."  I think the people must have shopped at vintage consignment stores.  Their prices were too high for them to be yard salers.  

We hit one sale that had 15 large boxes of DVDs for a dollar apiece.  I don't consider myself to be particularly movie-savvy.  I'm about average, really.  But I had not heard of 95% of those movies.  They were mostly modern American movies.  I can only assume that they were really terrible, the kind of thing the studio makes in two weeks on a really small budget because they're bound to make enough back just by selling 10,000 copies from the Wal-Mart discount bin.  A long time ago, people used to make terrible horror movies in, like, days.  They didn't have to be good, because they were cheap, and people just wanted something to see.  You could be depressed that there is a whole industry based on making something that only has to be good enough, but the silver lining here is that we will never run out of bad movies to make fun of.

As it was, we picked up some old baddies.
Invasion Inner Earth
How Awful About Allen
Hercules Against the Moon Men
The Witch's Curse
Missile to the Moon
Dementia 13
Carnival of Souls

I bought a huge box of dishes for my sister, who has been looking for some lightweight, hard to break Corelle dishes so that her children can finally start earning their keep and setting the table.  I (or rather she) got 16 dinner plates, 16 cereal bowls, and 8 bread plates for $35.  I described that event all in one little sentence, but in actuality it took half an hour to call her up, ask if she wanted them, try to describe them, take a picture of the plates with my phone and send it to her, then discuss how much she was willing to pay, and finally make the deal with the seller, who was probably amused by the whole spectacle.  And she won't even get them for another month, because she lives in Tennessee.  I told my mom about this score, to which she replied, “You’re a good person to know.”  When she makes these sort of odd and sweet statements, she reminds me of my grandmother, who pretty much only says odd and sweet statements.  Will I be like that when I’m old?

And here are some random purchases.  I've taken an interest lately in kitchen linens.  I like their homey scenes and the fact that they feel soft, as opposed to hand towels, which is what I had been using in the kitchen.  I’m going to paint the paper towel holder, as right now it looks like someone was using it for a drop cloth.  I also got a silver tray, which I have absolutely no use for.  I mean, in all honesty, no one in the world has ever needed a silver tray.  But these things happen at yard sales.  Sometimes things call to me.  It is actual silver, made by Oneida, and was $.50.  It may end up in the Goodwill box in six months, or I may find a use for it yet.  Maybe someone I know desperately wants a silver tray just like this, and then they, too, will think that I’m a good person to know.

 

You probably don't know what this is, but this is Sputnik.  It's actually a little paper holder than you can put on your desk or wherever, but it's meant to look like Sputnik.  How do I know this?  Because I already have one that I bought from the Kansas Cosmosphere.  I paid twelve whole dollars for it, but Josh got this one for a quarter.  How many people had already passed this thing by without even knowing that it was the thing that launched the Soviet Space Program?  Sometimes the things you find at a yard sale feel very serendipitous.  We were uniquely prepared to appreciate this little desk thing, and it sat there waiting just for us to come along and buy it.

Aside from the accordian, I had another yard sale first this morning:  a shoes-off sale.  It was an estate sale, and the people had white carpeting.  They asked that we remove our shoes when we came in, which made me feel like I was at a very authentic Japanese restaurant.  If only someone had tossed knives around, but maybe some other time.  The lady had some fiesta ware.  I know a lot of people collect this stuff, but it's never really interested me until today.  Maybe it was the seventies orange, maybe it was the funky rounded-square shape, maybe it was seeing a whole set together as opposed to random individual pieces, but I really liked it.  She also had a seltzer bottle like what a clown would use as a spray gag, which was very tempting to Josh.

The lady liked cats.  Usually, when I say that someone had an estate sale and they liked cats, that means that the house had an overpowering stench.  But this was not the case here, so maybe the cats had to take off their shoes when they came in.  She did have several pieces of cat artwork and lots of feline books.  It reminded me of being age nine or so, when I was in the full throes of a little girl cat obsession.  Some of the art was neat - vintage ads for cat food and the like.  But some of it was just pictures of cats.  The little girl in me would have loved all of that, because to me, the quality of the product didn't matter, but if felines were involved, then I was all over it.  I like to think that my tastes have matured over the years.

It also reminded me that my niece, who I hear is very interested in kitties, has a birthday coming up.  I couldn't bear to buy her any of the art, though.  She probably would not appreciate the vintage ads, and I couldn't bear to buy what looked like a framed calendar picture.  And trust me, I know what framed calendar pictures of cats look like.

We did see one other thing worth mentioning:  the most amazing lamp ever.  It looked like a giant flowering plant, and after studying it for five minutes (while I was taking pictures of dishes with my phone), even Josh thought it was awesome.  He originally dismissed it as being hideously seventies.  I wish I could describe its incredible beauty to you, but I cannot do it justice.  Luckily for me, it had already been sold, no doubt for upwards of $100.  If I had to choose between that lamp and the accordian…that’s a choice that no yard saler should ever have to make.

I have got to start taking my camera along.  So that you may see amazing lamps, even when I can’t buy them.