Post Yard Sale Discomfort

So. Up at 630 to do a coffee run. Some punk kids had ripped down my signs and had to fish one out of neighbours tree and the other from halfway up the block. Signs more ghetto looking than ever. Started carting crap out around 745ish. People started driving by around 830 despite advertised 10am start. Many, many trips up stairs with heavy boxes. Not as busy as expected. Occasional jack ass muttering to family about price of a $2 trade paperback. It was pretty boring. After sale had to pack all stuff back up and take it downstairs. Upshot: easier to carry stuff down than up. Also sold set of 6 kitchen chairs and didn't have to make that six trips down the stairs.

Result:

Negative: Despite frequent and liberal use of sunscreen am sunburned on back. Have rash from sun on arms. Apparently so white allergic to sun.

Postive: Profit: $170.25

Future? Will probably try Forum Flea market as is indoors and has much higher customer potential.

Yard Sale Madness Pt. 1

I suppose I should call this one pre-yard sale madness.

So I tried at least three times last year to have a yard sale and was rained out... you guessed it....3 times. It's hard to schedule because I usually work all weekend every weekend. So I have to wait for a randomly assigned day off (as will happen tomorrow) or book the day off (as I tried 3 times last year). It's kind of funny that on my random Saturday off the weather is going to be good. And it was bad every time I scheduled a day off for this sale.

Anyway, this drama has been going on for awhile. The end might be in sight. I thought it would be a good idea to go through and organize stuff and check it out before tomorrow and man! I have a TON of stuff to sell. I think I might have more clothes for my yard sale than some people own. Ditto: books, VHS movies, and CDs. Nearing the end of the sort I realized I was mixing a big box of Oneida dishes my sister kindly donated. House-wide search ensued and then remember had put it in the attic. So not what I wanted to do. The attic has about 3 good temperature days a year and the first over 30 degree is not one of them. Oh well. Found dishes, a wicker shelf, a rubbermaid bin, two backpacks and a bag of stuff had placed in the attic after yard sale failures last fall. Whew! Sweaty pig mess at the end.

So far the yard sale has cost me nothing but time (about 2 hours tonight and countless hours collecting and organizing stuff before tonight). Hopefully tomorrow the work pays off in a reasonable fasion.

Good things about having a yard sale: You can make money and clean out your stuff.

Bad things: Haggling. I hate hagglers. The sign. I hate putting up the sign for some reason. The people. I don't like talking to strangers at the best of times, but haggling strangers is much worse. Trying to price stuff. I don't go yard saleing. I don't know how much to charge. And I went with the ask about twice as much as you want for something to actually get close to what you want. The hagglers will knock you down and the non-hagglers (like me) will pay your higher asking price.

How will it all break down? Only time will tell.... Stay tuned for yard sale results.

Star Trek

Go see it!

Life is good. Tutoring is going pretty well. Things are good, go see Star Trek! It made Wolverine look like The Last Legion.

When all else fails...

So my Wii remotes (also called wiimotes) stopped working yesterday. I had just gotten home from tutoring and thought I'd get my 30 minutes or so of Wii Fit in before I made dinner. I turned everything on and it booted up and then nothing. No action on the screen and a flashing blue light on my controller. So I tried another controller. Nothing. I went back and forth between the two uselessly. So I turn the system off for a minute and back on. Still no dice. I try unplugging the sensor bar and plugging it back in. Nope. At the end of my technical expertise I said 'fuck it' I'm hungry and went and made chop suey while researching the problem. After dinner and a read through of how to fix out-of-sync remotes I tried again. Still nothing. Eventually I got fed up and went to bed. After dinner this evening I try again to fix the remotes to no avail. I switched batteries around and turned stuff off and held in the "sync" button on the console while trying to connect the remotes till I was blue in the face. Still nothing. So I trudged back upstairs and reread a few of the pages I looked at yesterday and learned an important lesson in repair work. It's important to read the directions completely and carefully. I was only doing half the fix. Back in the basement I followed all the steps and away I went. Now I'm too tired to play my Wii, but I could if I wanted to.

Taking the Bus

So having just gotten back from vacation I hadn't taken the bus in over a week. I had forgotten how tired of the bus I was. Sigh.

Now I have been a user of public transit a lot longer than I was a car owner. And said car was a Piece of Shit Ford. I am firm believer that it is generally a good way to travel, it's better for the environment and is quite a bit cheaper than the threefold expense of owning a car. The $60 a month I spend on a bus pass wouldn't even pay for gas let alone insurance or a car payment. In bigger cities the trains and subways have been awesome ways to get around and even the bus generally affords decent reading time.

That said. I'm really tired of taking the bus. And what follows is going to make me sound like an unmitigated snob, but so be it.

I got on the bus this morning and it wasn't too bad. A weird lady loudly chewing gum got on soon after me, but sat far enough way that it wasn't that bothersome. Then a lady got on and sat directly in front of me. Harmless enough until her smell hit me. She was drenched in some sort of nasty chemical perfume that was some weird combination of fruit and spice. It was terrible. Soon after a slightly smelly (and as I came to find out, dirty) man got on and sat down next to me. He sat 'man style' legs spread and definitely crowding me. Then he pulled out one of those industrial freezer bags. It looked like it was full of electrical cords, to my dismay it turned out to be full of black licorice. I hate black licorice. It tastes foul and smells worse. So now, not only am I trying very hard not to breathe in the perfume from the lady in front of me, I'm trying not to breathe in the smell of the licorice and ignore the entirely gross sound of the guy chewing the licorice. I'm also trying to occupy less and less space in the seat as the guy is making no effort to not touch me. I appreciate that I am a big girl, but it's not that hard to avoid touching the person next to you. I was a little breathing, shrinking ball of misery by the time the 30 minute ride was up. Then when the guy got off ahead of me I noticed his pants were dirty and covered in a bunch of white dust. I look down and sure enough my pants are now covered up the side where he said in white dirt too. The 2nd bus was incredibly overcrowded for a weekday afternoon and just as miserable a ride as the first. In all fairness the bus ride home wasn't too bad this evening although the bus stop wait for my first bus did feature an older heavy set man drinking straight from a large brown liquor store bag.

Ugh. I'm very tired of being stuck with public transportation. In Halifax public transportation is largely full of the old, crazy and Spryfield like poor with screaming children. There are a handful of students and mostly normal people thrown in for good measure. (I warned you I'd end up sounding like a snob). The bitterness and snobbery is really more my fault than anything else and stems mostly from my two main problems with the bus: the crowding and the people who take the bus.

I hate crowds and I have an extreme dislike of people in my personal space. This means than whenever a stranger sits next to me I am immediately uncomfortable and slightly stressed out. This only gets compounded by the jerks who make no attempt to give you space. If I'm going to take the outside seat you can be damn sure I'm going to make every effort possible to NOT sit on or right up against the person next to me. You can also be sure that I will NOT be squeezing my ass in between two people in a spot that was not meant for my ass. I am however frequently the victim of people who have no problem with plopping down way too close or some fat lady (or man) who thinks it's OK to squeeze herself in between two people seated with a buffer between. Seriously lady? That seat you just forced yourself into has enough space for a 14 year old. And not a big one. If your butt don't fit, don't sit. That should be a bus rule. Exceptions to this rule: Really old people, pregnant and handicapped people. They probably need to sit. When this happens I'll usually stand up. When I'm stuck in the inside seat I generally just cower in misery trying not to scowl or elbow them until they get up or my stop arrives.

The people who take the bus is a pretty broad term for all the bad bus behaviour I can't stand. This refers mostly to people who listen to their ipods too loud, are generally loud or disruptive or are obnoxiously chewing something. Usually gum. I realize my weird anti-chewing fetish is more my own neurosis than theirs, but it's just plain gross to not close your mouth when chewing. It's uncalled for to have excessively personal conversations at top volume on the bus. No one wants to hear about your friends abortion, where you keep your knife or your breakup fight with your boyfriend on your iphone (all true things). If I'm sitting in the middle of the bus and I can hear your Eminem song and your at the back of the bus, your mp3 player is too loud! There is a lady who takes the first bus in the morning who always sits next to me if the seat is free. She's a bleach blond with no concept of personal space who chews her gum, at 7 in the morning, with her mouth open. It's gotten to the point where when I take the first bus in the morning I commit bus behaviour crime and place my backpack on the empty seat next to me when we get to her stop.

Phew! That was a lot of somewhat incoherent rambling. I could probably go on, but you get the idea. Sometimes good things do happen in transit. One night this past winter I was in the middle of an almost 5 hour bus journey home during a snowstorm and I talked to an elderly black man for a bit who told me about his new shoes and his beautiful wife who passed away. He kept a photo of her in his briefcase and thought she was prettier than Halle Berry. He said he was studying law at Dal. I'm not sure how much of what he said was true, but listening to him speak of his love for his wife was pretty cool. Taking the bus everyday you get to recognise people and I've seen babies turn into toddlers, turn into little kids. There is almost always something or someone to see or listen to. And I get almost 3 hours a day of free reading time.

Yes, I said three hours. What would be an approximately 45 minute a day commute to and from work is about three hours a day on the bus in Halifax.

What does this all mean? Nothing special really. Someday I'll have a car and won't be able to rant about the bus anymore. I might miss that. It can be fun to have something to bitch about. Plus I could fill a book with transit tales.

Post Earth Hour

So Nanny and I did participate in Earth Hour, although you couldn't tell because Nannys camping lantern is brighter than the living room lamps. Perhaps we should just switch to that permenantly. Nanny was more into Earth Hour than I was, which is kind of cool when you think about it. She said all her lady friends were going to do it too.

We dutifully turned off our lights at 830. She turned off her lantern and i headed to the basement for candles. It may have been smarter to get the candles before we turned the lights out. Anyway, I also should have used the ladies room beforehand. No biggie, I headed to the washroom candle in hand and unthinkingly turned the light on. Oops! Habits are hard to break, I promptly turned the light back off and conducted my affairs by candlelight.

I though a walk around the neigbourhood might be interesting, see who was participating and who wasn't. From the house it looked promising and it had been a beautiful day. Leaving the house I realized it was much colder than it had been and knew it wasn't going to be a long walk as I wasn't dressed for one. Also it was dark and I didn't want to get mugged. Not because mugging is a popular sport in my relatively quiet neighbourhood, but because I'm distrustful and paranoid by nature. I wandered around for almost 20 minutes and eventually came to the conclusion that participation in Earth Hour was maybe 30%. It's hard to judge as my survey was not extensive enough to give an accurate result and the numbers were hard to guage for a few reasons. A number of the completely dark houses appeared to be totally empty with no cars in the driveway. A fair number just had lights on all over, a couple had candles lit. A few that appeared to have lights on may have just had lanterns like us so I'll give them the benefit of the doubt. And then were the ones with no lights on, curtains somewhat firmly shut who were watching TV. I'm mildly conflicted about those, because turning off your lights while watching TV is still saving electricity and is at least a symbolic gesture of participation in a largely symbolic event.

Much chilled and somewhat dissapointed in my survey I returned home and read for a little bit and then, oddly got bored. The quiet was kind of getting to me. I'm used to reading with music or something else goign on when I'm not in bed. And it's rare that Nanny is up and she doesn't have the TV on. So I figured that instead of sitting there ignoring each other and reading we should just play cards.

We played skip-bo (spite and malice would be the non-brand name). We had a darned good evenly matched hand that took quite awhile. I eventually one and got 40 points for what was left of Nannys deck. Funnily enough 40 points was exactly what I needed to hit 500 and win the game. I think it's also the first time I've won 500 to zero. At the end of the hand we discovered it was 945 and Earth Hour ran long.

All in all, it was pretty cool. It reminded me of when the power goes out in a storm and you just chill and read and hang out. It was cozy and nice. On a forum I frequent full of people from all over the world I asked who had heard of Earth Hour and who had participated. I discovered that lots of people had heard of it and participated and more than one mentioned using the time for hanging with family. Kind of cool.

k-

Earth Hour Conflict

Ok. So I support Earth Hour. I appreciate the idea of raising awareness of smarter, more ecofriendly energy consumption and a better awareness of being a responsible eco-citizen in general, but...

I was in the mall today picking up a copy of Lolita and on my way back to the bus stop I noticed that Sears (of all places) had an Earth Hour sign outside its store. And I thought "oh yeah, Earth Hour is Saturday". Then I looked some more and there were at least 8 glossy cardboard signs outside the store entrance adverstising Earth Hour. AND there was a 32'' flat screen tv running a countdown clock to Earth Hour.

Now, call me cycnical, but why, oh why would you run a TV CONSTANTLY to adverstise something that is supposed to raise awareness about energy consumption? Then I started to think about those glossy cardboard signs. I don't think you can really recycle finished glossy cardboard signs. Now I realize Earth Hour is more about energy consumption than recycling, but just how much energy was used making all those signs? Whats going to happen to them after Saturday? How many more stores in how many more malls are doing this?

I was thinking that maybe Earth Hour should be more of a grassroots movement. Word of mouth, IM's, facebook invites, that sort of thing. Although you have to be using energy to be online at least it's not generating tonnes of garbage in the name of the environment.

On the other hand the argument could be made that that TV running the countdown clock would probably be turned on inside one of 30 demo tvs running the latest Pixar film on a loop.

Gah! What to do? Is the awareness raised worth more than the cost to raise it? I don't know. It just made me think.

k-

ps. Check out the Wikipedia article on Earth Hour, I guess I'm not the only one to wonder about this.

pps. I've been checking out stuff online:
This guy also had some interesting things to say.

Weird Day

So yesterday was a weird day. I got up. Thats not weird, but it all went a bit wonky after I left the house. I was on the bus when I realized I had forgotten my travel mug. This was annoying because you can't get coffee as a bus passenger if you don't have a travel mug. Unless of course you feel confident in your abilities to hide the coffee in your bag without spilling it, which I didn't. So coffee mission was a failure. It was a gorgeous day out so I had left for work super early to wander around and try to get some shopping done. It was gorgeous until i hit the bus stop and the wind picked up and I realized it's not quite spring yet. Still. Not too bad. I arrived at Value Village, my clothing store of choice, and completely failed at buying ANYTHING. Not a book to be had (that I wanted. In all fairness I was ONLY looking for a copy of Lolita). Then it was really busy and annoying. I hate March break. I still have to work and all the stuff I enjoy about having a weird retail schedule (the quiet daytime shopping times etc...) is not available during March break. So I got quickly pissed off at the crowds and left in a huff. Immature, but true.

While waiting for the bus (a theme for the day) a deaf guy came up and gave me his deaf card thing and asked me for money. Then pouted when I smiled and said no. Then I made the grave error of signing 'thank you' (he was somewhat polite about my refusal and smiled and 'thank you' is one of the few signs i remember. also a sign i use on the deaf guy who frequents my photolab). NEVER sign to a deaf person to whom you have just refused money it just renews their quest to get money. If i had money I wouldn't be taking the bus and I would have a car. Anyway now I'm annoyed at Value Village, annoyed at myself for being a bitch and annoyed at the deaf guy for making me feel like i was a bitch for not giving him money I didn't have. (On a side note I've since heard he's a regular around bayers lake and rumour has it he's not deaf). It's also weird to be panhandled in an industrial park. Although there he has zero competition, whereas downtown it's a different story.

So... The bus finally arrives and I get on show the driver my pass and go to sit when the driver calls me back, and kind of grabs my arm. I'm like "sorry?" and he asked to see my pass again. And I'm like "i showed you my pass" but i thought maybe I flashed it too quick or something. It's not like I do this every day (i do it like 4 times a day). He proceeds to take my pass out of my hands and examine it closely. Then he tells me there have been alot of fraudulant passes lately and he has to check them all and that he gets "5 or 6 a day, not that I think you have a fraudulent bus pass". Obviously he suspected or he wouldn't have pulled me back. This bus pass fraud is kind of news to me, but I didn't really care because I don't have a fraudulent bus pass and it was kind of funny.

So... I get to Videoquest, which if you have been to bayers lake is near nothing else of interest, but i really wanted to stop in and check out the previewed dvds for Nick and Noras Infinite Playlist. Which they had!!! My luck was changing. Now previewed dvd's there are buy 2 get one free. So am i goign to buy just 1? No! So I quickly pick out Saw V (to complete my set) and then have a debate over the third. Should I get RocknRolla, the new Guy Ritchie? or Choke based on a Chuck Palaniuk book? Hmm.... I ask the clerks because they aren't too busy and they're bound to knwo more than me. The first guy recommends Rocknrolla and as I'm putting Choke back on the shelf he kind of spazzes out and says that he especially recommends Rocknrolla because he can't sell Choke until tomorrow. But then tries to assure me that Rocknrolla is indeed a better movie and he's not trying to get me to pick that because he can't sell me Choke. The clerk at the counter as i'm paying agrees and we have a nice three way chat about the merits of Chuck palaniuk books and movies. Sweet! Good times at Videoquest and I have the thing I went in for. Things are looking up!

So... I get to the bus stop almost 10 minutes early, having not killed the 30 minutes I needed to. It really is an inconviently located movie store for a transit girl like me. I like them alot though, they are locally owned and operated and have good prices and usually good staff. So whatever 10 minutes isn't too bad in the cold. It isn't until it turns into 25 because the effing bus is late because of all the march break kids. And as it turns out a bus driver new to the route. No problem I still have an hour to kill before work. I opt to hit walmart for lunch at mcdonalds, it's cheap and i haven't had it in awhile and i sadly still like it. Now, on my way into walmart I set of the security alarm because of the videostore dvds in my bag. Ugh. Fine, I have to go the bathroom anyway so i head in and figure I'll pull out the security tags while there so I don't embarrass myself all over town. i open up the dvd case to pull out the tag and there is no dvd in it. Well shit. A quick check reveals that the clerk i was chatting to hasn't put ANY of my dvds in their cases. In my confusion over the missing dvd's i forget to remove the security stickers.

At McDonalds it takes me 4 tries to work the debit machine. 4. I swiped, the clerk said something i didn't hear, I swipe the other way and he repeats "you have to wait until it says 'swipe card" oh. So i swipe again, the wrong way. and he says "stripe inside" at this point i'm laughing and so are the two people behind the counter. At me. The fourth try works. And I comment on how the debit machine is complicated. Because when in doubt self depreciating humour never fails. He laughs and says "well, all the machines are different everywhere you go". (which is what I say to customers when they are idiots who can't work the debit machine). And I say, no it's just me. Anyway now I have lunch. Before I can eat I call videoquest where they do remember me and the guy promises to leave a note for when i come in to collect my missing movies. Things then go smoothly until I get to work and jam my finger not once, but twice in the cupboard where we keep our stuff. The cupboard where we're not supposed to keep stuff, so i'm lucky I don't break my finger because then I'd have to explain why i was putting my stuff there in the first place. More wackiness ensues at work where I generally make an ass of myself and the day is done. I did buy a lottery ticket on my break, assuming that all this bad/weird luck means I must be due to win the lottery. While I'm buying my lottery ticket I ask the girl to check the ticket that's in my wallet. At this point the machine makes a crazy noise and I get excited until the girl informs me that the noise indicates I have asked her to check a ticket for a draw that hasn't taken place yet. I already have a lottery ticket for that night. I buy another one for good measure and leave.

Believe it or not the bus ride home was just as weird, but I'd say that's all the news we need for one day. Phew!

ps.... If I have even a single reader at this point I'll be shocked. Julie are you still around? You're my only reader anyway.

pps. So obviously it has yet again been ages since my last post. My goal now is to try and post at least once a week. I can manage that right? I miss writing, and i enjoy writing. More to come soon. Next week even.

k-