Category Archives: garage sale

anniversary, garage sale

The Month So Far …

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I seem to be unable to get my bloggy groove running smooth of recent days, so here are a couple of the high points from the last couple of weeks. Hopefully just writing it out will re-start the groove thing. {*grin*}

We held our annual garage sale over Labor Day weekend. L and I have decided that this is the last one for a while. As you might remember from last year (described here), we had a big one. Here’s a picture of a small part of the sale from last year:

This year was a bit more restrained because we have finally gotten rid of a lot of the junk that accumulated over the last 20+ years of living here. Now that we are down to normal levels of trashy treasures, it is time to let the stuff breed and grow for a while. Then we can have another big one. At least the MIL was able to sell her freezer for more than she was asking for it.

This year also featured L and I’s anniversary falling on Labor Day. So on the 6th, L and I spent time together around the house and then went to supper with our mothers. What might be called a very high key celebration of 35 years of wedded bliss. {*grin*}  L and I have never been ones to treat the day as a cause for massive celebrations, but this was a very pleasant time because we got to spend it together with only a simple supper social obligation. For a number of years I played in a 3 day Labor Day golf tournament, so our anniversary almost always fell during the tourney. This year I did not and it made the day really laid back. A progression of L and I over the years:

Engagement
Marriage

20+ Years Married
Recent Times



Avatars
I am still amazed how lucky I am to have L in my life, even after all these years.
Well, that is all I have time for right now. Hopefully I will be back to more regular blogging now that the garden, melons, and lawn have slowed down and the temperatures are starting to feel fallish. 
garage sale

The Great Garage Sale of ’09

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Time for another rare weekender from me. That is partially because I am too tired and sore to do much else and partially because the helpers (Hi mom, MIL, L, and Marlene) want to see how the pictures turned out.

Our great garage sale of ’09 was slated to open at 8am, but that meant little to the pushy-loos who tried to get early cherry picking rights. {*grin*} As I was setting up tables shortly before 7am, the first of the people I had to tell repeatedly that we didn’t open until 8am came driving up. In any case, by 8am it looked like this:

(Note my MIL heading back to the cashiers table and my mom in the blue jacket putting the finishing touches on the items on one of the tables. Also note that yopu can see a lot more detail if you click on the pictures and look at the full resolution version.)
 
A view of some of the other stuff as the crowd mills about, anxious for me to proclaim that we are open for business  These picture omit the furniture we also had for sale. Big heavy furniture. Furniture I got to move yesterday and then later today as people came to pick it up.
When I finally proclaimed us open for business, one of the ladies in the crowd would have made any linebacker proud. She quickly grabbed a color TV, a VCR, a DVD Player, and shouted she wanted the water cooler as well. She did all this while talking on her cell phone calling for the large transport support (her mate driving a pickup truck). Sales and visiting stayed brisk for the next several hours. (After all, one of the real points of garage sales in a small town is to visit with everyone!)

By the time the steady rush was slowing down around 10:30, we had sold a lot of the junk solid consumer goods on hand. Part of my collection of mice and engineering books were still available, along with some old computers and printers and decorative doodads.

 
 
Over the next hour a lot of this stuff sold as well. The chalk board was a late addition to the field since we forgot to put it out. It had been sitting in a family room closet for years, untouched by human hands. In fact, when we pulled it out, it had this on it:

It had been a back prop for a play/movie by the Son and Sarah, his cousin from Connecticut. To give you an idea of how long it sat there, the Son is now in college and Sarah started college this fall and this had to have been during their grade school years. Because we put it out so late, no one bought it and we got to keep it for another timeless string of years. Probably just as well since L and MIL were both pretty sentimental about it.

Spent the afternoon cleaning up and packing the remaining stuff suitable for charitable donation up to wait for the time later in the month when they are in town. Time now for me to to sit back and get ready for tomorrow since I have booth duty all day at the local Sugar Beet Days (harvest festival) for the EMS Authority ballot issue. I’ll see some of you there.