Monday Rambles

To start us off, a poor picture of belly-button rings.

OUCH!

Why a poor picture?  Because I accidentally totally deleted the carefully edited and fixed up one.  I am a crappy blogger.

Why belly button rings? Because I found them when I was going through a big batch of jewelry that came with the booth I bought.  I was bagging like items into bulk lots and marking other things down.  It just struck me as kind of odd to find all this body jewelry mixed in.  There are booths in the Peddlers Mall that sell body jewelry and stuff like that, but that's all they sell.  You don't normally find it mixed in with lots of toys and dozens of relish dishes.

Also, aren't some of them a tad elaborate to be hanging out of a navel?  I'd be afraid they'd get tangled in my shirt or something.  Of course, I'm not really a piercing kind of guy, unless you count the time I took a BB to my left buttock hind quarter.

Too much info?

How is that for a totally random start to the week?  How about some junking stories?

I was in a thrift near the booth a little while ago, just kind of browsing stuff.  There was an older couple there, also just browsing stuff.  All of a sudden, he finds a pink wig.  He starts rubbing it and holds it out to his wife.  "It's sooooooo soft!  Feel this!"

They walk around the store carrying the wig for a while.  When I go to check out, they get in line behind me, still carrying the wig.  They're chatting with each other and the cashier.  I'm chatting with the cashier as well.  Finally, I cannot control myself any longer.  I've paid for my stuff and they're getting ready to pay.  I turn to them and say:  "I just have to know which one of you is going to wear the wig."

Everyone starts laughing, then he kind of stammers out:  "My wife will wear it."  To which she immediately replies:  "It's your collection.  You wear it!"

Collection? Of pink wigs? Odd colored wigs? Wigs in general? Cosplay stuff?  What can of worms did I unwittingly open?  Oh my!

Sometimes I need to just keep my mouth shut, I guess.

It has been a typical August for the booth--a long, hot slog.  Daily sales have been all over the place.  Fabulous one day.  Not so hot the very next one.  I was holding my own until the fair started last week. For the first three days, everything ground to a halt.  Killed my momentum and my sales.

The fair was late this year.  Usually, there's a week or two afterwards for sales to recover.  This year, there's only two days.  I'm going to come out about like normal, when all is said and done, but I'm looking for some sales growth before the end of the year.

The fall is usually good for sales.  I've already put my fall decor in, and am going to start putting Halloween out this week.  It's a little early for the Halloween, but I've got the space and a little more Halloween than normal.  Last year, during Halloween clearance sale time, when I was stocking up for this year, it was right around the time I started chemo again.  I think I was a little more aggressive in my shopping in order to make some kind of personal point.

At any rate, I've got a lot of skulls to sell.

No one seemed to know what to call the metal thing in Mazda yesterday, other than "something metal."  The community sale I went to was right around the corner from the Peddlers Mall, so I dropped off the big stuff and took these reveal pics.

The metal thing is actually used to convert linear measurements between metric and standard units.  It's just odd enough and geeky enough that I couldn't resist it.  Also an old window.  I only like to carry windows that have something kind of special or different about them.  I like the privacy style glass on this one.

Everybody pretty much guessed the bookcase.  The checks are contact paper.  One of the churches I went to had closed its preschool and was selling stuff off.  Unfortunately, most of the furniture was either too large, too ratty, or too pricey for my needs, with the exception of this bookcase.

I did get some fun small stuff there, however.  But you'll have to wait for tomorrow for that.

Technology has been frustrating us lately.  Our internet went our last weekend, when something knocked our cable loose.  We get that fixed, and then the power goes out Saturday right before we were heading out to the sales.  A transformer down the street blew.  I step out front and join the neighbors in staring down the street, like that's going to fix something.  It was back on by the end of the day.

This Saturday, the Peddlers Mall is going to have a sidewalk sale and cookout.  I've signed up for a spot and will work on getting stuff together this week.  I plan on putting out a lot of what I have left from the booth buy-out--marked down real cheap. I've had a lot of luck moving the marked down glass stuff and toys.  The toys are nearly gone, and a good hunk of those divided dishes are too.  Now is the time to finish them off, along with a lot of the household implements and such from that buy.  It'll be a bargain extravaganza!  (I'm hoping to find a few deals for me from other sellers.)

I set up a special sale table for those dishes.  That's helped them move.

I'm also going to pull a couple of things off Sorrow Mountain to join the fun.  Speaking of Sorrow Mountain, that post brought lots of comment.  I call it "Sorrow Mountain" because I am not so happy that it is there.  I don't like the added expense that comes a long with it and I hate having that much excess stuff.  My goal in life is to whittle it away to Weepy Molehill.

I resisted getting a storage unit as long as I could, but it was inevitable.  When you lose a store where you have ten spots, including a storage room, it's a big hit.  Up until the last days of the move out, I kept insisting that we could handle the overflow in my junk room, our shed, and the small storage unit we have for the house.  As it turned out, I used all of those areas to hold stuff, and still had to get Sorrow Mountain.

I didn't mind having a backlog in the beginning, because I was afraid that I might not be able to get out as much in the summer, due to my treatments.  My plan was to slowly whittle away at it with the goal of majorly reducing it by the fall.  I had a vision of going over there every week and sorting stuff and tagging stuff and making it something more viable than just a repository.  That kind of didn't happen, mainly due to the treatment fatigue.  It's been hanging on me like a weight ever since.  Getting over there the other day to do the little I did felt good.  Real good.

By the way, in answer to Judy's question, the patron saint of Sorrow Mountain is, of course, Our Mother of Sorrows.  This reminds me that I ought to warn tell you that my answers to your "Ask Eddie Anything" questions resume this week.

Turns out I got a little too carried away pulling stuff off Sorrow Mountain to take the booth last week.  Somehow I had it in my mind that I needed four small pieces of furniture to fill holes that didn't really exist.  I'm a bit packed right now, needless to say.  Fortunately, one piece was a too cute yellow primitive table that sold practically as soon as I unloaded it and thus made more money than it would have continuing to sit on the Mount.  Unfortunately, I realized too late that I had never taken a pic of that table for the blog.  Sorry.  Bad blogger.

I took six boxes of books, tapes and records from Sorrow Mountain to Half-Price Books last week.  HPB is my last ditch resort to get rid of stuff, since they don't pay that much.  I ended up walking out with something better than money.

WOO to the HOO!

TWO FLATS OF MANGA!!!!!!  That's over 100 volumes.  I made enough selling my stuff to pay cover one of the flats, so that all worked out well.  I had to rearrange my book booth to get them all in.  I now have two entire bookshelves of manga.  I think I'm going to take the shelf I bought over the weekend and dedicate it to graphic novels, which will free up space in the comic boxes, which means I can bring more comics in.  All is good.  That sound you hear is the local nerd council humming in agreement and approval.

Of course, since it's Labor Day weekend coming up, that means there's also going to be a Big Flea coming up--with an antique wing, yet--woo hoo! Gotta get the granny cart spruced up and ready.

I read the best book the other day.  I've been trying to use my down time to read more, since that always makes me feel better.  It's sad when I get too tired to read.

Image from Amazon.

It's a sort of alternative look at Shakespeare's King Lear though the eyes of the court jester, who's quit a bit smarter than his sovereign.  If you remember your Shakespeare at all, you'll know that being brighter than Lear wasn't terribly difficult.  I say it's a "sort of" alternative look, because Moore deviates wildly from the plot, tosses in characters from other plays (like the witches from Macbeth), and is not afraid to throw in an anachronism or two for giggles.  It's a wonderful, if somewhat bawdy, romp and an awesome way to spend an afternoon.

While our cable was out, I needed something to listen to/watch while I tagged merch, so I dug through the DVD pile and did some binge watching.

Image also from Amazon

This is one of those lesser quality sets you can buy for five bucks at Wal-Mart and the like, usually containing material not available elsewhere.  I paid a buck for this one when the local Borders stores were closing.  It provided hours of entertainment.  It seriously doesn't get any more retro cheesily wonderful than this--preposterous plots, laughable special effects, and plenty of buff shirtless guys in mini-skirts.  (Not that I was noticing that or anything.)  Totally awesome.  I ought to do stuff like that more often.  I have a Bela Lugosi set around here somewhere....

While we're on the subject of good reading and the like, please check out this awesome post of tips for folks planning to hit those long highway yard sales from Melissa's Antiques.  She actually went to the Highway 127 sale for the first time this year, but--like me--she's a vet of several smaller, local highway sales.  Good tips and advice in there.  One that I would add is to keep an eye out for small country churches.  Even when they're not having sales, the empty parking lots are a safe place to pull off the road and do things like rearrange your load, without having to worry about getting mowed over by a semi.  Be sure not to miss the pic about halfway down or so in her post.  You'll know which one I'm talking about.

I have my next cancer center visit tomorrow.  These infusion days roll around fast.  At my last visit, they gave me a prescription for a low dose steroid in hopes of helping with my fatigue.  Boy Howdy!  The difference is like night and day.  I'm not even taking the whole prescribed amount each day and I feel so much better.  I need fewer rest breaks and my energy level is much more consistent.  I do feel a fade slowly come on late in the day, but I'm able to get so much more done in a day and not feel like death while I'm doing it.

Don't worry.  I'm being cautious and careful and not overextending myself.  I'm still rests and breaks and the like, but it feels good to get things freaking done.  I feel like my life has been on hold all year, while I've been eking out little dribs and drabs that have never quite been enough.  It's nice to see a change on that front. I don't like adding another med to my regimen, but this feeling seems to be worth it.

How about we wrap things up with a pic of Chiquito making his sleepy face?  He always looks so cute when he's struggling to wake up and figure out what's going on.

Focus on the cute, groggy kitty.  Not the messy sheets.

That's not even your Chiquito of the Month for September!  You'll get that tomorrow, of course.