Monday Rambles

HAVE WE MET?

Well, hello again, friends!  I've not had many opportunities for blogging lately, but I have missed you.  There's lots to share, so let's get started.

EDDIE UPDATE

I haven't talked a lot about the cancer stuff lately, because there really isn't anything changing.  I get my treatments every three weeks, and things continue to go well.  I had another scan at the end of last month, and everything still looks good.  I qualified for an assistance program from the drug company, so my co-pays are now taken care of, which is nice.

I seem to finally have all the steroid withdrawal over with, so things are returning to normal on that front.  The blood sugar is lots better, and I've dropped a few pounds.  Not many.  Just a few.

I had a sinus thing going on last week that kept me out of action for a few days.  It seems to be clearing up, although I still have a head full of yucky stuff.  I feel like all I do is blow my nose.  And cough. A lot.  I'm afraid that I may accidentally blow one of my lungs out my nose when I get on a coughing jag.  Hate it when that happens.

I've always been prone to stuff settling in my chest, which then takes forever to clear out.  I've actually coughed so hard before that strangers have come up to me and told me I need to stop smoking!  And I don't smoke!

The sinus thing started last Tuesday, which was also a treatment day.  Since I was already planning a stay-at-home low key week, I was in a great spot to just stay in bed and rest. Things really worked out well, and Chiquito liked it too.

BOOTH UPDATE

Well, sales are a little better this month, but not by much.  It's very fits and starts right now.  I did HUGE over the July 4th weekend, but then took the rest of the month up to this past weekend to double that amount.  The crying of the blues will continue until further notice.  I'm moving lots of stuff, but it's nearly all small, lower priced items right now.

It seems like on the days when I do sell a larger, higher-priced piece or two, that's all I sell.  The mix is off in my sales totals.  Still, they are higher than last month, for the most part.  

I moved out of the booth with the pole smack dab in the middle of the entrance to a space right next to may other spaces.  Less walking for me.  I like having all my spaces together.

At the same time, one of my college roommates, who also had a booth in our mall, got a new job and had to give up his booth due to time issues.  He gave me and another vendor about 75% of what was in his booth--FOR FREE!  I've been kind of awash in stuff from that.  Really nice stuff to boot.  He does a lot of woodworking and repurposing kinds of stuff, and some of his projects were included in the items he gave us.

Slow sales are causing a lot of vendors to leave, but there's also been an influx of new folks.  Open spaces in out store get snapped up pretty quickly, often by existing vendors.  The manager told me at the beginning of the month that there wer so many vendors swapping out spaces that it was almost like a jigsaw puzzle. 

This was one booth's closing sign.

I had been intending forever to get a pic of the "Buy from the BUNNY" sign to put in the blog, because I just love it.  I never got around to it, until it was time to say "Bye Bye Bunny."  Sad.

Of course, since I was out all last week, I'm planning on spending all this week at the booth trying to pull things back together.  I'm hoping to take new pics, since an update post is long overdue.  I just need to remember.  That's the hard part.

DVD OF THE WEEK

This is a favorite movie of mine and I like to pull it out and watch it from time to time.  Martin Sheen and Trevor Howard work so well together and their scenes just shine throughout the whole film.

Religious politics and inner working fascinate me, especially with the Catholic Church.  I am constantly reading up on various aspects of the way the church operates.  One of my favorite subjects is the tension that exists between the newer course the church has taken since Vatican II and Catholics of a more traditional/conservative bent. 

This 1973 TV (!) movie (based on a novel by Bryan Moore) examines that tension with Sheen playing a young priest sent to get a recalcitrant Howard and the monks of his monastery to update and move along with the times.  The story is set in a fictional time after two more church councils have brought even more changes, and the monks have become steadfast and reactionary.

Like I said, the acting is exemplary and the story avoids any easy answers as the men strive to understand each other and seek a resolution.  The ending is haunting.

Given the current tension that exists between the current, very progressive, Pope and many more conservative bishops and cardinals, this 40 year old movie is surprisingly timely.  Well worth hunting down. 

STUFF UPDATE

Since sales have been so slow lately cutting back on going to yard sales and such.  I'm in "clear out the backlog" mode instead.  I did buy a bunch of manga over the weekend, but I was really low on it.  That was the first major purchase I've made all month.

Since that means I won't have any new things to share here, I'm taking a different approach to doing finds posts.  Check in tomorrow for the first installment.

MUSIC FOR MONDAYS

Have a tune for the first of the week.



Since the FBI officially closed the DB Cooper case last week, I thought this was an appropriate way to mark the occasion. 

THAT'S ALL FOLKS!

Now we're all caught up!  Thanks for stopping by!

Some Updates

First off, I'd like to thank everyone for hanging with this blog through the silly season of this past week.  I'll go ahead and warn you that there will be some more of the same coming up in the weeks to come, but hopefully not as constant.  There's something wrong with my head in that I kind of like doing that sort of stuff, but it also buys me some time to get some longer pieces written (or, as in the case of this week, work the booth every day).  It's not easy being me, but, apparently. someone has to do it.

We interrupt this update to being you a picture of a cute blue birdhouse.

 
That little "thank you" you're hearing right now is coming from your soul.

Sunday, in the Mazda post, I promised cuteness and awesomeness in the Monday Rambles post, but there was no post on Monday.  (Boo, me!)  Let me make up for the lapse now.  Also, let me assure you that there will be a Ramble this coming Monday.  I'm not sharing everything in this update to make sure it happens.  Sneaky me.

Anyway, as to cuteness and awesomeness, prepare to be blown away.  I hereby present:

KAWAII

The idea is get you to look up nerdy Japanese terms.

KAIJU AND SENTAI  (AND MECHA)

SUMO BUTT

This whole set folds up into its own little carrying case

There was a lot more of each, but I think you get the idea.  The most unique church sale in town happened last week.  It's not one of my gold standards, but it is one of my favorites.  One of the churches in town also sponsors a Japanese church, and that Japanese church has a fund-raiser sale every year.  It's a really fun event, complete with food, music and cultural demonstrations.  Also, great stuff for sale at great prices.

It can be a really good source for manga and anime, both untranslated and translated, which is one of the reasons I like to go.  Another is the availability of really cool imported toys (like the above) at not imported prices.  It was well worth going.

I've been doing more diving into the renovation dumpsters up and down the street. Well, except for the one that is too tall to get into.  I mentioned this mirror before, but I wanted to share a pic after I got it cleaned up.  It's a beauty.

It's also quite heavy.  And was found at the bottom of the hill.  The cool, heavy stuff is always at the bottom of the hill.  The dumpster was full, but this mirror was laid neatly on top, as if the demo folks wanted someone to find and take it home.  Glad to accommodate.

I found these counterweights at the same house on the way to the bus yesterday.  I also seem to have a knack for finding awkward heavy things when I am on the way to catch the bus.  All I had to try and carry them in was a plastic leopard print bag.  If you can't be practical, be fabulous!

As I mentioned above, I have been working pretty much non-stop for the past week re-doing the booths.  After seven days, four of which were entire days, I am still not done.  I needed a break, however, so I stayed home today.

Here's a preview.  More pics to come when I'm done.  In the back on the right, you can see the new Wall of Canisters that I created!  It's been an exhausting week, but I've had some interesting meetings with some of my regular customers.  I'll write more about that on Monday.

A little girl of about eight or nine pointed to this Raggedy Ann doll and yelled:  "Hey Mom!  Look at this clown!"  What are they teaching kids these days?

More to come! 

Until then:

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.

The real reason I hang out at the cancer center

FREE

Fat Eddie is Happy Eddie!

ICE CREAM!

I guess that secret's out now.

Seriously, two ice cream cups is part of my ritual there, along with the heated blanket and a pillow.  For some reason, I ended up not asking for the them yesterday.  I never skip out on the ice cream.

The little red thing is the badge with my patient number on it.  I'm supposed to wear it every time I go in, so they can ensure I get my treatments and not Hortense P Snodwaller's by mistake.  Usually, I forget it.  In fact, I think yesterday may be the first time I remembered it this year.  I should have gotten an extra ice cream for that.

You can kind of see the IV tube snaking its way across to the Purple Power Port.  (ENGAGE!)

Yesterday went about as smoothly as it's ever gone.  In at eight, out by eleven.  That's my motto!  Hardly any wait time at all, except for my labs to get back, which is a necessary wait.  If certain numbers are off, then I cannot have the treatment.  Thankfully, that has never happened for me.  I did hear one of the nurses trying to explain to another patient yesterday that her labs showed she was almost dehydrated, which is one of the things that can keep you from getting treated.

This is a very fast infusion.  It only takes 30 minutes.  Once the drug arrives, and they hook it up, it hardly takes any time at all. Quite a switch from my first treatment, which took 90 minutes, plus pre-meds.

By the way, I started that book I'm reading right after I got to the cancer center and finished it after I woke up from my nap.  It's been a while since I read a book all the way through in a day.

Don't forget to leave a question for Ask Eddie Anything!  I'd love to have a few questions from readers who have never commented before.

DONE! FINALLY! MOSTLY!

It's finally done!  Or, rather, as done as it's going to get for the moment. 

This is my final space:

Such as it is.  Sigh!

I'm not totally happy with it.  There's way too much stuff here, and much of it is in the wrong place.  Some of it is not even that great. 

Why do I have a booth of crap?  Well, it's not all crap, but there's more in this space than I like.  I realize that one person's crap is another person's gem, so I'm hoping some of this stuff will sell through.

I'll explain more about the crap next week, when I have a chance to take you all on a photo tour of all three spaces.

Oh yeah.

Please ignore that pile of junk in the floor in the middle of the photo.  You definition of "done" may be a little different than mine.

Or maybe I just wanted to get everything out of carts, and being in a pile on the floor counts for that.

Yep, I'm one lazy classy guy! 

I've got a lot of tweaking to do, for sure.