"You are the packrattiest packrat I know." — Kris, exasperated with me and my packratty ways

Kris and I hauled a vanload of junk up to the Mirons' this weekend. The four of us created a vast pool of junk and held a yard sale. Though nobody seemed particularly interested in my Star Trek tapes (video or audio), the sale was a success.

Both days of our sale were beautiful: sunny and warm, but not particularly hot. We sat in the driveway and chatted with the frequent guests. (We enjoyed visits from Craig and Lisa, Mac and Pam, Andrew and Courtney, Mart, and Dave and Karen.) At one point on Saturday, there were eight of us kibitzing by the check-out table and not a single customer for half an hour. We didn't care — we had fun.

Saturday's traffic seemed a little light, so we created better advertising for Sunday. Aimee and Kris whipped out some signs, and then Joel and I — acting as scofflaws — darted across busy streets to post them around the neighborhood. The signs seemed to help.

Highlights from the sale:

• Joel's boxes of ceramic tile sold early on Saturday. He replaced them with more boxes of ceramic tile. My box of kerosene lamps also sold early on Saturday (maybe to the same man who bought the tile, actually). These sales surprised me.
• I labeled our ugly old desk "Ugly Desk $5" but nobody seemed interested. On Saturday, I relabeled it "Student Desk $10" and it sold. (For $7 — I was willing to let anyone talk me down on anything.)
• Joel sold a bubbly pyramidical tranquility fountain. ("Tranquility is cheap at any price, but in this case it costs $10.") The fountain sold rather quickly to a woman who had been looking for just such a thing.
• People seemed drawn to Kris' mountain bike, but nobody actually bought it. She bought it for $20 in 1989, and we were trying to sell it for $20 now. I took it out to the shop to use as an exercise bike during the summer.
• I offered "stereo components of dubious quality": a CD player for $5 and a tape deck for $3. I didn’t bother to check them before the sale to be sure they worked. As it happens, they work fine. I could have probably asked for $20 and $10, respectively. My laziness cost me!
• Around lunchtime on Sunday, a wandering minstrel joined the show. A young guy with a guitar strolled up and took a seat in our midst. He strummed (reasonably) and sang (unreasonably) "Midnight Special". Joel helped him sing:

  Let the Midnight Special shine a light on me
  Let the Midnight Special shine a ever-lovin' light on me

  By means of payment, Joel offered him any book from our vast selection. The wandering minstrel seemed unenthused. The wandering minstrel wanted the VHS copy of "The Shawshank Redemption" instead. We figured that was a small price to pay to see him go.
• I had four large boxes of computer books to the sale. None of them sold (though Andrew made off with several to use in the his computer class). On Sunday, Joel and I packed the books into the van and took them to Powell's Technical Store. "I'll bet you they take no more than two of them," said Andrew as we left. Actually, they bought ten of my computer books, but none of them were what I expected. They rejected my Linux programming books, rejected my C++ textbooks, rejected my HTML books. They bought books on programming BASIC on the Apple II, a 1984 book on programming adventure games on a TRS-80, and other "collectors item" computer books. I only got $29 in store credit out of the four boxes of books.
• Ben, the neighbor boy, coveted my Star Wars comic books. He bought several of them on Saturday, and on Sunday morning he was out leafing through the boxes for more. His father wouldn't let him by any, though. At the end of the sale, I knocked on his door and told him that he could look through the boxes and find a few more comics, that I'd give them to him for free. He was so happy about this that I felt like giving him all of my Star Wars comics.
• A woman bought my four Star Trek plates as a house-warming gift for a friend. (See Joel's take on this transaction in the comments of the Microfiction entry.)
• I sold many cassette tapes ("25 cents each!"). My Led Zeppelin tapes were the most popular. One woman was ecstatic to find a copy of Talking Heads' "Stop Making Sense"; she'd just lost hers recently.
• Nobody wanted to buy our board games.

There were other fun little stories, but I can't remember them all. My fellow sales agents can share anything I've left out.

On Sunday afternoon, we packed up the unsold junk and hauled it to Goodwill. Our final tallies were: Kris $67, J.D. $134 (plus $29 in Powell's store credit), the Mirons $137. We didn't get rich, but we had fun and we rid our lives of clutter.

It was a long weekend, but it was productive and fun.

On this day at foldedspace.org

2005 — A Bump in the Road   It's a long-standing joke how underworked and overpaid we are here at Custom Box Service. Then there are days like today.

2003 — Moo   You know you have overcommitment problems when you need to pull out a sheet of graph paper and a ruler to plot all of your scheduled activities.

2001 — Linux Test   I'm posting this on my laptop, running Linux full bore.

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