We're Sale-ing A-wayyyyyy...

Yesterday was the neighborhood yard sale, and we were both busy and lazy all week, so we didn't prepare as completely for it as we should have. We spent Friday night hauling boxes out of the attic and sticking price tags on stuff, and it was 1 am before we realized it.

The next morning, of course, we had to get up at 6 am and set up for the sale. If you do the math, that's only 5 hours of sleep. This will come into play later in this story.

The neighborhood didn't have this sale last year, so the last time we did this was two years ago, and at that time, we had just moved in and had a TON of junk to get rid of. This time, we were shocked to see that there really wasn't a whole lot of stuff to get rid of. I had various power adapters, and computer junk, an old PDA, our old weed-eater, a hedge trimmer, and that's about it. We had an old waffle iron and our old rice cooker, and then Bernie had various soft items like place mats, and we had a lot of old clothes. The rest was very small stuff.

Compared to our across-the-alley neighbors, we were strictly small-time. The neighbor's son works for 1-800-GOT-JUNK, and he's been cherry-picking good stuff from the junk they collect. He had several 35mm cameras, an electric scooter, potted tropical plants that came from a pro football player that got traded to New York, furniture, etc. People were backing up their trucks to their garage all day.

Anyway, we were let down by the neighborhood association, which had sent a newsletter item saying the sale would be published in the paper and that a charity was sending a truck in the afternoon to pick up anything we couldn't sell. In fact, neither item was true, so the traffic was very light. At the end of the day, I was surprised to hear that Bernie and I had sold $120 of stuff.

Strangely enough, she sold 5 or 6 Malaysia keychains (you know, tourist-type souvenirs) that she had brought home from our last trip. You never know what's going to be popular.

Anyway, we loaded up the clothes that didn't sell and hauled them in the back of my truck to Goodwill, then went to our favorite sushi place for a late lunch.

Interesting side story: We discovered our favorite sushi chef's Servsafe certificate on the wall. His name is Jackie, but we saw his Chinese name on the certificate, and it's really Zhao Qi Chen. "Zhao Qi" Americanized to "Jackie" - so he's Jackie Chen! (Chen is pronounced pretty much like "Chan", folks, so bear with me). Furthermore, Bernie tells me that "Zhao Qi" means "The real thing" in Chinese. That's just a pretty cool name any way you look at it.

After lunch, we came home and moved the remaining boxes indoors and collapsed in exhaustion. At this time, I was reminded there is a party across the street in two hours and we have to make a cake for it. Bernie gets started on the cake, and I decide that I need to make a contribution also.

A couple of weeks ago, I caved in to an impulse and bought the "As Seen On TV" pancake puff maker. I thought I'd try it out and see if it could make something for the party. After looking in the freezer, I saw only some ground beef, so I decided to make cheeseburger pancake puffs. Ground beef, dehydrated onion, ketchup, mustard, cheese. Darned if the filling didn't taste just like McDonalds! Anyway, the pancake puffs are the real deal - they came out very nice, using the normal old Bisquick recipe. I made a huge mess of the stove top in the process, dripping batter everywhere, though.

So after a quick shower, we dash over to the party, pausing in the process only to toss a soccer ball back to the kids from across the street, who manage to kick it over our fence three times in 15 minutes while we are trying to leave. I tell them they need more practice - but not here, because we're leaving and can't get the ball for them any more today.

Once we get to the party, it turns out to be a good thing I made the cheeseburger puffs, because the neighbors bring the kids along (the puffs disappear once the kids figure out what they were). A couple of hours later, we come home and decide we're too tired to clean up. I stay awake about 30 minutes before I can't keep my eyes open any longer. We've been on our feet all day since 6 am, on 5 hours sleep, and even though it's only 10pm, it's bedtime. Zzzzzzz.

That's a whole weekend of work in just one day.