Garage Sales: Descent into the Unknown.

Garage sales are the Cracker Jack Boxes of America.  Inside each is a prize.  A musty old sweater of cats for 25 cents.  The surprisingly classy coffee table I'm resting my feet on for $5.  Or a pair of detached baby doll heads, price not listed.


The one on the left kept blinking.  


You will never find better deals than at garage sales.  Not on Craigslist, not in the classifieds, not anywhere. My couches, my coffee table, my driver, and my fishing pole I all got at garage sales.  All are high quality, all are in good condition.  The combined price total?  $137 bucks.  70-90% off retail is common.  Every dollar saved at garage sales is a dollar I can invest elsewhere.

On top of it all, garage sales are fun.  My friends and I hit five different sales last Saturday morning.  Sure, there's loads of junk. Sifting through people's undesirables is its own odd delight.  You will uncover some gems.  Last weekend I found not only those baby heads, I also test drove an electric scooter.

And nothing beats the feeling of finding something you need a great price.  Jackpot.  If you really like to save money, or screw your neighbor, bartering is a totally accepted part of the experience.

If you've never been, it's easy to get started.  Some simple tips:

1. Bring Cash:  No, the sweet old lady down the street will not take your credit card.
2. Scout out the sales on Thursday and Friday:  Check the local newspaper, Craigslist, grocery store bulletin boards, and/or that street corner where everyone posts stuff.
3. Arrive Early:  The best stuff goes fast.  I'm fairly certain this is a top-ten favorite old person activity, and they get up before you do.  But if you can find away to rise and shine early on Saturday morning, sharpen your elbows so you can beat granny to that blender.
4. Don't Be Afraid To Barter:  Garage sales happen because people want to get rid of stuff.  Most people are willing to take 10-20% off the price listed.  That number goes up the later it is in the day.  Nobody wants to pull their junk back into their garage.
5. Make It An Outing:  Make it a guys (or girls) day out.  The next date you go on?  Mix it up, take her to a garage sale.  You'll never lack for topics to talk about, and plus you can show of your witty, zany side by trying on the sweater with cats.  Or show her what a tough guy you are by negotiating the price of that remote control truck down to $8 from $12.  The romantic possibilities are endless.

Let me know about your own experiences and tips.  Happy hunting!

Life's Simple Pleasures: Gardening

 Gardening.  Growing your own food and then eating it.  One of the top 10 best things in life.   Why?

1.)  Gardening is something man was meant to do.  We owe all of modern civilization to gardening.  Without it, you'd be out in the woods, half naked, chasing your next meal.  

2.)  It connects you to where you live.  You only eat what your climate and soil can grow. You gain a new appreciation for your local climate, customs and cuisine. 

3.)  It connects you to your food.  Home grown food tastes so much better.  You'll never look at the grocery store the same way again.  All that stuff came from somewhere, and some of it really isn't food any more.

4.)   It's great practice for when I have to feed myself after society's collapse.  

5.)   Gardening replaced 64 square feet of stupid, unproductive, water-hungry grass in my lawn with raised garden beds.  

Below:  Stupid grass. 

Why don't you do something with your life!

While I haven't eaten anything from my garden yet, watching it grow is it's own reward.  

Occasionally I wonder if this is what it's like being a parent.  Ignore the seed planting metaphor (please).  The immense joy at seeing the little guy sprout out of the ground is undeniable.  Based on everything 10th grade health class taught me about childbirth, it's in fact WAY better than seeing the birth of a real baby.  Plus, I've experienced it hundreds of times already this spring.  Which you wouldn't get to do with real babies unless you were Genghis Khan.

It goes on.  Like a parent, I nourish the little sprout.  Water it.  Remove the bad influences around it the best I can.  Make sure it receives the best sunlight.  And now, once a little seed, a tomato I planted looks like this:  

I brought you into the world.  I can take you out of it.                                   

Very rewarding.  Probably how I'd feel if my kid brought home straight A's.  

I got my start gardening as a kid with my dad.  We had a giant dirt field where we'd plant row up on row of potatoes, peas, broccoli and more.  We ate all the produce we could handle and sold the rest at the local Saturday Market.  I hated the weeding.  But nothing was better than as a fourth grader making between $50-$100 on a Saturday morning.  That started my lifetime interest in personal finance.

Gardening does have it's dark sides.  Chemicals (no thanks).  Bugs.  Slugs.  Weird little grubs I find deep in the ground.  But the worst is something you'd least expect.

"Mwahaha"

That's right.  Bambi.  Capable of destroying months of care and nourishment with one night of munching.  Indiscriminate.  Heartless.  And cute as buttons.  On top of everything else, gardening has taught me to hate deer.  Give it a shot.

Loss

This weekend a former student of mine passed away.  He was only 15.  His life had been rough by any standard.  Born legally blind.  His father passed away.  His mom in jail.  But hewas always smiling.  Always happy to see you.  His heart was huge.  He loved you.   And he needed your love. He craved affection.  You can see why.   This made him easy to hurt, I think.

I met him when he was in 5th grade.  I was interviewing for my job.   I ate lunch in the cafeteria.  Hesat with me.   For the next three years he would ask me to eat with him almost daily.  Sometimes I would join him.  More often I would not.  

He was needy.  At times I pushed him away.   At times I was busy.  At times, I had no time.  But I hope he knew that at the end of the day, I really cared for him.  

I will remember him.  Eating lunch with him.  When he asked me for advice with a girl he liked.  Endlessly urging him to write neater.  His fascination with Japan.  The time I told him that Japan had been sold to China and turned in to a toy factory.  Yelling "hello" at him from the window of my car as he waited for his bus.

And I will remember the last time I saw him.  His face lit up when he saw me.  He was much bigger than when I had seen him last.  He extended an arm towards me, his hand outstretched, really a paw.  I didn't understand what he was doing.  

"It's good to see you!"  Arm still outstretched, now moving closer.  He wanted a hug.  I hugged him. We chatted, very briefly.  I had to go.  There would be time to catch up later. 

Direct TV: Cancelled. Life: Resumed.

On Friday I took a deep breath and made the call that has changed my left.  I cancelled Direct TV.

Actually, to avoid a cancellation fee of $160 I suspended Direct TV until September, which happens to coincide with the start of college football season . I will not be a martyr for this cause.

The benefits are already apparent.  In place of Family Guy, I've found time to cook.  The crock pot never ceases to amaze me.  You put ingredients in, season to taste, and the crock pot cooks it for you overnight into something delicious.  It borders on magical.  And begs you to be bold.  As I write, an odd mixture of sweet potato, potato, celery, carrot, apple, beans, cinnamon, honey, cayenne pepper and sour cream sits simmering.  While I sleep, it will transform into.... something.

Also today, I made a salsa I heard about while listening to The Splendid Table.  Sort of.  Tomato, pineapple, garlic, onion and spices simmered down into a delicious sweet and spicy mix.  

Instead of Sportscenter, I tried to chip golf balls into the raised garden beds I built, but haven't yet filled.  It was nice outside. It smelled like flowers.  And somewhere in the neighborhood someone was barbecuing.  And the whole time, my TV was black.

TV: The world's biggest time suck.

I sit on my couch.
I laugh at cartoon, and sit.
Time never redeemed.

You Are The Average Of Your Friends

Friends are one of the best things in life.  They also influence you more than you may know.

A very wise man once told me that we are all the average of our five closest friends.  They influence our habits, our diet, our hobbies, our profession, and our income.

A common anecdote I've heard is that your income will be with in 10% of the average of your 10 closest friends.  I have no statistical evidence to back that up, but anecdotal evidence is everywhere.  Teachers hang out with teachers, actors hang out with actors, NBA stars hang out with NBA stars.  I'm not sure if correlation means causation here, and I'm sure most of us make friends from the people we work with.  But it's also true that similar types of people are drawn to similar types of work.  Many of my good friends from high school have also gone on to be teachers.

Whether it can be proven or not, the saying speaks to the importance of our friendships, and choosing good friends.  People that stimulate you, challenge you, support you, make you life, encourage and correct you are worth their weight in gold.  People that lead you into bad places and bad decisions (for some reason I'm thinking of Kesha right now), are worth their weight in something else.

And if we are the average of our friends, are we lifting our friends up?  Or are they lifting us up?  Something to think about.

Arrival: New Orleans

New Orleans smells spicy. The sticky air is a shock for someone not accustomed to humidity.
When traveling solo, I undergo a slight unease when first stepping into new environs. No friends waiting, no familiarity. Just a couchsurfing address to arrive at and a big bunch of unknown standing between me and it. And the unknown, while not always scary, is sometimes unsettling. I cope by taking a go-with-the-flow mentality that gets me to my destination much like a river carries floatsam and jetsam downstream. Might not be the quickest between, and I might be a little battered, but I arrive eventually.
I hopped on a bus that went downtown. The view out the window was breathtaking. Delapitated homes, bombed out warehouses, it's like a third world country, or a war zone.
There were four of us on the bus. I was squinting at my blackberry, trying to make sense of the map I had downloaded. The bus was dead quiet, so the conductor's voice startled me and the rest when she said, "Turn down your music."
I looked up, and saw the other three passengers looking at me. I looked at them. They kept looking at me. I looked at my phone, suspicious it might be making a secret noise that only I couldn't hear. Nothing. I looked up, and no one was looking at me. Relief. Silence.
60 seconds later. "I'm not joking. Turn down your music or I will pull the bus over." The looking started again. I was beginning to think either she, or I, was crazy. Finally, a young man seated in the front half of the bus, but closer to me than the driver, moved to the back half of the bus. More silence. More abandoned buildings.
We arrived downtown with no more interruptions. I rolled my way down Bourbon Street, dragging my luggage with a bum wheel behind me, rat-a-tat rat-a-tat. It's the travelers walk of shame, announcing to the world A) no one would pick me up and B) I'm too cheap to take a cab.
After passing Bourbon's endless strip clubs, jazz clubs, bars and trinket shops, I found the Frenchmen Street bar where my couchsurfing host works, equal parts sweaty and victorious. She took my luggage, and gave me a beer on the house. Arrival.