With Meghan back in town after two weekends away, last Saturday we just had to go out and make the rounds of whatever piddly sales were out there, even though it was bordering on drizzly when we headed out. There wasn’t much advertised, and some of the listings didn’t appear to actually exist. We almost missed one of them because they just listed the intersection and said “look for signs” — which would have been great if this wasn’t the only sign they had.

I still can’t believe we actually saw that from the street. The sale was in an apartment and the stuff was about as bad as the sign.

We went to one moving sale where they had a few interesting things. Meghan bought some books and two pieces of carnival glass. When she unwrapped it at home, she discovered they had only put one piece in there, so she had to drive all the way back and get it — then the lady gave her a hard time about whether she had really paid for both.

A “rummage sale” at a cafe turned out to be two tables of vaguely interesting stuff. At least we got coffee and snacks. Another sale up the street from there was in someone’s garage, mostly full of new crappy tools. The woman said they were going to have more sales with different stuff soon, so even if we didn’t want any tools we should come back. “Did you have a store?” I asked nosily. “Sort of … an online store,” she said. The non-tool items were things like boring votive candle-holder sets for $10 that I can’t imagine anyone ever would have ordered online. Oh well.

Neither of us really had the saling vibe so we decided to knock off pretty early, making one last stop at an estate sale that sounded like it could be okay. When we got there I was a little scared by the front door — complete with bathtub no-skid stickers on the door and a stunning “Beware of Cat” sign.

When we walked in, it smelled like people had been smoking in that house for about the last 40 years. There were ashtrays for sale … and one that had about 20 cigarette butts still in it. (For sale? Who knows.) There was an assortment of crusty junk scattered all over the living room and into the kitchen. It was also freezing-ass cold.

I noticed some steep stairs in one corner (covered with grungy-looking long shag carpet) and asked if there was more stuff upstairs, to which the seller nodded. Somewhat apprehensively we went up. Upstairs was a really weird scene. It was like they had cleaned up 90% of the former contents of the room, but then decided to leave just a few random piles of junk here and there. And when I say junk, I really mean junk.

This dresser gave me a bad vibe. Along with all the really great items you can see, there were photocopies of someone’s driver’s license, sitting on top of several pieces of unopened mail.

To be honest, there was almost a crime-scene vibe to the place, and I was starting to get a little creeped out. I bought nothing and loitered around outside while Meghan paid for for a couple of yellow spaghetti string glasses. I told her when she washed them it would probably turn out that they were really white.

My only purchase? A small white garbage can (unused) for $1. Not really a day for the record books, but hey. Yard sales are a crapshoot and you gotta hit a bunch of duds to get to the ones that make it all worthwhile.

Trunk photo? You gotta be kidding.