On Saturday we had the weather we should have had last weekend — sunny and quite pleasant out. Not surprisingly, there were a lot of sales in the area that had the snowed-out neighborhood sale last weekend. With plenty of sales and nice weather, it really felt like the yard sale season had finally started.

The first few sales we hit were pretty standard stuff — one had been advertised as “collectors paring down,” which sounded great, but the stuff they collected wasn’t really our speed. At one moving sale Meghan bought a stuffed toy dog (complete with bone) to give to her dog to chew on, which seemed wrong in a funny way. Then we went to a sale (whose ad called it a “do-over sale,” since they’d wisely bailed on having their sale in the snow last week) with a huge selection of decent clothes in a range of sizes (the seller said she’d lost weight, and seemed a little sad to see some of her cool-but-too-big clothes moving on).

I didn’t end up buying anything (every time I picked up some piece of clothing that looked good, it turned out to be in another shopper’s “pile”) but I did really like these girlie glasses. They were priced too high for me to be able to justify bringing more glasses into my house, though.

This sale was across the street from a house which did set up last weekend. I saw stuff set out on the sidewalk and thought maybe they were doing the sale again, but it turned out to just be a few boxes of free stuff — mostly books of the somewhat boring and crusty variety. I didn’t notice until looking at the picture that one box said “ETHEL.”

We moved on to a few more sales. One ad said “We shop too much and must have a sale to support our habit.” I could relate to that, but we didn’t seem to have the same taste. Another ad had read “Spin the wheel of fortune!” I thought maybe they’d have an actual wheel of some type there — either some kitsch doodad they were selling, or perhaps some kind of wacky pricing gimmick for their sale. But there was no wheel in sight. Meghan was talking to the seller and said “Hey, I’m here to spin the wheel of fortune!” The response was a nervous giggle, with no apparent recognition of the phrase.

We headed over to what we were calling “record guy sale.” He has a sale every year and sells boxes and boxes of records for a few bucks apiece, much to the delight of the many dedicated record nerds who make the yard sale rounds. I’ve bought a few records from him, but he also usually has cool books and other stuff, which is really what I was more interested in. On the way over, we stumbled upon another sale that was pretty cool. There was a really strange mix of books there — everything from radical anarchist zines to a Britney Spears bio. We started digging through the stuff when my phone rang … there was a slight emergency at home and I needed to cut my yard sale day short. My first-real-day-of-the-season joy was quashed! I told Meghan I needed to go back, although not before we finished looking through the rest of the books. I ended up buying a Jandek CD and a small pile of books, the most noteworthy being this little pamphlet.

Thankfully, everything turned out to be pretty much fine back at home. I was a little bummed about having to call it quits early, but what can you do? I love going to yard sales but really, there are plenty of things in life that are way more important. Meghan called a little while later to report that she went on to a few more sales, got a few more books, and wished she’d had her camera with her to document the collection of California Raisin collectibles someone was selling. So I guess I didn’t miss all that much by having to knock off early. And there are plenty of Saturdays still ahead!