Meghan had stuff going on last Saturday so I made a plan to hit sales with Karl. There was an estate sale close to home that we wanted to hit first, but it didn’t start until ten. We went and got numbers (12 & 13) and then checked to see if there were any sales nearby we could hit in the meantime. NOTHING. I lamely suggested we could drive around and look for signs, but in early March when it has been raining all week? You’re not going to see signs. We parked back at the sale about ten minutes early and waited with the crowd. At least they opened on time, but instead of taking our numbers they just let people in randomly. It drives me crazy when people set up a system for letting people in and then don’t even use it!

It also drives me crazy when you wait around and then the sale is a bust. I didn’t find anything, although I was slightly fascinated by this Horse Race Analyzer handicapping computer. The manual was pretty funny — reassuring people that even though they’d probably never used an actual computer like this before, they shouldn’t feel intimidated.

Karl found a few things, including some old Boeing company newsletters from the early ’40s. Our minds were pretty much blown by the cover on this one.

Amazing, right? We had all just been marveling at the Black & WTF photo blog, so this seemed to fit right in.

Since there was nothing else even remotely nearby we headed across town to a sale that had sounded good — listed as an estate sale in a double garage, with records, vintage housewares, and other tempting-sounding items.

Again, I struck out. The few things that were cool were priced ridiculously high. And a lot of them were just ridiculous, aside from the price.

After a while I left to wait in the driveway. Karl took forever, reminding me why we once dubbed him “Lloyd Dawdler.” He emerged with a few unremarkable items (or maybe I just didn’t care at that point).

I was about ready to write off the whole day, but then I found listings for a couple of other estate sales nearby. We entered one house and were greeted by the always-dreadful explosion of Christmas crap. The house was cool, but most of the stuff wasn’t that great. We went into the basement and flipped through a couple of boxes of records. I laughed when I found this.

Some of you may recall our previous encounter with this queen of cheesy aerobics. As I was taking a picture one of the sellers said I could just have the record if I wanted it. I declined, making this the second time I’ve passed up the chance to own one of her records for free.

I did snag one 45 from someone I’d never heard of, based purely on the fact that Wanda Jackson was credited as the songwriter. (Sadly, the song turned out to be pretty boring.) Then I moved on to the books, where I found a “marriage manual” called Sex Without Fear. Rather than tell you more, I’ll direct you to Studies in Crap, where it’s already been covered in excruciating detail. When I went to pay for the items the sellers joked about how everything in the house was worth big money, then charged me a whole buck for my two items.

Our last stop was a house on a peaceful little lake.

Judging from some of the books, sheet music, and odds and ends lying around, the house had been occupied by a musician and someone running a camera repair business — which seemed to bode well, but most of the stuff was boring or just odd.

After determining that there wasn’t much upstairs, we descended into the basement. Perhaps this was a bad idea.

I kept hoping something great would emerge from the dreck, but it didn’t happen.

Not the finest day ever, but we all know how many yard sale toads are out there waiting to be kissed …