Possession is 9/10ths of the law |

Of course we had to hit up sales, since it was National Garage Sale Day. When was this holiday created? I have no idea, but if we have National Talk Like A Pirate Day — why not.

Jenny and I made plans to meet at 8:30, hit a sale that started at that time, then do the usual get our bearings, get money and get a baked good. Our first sale was a group sale that we have been to the last three years. They make these pretty amazing signs that are different each year. We didn’t manage to take a picture this time but they were in the same basic style as this and this.

The problem with a group sale is when some folks are ready, some haven’t even unloaded their car. We were both grabbing stuff as they were still bringing more items out of the house, and even came back an hour and a half later and picked up a few more items. I was stoked to get a pair of Frye boots in my size for $7 and Jenny purchased a really cute winter coat for her daughter. The second time there I heard a guy say, “I am surprised no one purchased the Wii” — but I heard “I am surprised no one purchased the weed.” I mentioned this to one of the sellers, who laughed.

After that we went to a sale that seemed to only have three things: DVDs, Sci-Fi books and kitchen items. I know we have talked at length about scanners, but there is another type that gets on my nerves: a person that buys every single DVD or CD at a sale. The first time this happened, I had 2 DVDs in my hand and then heard that I couldn’t buy them, because they had already sold. What? If you don’t have it in your hands and it doesn’t have a sold tag on it. Hmmm…. This has now happened to me three times with the same woman (and also with another guy in West Seattle). It seems to be very similar to scanners, but Jenny feels like it’s less bad since they take everything, even the crappy stuff. I am mostly irritated if I want to buy a couple of DVDs or CDs for personal home use. This time, I had a DVD box set in my hands and heard “sorry, I just purchased that … ” Oh, hell no. I just said “Possession is 9/10ths of the law” and refused to hand the DVD over. In fact I just gave the seller the money and got into the car. After I bitched about this for about five minutes even I was sick of my own voice and I dropped it.

We stumbled upon this sign — hard to miss since they used a whole door.

The sale wasn’t that great, but at least it wasn’t ridiculously overpriced like the next one where they wanted $25 for crappy clothes.

We hit up another sale that had a woman very carefully picking up each plate and then looking them up in a price guide book she had with her. It looked extra strange since she had bad eyesight, so she was putting the plates super close to her face and then the price guide super close to her face.

On the way to the next sale we had something happen that I can seriously tell you has never happened before: I accidentally drove into a cemetery. I know what you are thinking — “HOW???” This cemetery is very small and older, so there are no huge signs out front. It also has a small street that runs along one side, so when I whipped into the cemetery I thought I was on that street. Both of started cracking up at how absurd this was. I do some pretty crazy driving on occasion, but this took the cake.

After getting back onto a normal street we hit a very strange estate sale. It seemed like it was really a garage sale that they called an estate sale. The old guy that must have lived there had kept all his nails in old beer cans. Both of us picked up a few that we could call “pen cups for the office” — this led to trying to find places to dump out all the extra nails.

We decided to hit the Maple Leaf neighborhood sale — which by now we have officially taken off our list as being a “neighborhood sale.”

11 sales is a couple blocks, not a neighborhood. The only exception would be if you lived in a town of 200 people!

One of our first stops wasn’t on that list, but had been advertised as a divorce sale. We have been to a few of these and I don’t recommend this. The vibe can be really bad. The first thing out of the woman’s mouth is “Who needs a wedding dress?” Let me just stop a second and say that this was the saddest wedding dress I have ever seen. It was made of that really horrible lace that 1980s prom dresses all seemed to use. Sort of like this monstrosity, but long and in a gross cream color. YUCK!

She did have a pair of shoes in perfect condition from the late ’80s that I remember seeing at the only shoe store in Omaha, Nebraska that was trying to bring interesting footwear to the mid-west when I was growing up. When I asked if she would go down on the price she said, “They are $5.” I just looked at her and said, “Yes, would you go down?” She mumbled something about it being early — sorry to break it to you lady, 11:30 isn’t early when it comes to yard sales. When we got into the car Jenny said “maybe she is getting divorced, because she had really bad taste.” OUCH!

At another sale I spotted this in their free pile and freaked out a little since I had one when I was growing up. Sadly this one was missing most of its pieces.

We hit a few more sales, nothing really amazing, and then our last stop in the area was at the Eagles — the guy there started grilling Jenny about how much she knew about the Eagles, and probably would have tried to get us to join up if we’d stuck around longer.