Cast-offs

A friend had to go down to Texas and clean out her grandmother's (3,000 square foot) house last week.  Her garage is now full of boxes of stuff her family didn't want and she's sharing the wealth.   Some of the items she brought back with her were pretty cool.  For instance, you see those blue tumblers in that box there?  There were four of them and now live in my house.  Plus I got a really cool old sauce pan, yellow, cast-iron...you know the kind I'm talking about, right?  I'm a sucker for those.  

But then there was also stuff like this:  

Yes.  That would be plastic fruit.  Yes.  That's a bug there on the pear.  She ran an unsuccessful campaign last night that was as relentless as mosquitoes in a swamp to get me to take it off her hands.  But I prevailed!  That horror remains in HER house.  As it should be.  -> 

Housesitter

Remember these? They take you back, don't they?

I'm old enough to remember when the whole concept of renting a movie and watching it at home was a big deal. I also remember that in the beginning, there were two sizes of tapes: Beta and VHS. I don't know why VHS, the bigger and lesser of the two, became the standard, but it did.

Can you remember the last time you actually watched anythingin tape format? I can't even remember the last time we had a tape player in the house. Funny, how quickly technology passes us by... ->

Behr

Did you know that now instead of just buying the little cards with the paint color on them, you can get actual samples of paint mixed? It's true. Sherwin Williams helpfully sells them in quart sizes, so if you don't like the color, you're stuck 1/95th of a quart of it. Which is great. So handy to have that paint color you don't like lying around.

Pictured above is a rejected paint color by Mom. One of five. ->



- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Mello

You all know my about my Sharpie fetish, right?  

Well...there may be a new contender for my heart.  

TUL. 

First of all, their website is really cool. 

Secondly, the pens look really cool.  

And as if those two reasons weren't enough to change allegiances...

Thirdly, they have little displays out at Office Max that allows for a potential buyer to give the pens a test run.  Not only does this clever marketing ploy service let you to feel the pen in hand, it offers you insight into the stuff that runs through people's minds when they doodle and/or test drive pens.  

And bonus! Photo op! 

Apparently the people of Norman, Oklahoma that shop at Office Max are either illiterate or boring.  

My friend told me she wrote things like "radioactive isotopes" and "torrid affairs" on the pad earlier in the day when she was making her decision.  So I specifically looked for her graffiti and was disappointed to find nothing but squiggles and a few "hellos".*

How perfectly mundane.  

So I took it upon myself to write "sesquipedalian" on every notebook they had out.  I also bought some TUL permanent markers.  I can't really tell if I'm going to elevate them to Sharpie status, you see, unless I write with ALL the colors.  Plus I need them.  -> 

*Come to find out she had gone to Office Depot.  Completely different store, it is. 

Tick Tock

Isn't this the coolest ring?  Santa gave it to me for Christmas with heavy, heavy guidance (read: I picked it out at the Girlie Show and Mom bought for me and then made me wait.) If you can't tell, it's a clock mechanism that's been reconfigured.  


I love this thing.  -> 

My New Phone!

That's right, folks. This is a genuine, Western Electric desk phone, circa 19 seventy-something.  Brass bells and everything--a sound that ranks up there with trains and dot matrix printers.  And the color is an awesome beige that is even discolored underneath the receiver.  How cool is that??  Best twenty bucks on Ebay I ever spent.  Especially because there's a sticker on the bottom that says:  

  See, it's NOT FOR SALE.  But I bought it.  It doesn't take much, really. 

There's just one tiny issue.  


It doesn't work.  


Well, let me amend that. The phone is 50% functional.  It works when you call me, I just can't call you. There's obviously a dial tone when I plug it in, but when I try to dial out the keypad doesn't register the buttons. 


I thought I was being so clever by getting the push button so I could negotiate phone trees from my office. In retrospect, I should have followed my first instinct and bought a rotary, which is what I have in the back of the house thanks to my mom.  Then I could tell the stupid animated voice on the other end that I wasn't calling from a touch tone phone.  Which I won't be doing anyway.  -> 

2010

Picture of the Day

I was driving home from the busy, almost Christmas-eve bustle of downtown Norman today, and in an effort to avoid the traffic on Main Street, I took a turn down a nearby residential street.  

It was the best decision I made all month.

I thought I had my Pic 'O the Day when I saw the Hummer on Main Street.  I was going to write about my being a stealth photographer and pride myself on being all subversive blah blah blah.  

And this I saw this: 

And I thank my lucky stars that no one was driving behind me because I quite literally slammed on my breaks and backed up in the middle of the street so I could 1) take a closer look and 2) find a parking place.  

This truck is the most glorious thing I've seen in months.  Naturally the owner caught me red-handed snapping pictures and I simply did not care.  Besides, if you're driving this thing around, not only are you begging for people to take pictures of it, you're begging to be featured on some whimsical HGTV show.  

Poor man.  All he gets is my obscure blog.  

William Patterson is his name.  He was so nice and obviously proud of his project. He coached high school baseball for years and now is a plumber.  Obviously, he's a huge fan of the game and he's visited every major league stadium in North America. He had a Dodger Stadium sign bolted to the (other) side of the truck and many of the baseballs displayed on the dashboard were from games he attended.  

The truck used to belong to his brother but they both had mobile museums.  Then his brother died, so Mr. Patterson took over the truck and combined the memorabilia from both.  He has no plans of letting this one go.  

Here's the best part:  

Yes.  All of that paraphernalia is BOLTED to the hood.  See the gloves on either side? One belong to his son and one belonged to a grandchild.  The catcher's vest?  That was his son's.  Interspersed among all the hard hats are figurines:  

 

He said he had thousands of them.  I counted a baker's dozen on the hood, but I've no doubt I missed some.  

The range of stuff he displayed was amazing.  Everything from kitsch to genuine antiques to objects that held sentimental value, obviously the most precious to him. See the bat and the ball?  He had them all over the truck and most were either from his offspring or his coaching days.  

I love this:  

And the inside of the truck was not spared.  Observe: 

That's right, folks.  The grandkids have free reign in that vehicle, and the ceiling was covered as well, with drawings and phone numbers and buttons of the kids and grandkids in their uniforms. 

So here he is...Mr. William Patterson.  Who, by the way, doesn't even have an email address so I can't send this entry to him.  He gave me permission to post, though, and said other people have put pictures of his masterpiece "on the computer".  

Best of all, this truck in not only in good working order, he takes it on road trips.  


Fabulous.  -> 

Lite•Br

 

Remember when I was walking thru Darth Mart back on October 26, 2010 and I saw out of the corner of my eye, from afar, that the evil little packaged brownies looked like "Lite Brite"? 

Well, I found one in the Good Will store today.  Not evil little packaged brownies. Those tend not to be in Good Will stores, although they have enough preservatives in them that they could be. No, I saw a Lite Brite!  I was all excited and thought for a minute about buying it--you know, to take me back to my room in Baton Rouge, Louisiana when I would spend hours in front of it with Paul Simon as my soundtrack. 

Then I remembered it comes with 1,267 of those little light bulb thingies, three of which inevitably will end up on the kitchen floor and embedded in the bottom of my foot within 24 hours.  The rest of them, like Leggos and marbles, will quickly multiply and slowly migrate to the rest of the house and my impetuousness will result in my finding those bastards in the depths of closets and corners for years to come. 

I'll pass.   

Besides, this the age of the iPhone and companies cater to Gen Xers who are loathe to let go of their youth.  There has to be an app for that, right?  

You betcha.  ->

(This was the first 45 I ever bought with my own money:)

Guide

GE

   

The magic of Facebook.  I posted there that my Crock Pot*, age 17.5 years (it was a wedding gift) finally died.  OK, truth be told the LID died.  Because I accidentally melted it.  Which is a whole other entry.    

Moving on. 

I had grand plans of going out and buying another one today. A bigger one! One with digital readouts! And a locking lid!  And set the table! And do the dishes along with cooking my dinner! So I posted and asked for suggestions.  One friend responded that he had two and I could have one of them.  

Score!  

I get an almost new appliance, a blog entry, AND get to feel all virtuous because I didn't have to actually purchase said appliance.  I'm reusing!  I'm reducing!  Yay me!  And for the record, I had The Geek drill a hole in the bottom of the old crock and it will serve has a planter come spring time.  So I'm reusing not once but twice.  

I simply love Mother Earth and it shows.   

Say you: So why did this guy have two crock pots?  

Say me: Apparently the one above didn't match his other appliances. -> 

*I didn't realize until just yesterday that "Crock Pot" is actually a brand.  I thought they were all called crock pots.  Nope.  The other versions, as indicated in the pic, are named "slow cookers".  To my dying day, though, I will call them all "crock pots".  Just like all petroleum jelly is "Vaseline". 

Plugged In

  

The only thing interesting about the conference I attended yesterday was watching how bored people were.   I was forced to download Angry Birds and a colleague and I started a game of Words with Friends (that's her phone).  

The good news was wifi and 116 outlet ports in the conference room.  One port for every two chairs.  And they worked, which was great.  Because having several open programs on your phone will suck the life right out of your battery.  And if you're not fully charged going in, that could make for one long afternoon.  -> 

400+

  

I counted over 400 storage units in this one place.  The single unit that was open when I was there contained one item: a car.  Norman, Oklahoma has seven separate storage unit facilities in town.  The smallest units at this place (5x5x9) rent for $30 a month and largest (10x30x9) rent for $125 a month.  But rates differ slightly depending on where you go.  No doubt marketers and builders and investors have it down to an exact science how many separate units a town's population can accommodate. 

My boyfriend Ira naturally beat me to the punch on this subject (Act 1, 16 minutes).  Perhaps my picture idea subliminally came from him.  In short, the This American Life story is about a group of people in southern California who bid for the contents in abandoned storage units without having a clue what's inside them.  The only thing the auctioneer does is open the door, wait a few minutes (people aren't allowed inside them) and then starts the bidding process. 

Say you: Thanks for the spoiler. 

Say me: A necessary evil.   

Because apparently the History Channel heard the story too and jumped on the idea.  There is now a reality show in production about this very thing: bidding on abandoned storage units.  Nope. Not kidding. 

I think Ira should sue The History Channel for intellectual property rights.  Then we wouldn't have to listen to those promos at the beginning of every podcast begging us to send him money. -> 

Related articles: 

• What's a Self-Storage Manager To Do With a Customer Using The Place to Change Into His Drag Clothes? (queerty.com)
• 8 Tips For Using Rental Storage Units (apartmenttherapy.com)

Yard Sale!*

    

If ever there was a microcosm of American consumerism, a yard sale, garage sale, tag sale, estate sale, whatever is it.  Oh, the gems one can find (read: Jenny Craig on cassette).  MUST HAVE items of 5, 10, 20 + years ago, unceremoniously dumped on card tables and sold for a quarter for the duel purpose of earning cash (read: serious depreciation disguised as "making money") and clearing the way for the current MUST HAVE items of today.  

I happen to like estate sales as the goodies at those are much more abundant, but my mother-in-law was working this one today so I went over expecting to find nothing.  

Instead, since it was near the end of the sale, I was told I could fill a paper bag (per yard sale rules) full of treasures for a mere two bucks.  

Hello.  Who can possibly turn this bargain down?  

Say you:  So that little guy up there now lives in your house. 

Say me: No.  

But I did get a nifty vintage 3-hole punch, some vintage wrapping paper (You know me and wrapping paper), a bulletin board, 3 mason jars, some needles in their original packaging that initially sold for 15¢....

Say you: OK!  I get it.  You found some cool stuff. But did you really need any of it?  

Say me: Well, clearly. Aa house is not a home without a vintage 3-hole punch. ->  

*Back story:  The tag seen in the picture was attached to a ceramic bird.  My mother-in-law bought it for her garden.  The doll was made in China and still on the table when I left.