In order to celebrate the heat of July, Nanc and I are having a garage sale today.

If you're in the neighborhood, stop on by!

So, I was talking to Rachel the other night and I told her that we were getting ready to have a garage sale this weekend. She said, "oh, I hate garage sales, it's easier just to donate everything to Goodwill and write it off." It's true, there is a lot of work to putting together a garage sale, but me, I like 'em.

I like meeting the people and seeing our treasured thrift score items find new homes. I like the guy who smiled at the Fonzie 8-track in the 25 cent bin, but then decided on purchasing a Darth Vader figure. Or the lady who was happy to buy our collection of Calvin and Hobbes books. Or the pop culture guy who was more than happy to buy the Sugar Bears and Johnny Whittaker LPs. Or my lunchboxes that found a good home with a friend.

I also really like the actual physical transaction of goods for cold, hard cash. Many weeks can go by without actually dealing with cash. Everything is done on plastic imaginary money any more. Aside from being a stripper, how many other chances do you have to work with large stacks of one and five dollar bills?

Of course, as my sister states, there are many things to dislike about the garage sales as well. Yesterday, somebody "repriced" a hand mixer from $3 to $1 on the sly. That boggles my mind. If she had asked, would we have reduced the price? Maybe. She will be cursed by bad thrift karma now, all for $2.

Then there's the sitting and waiting in the hot. Right now it is almost 9 a.m. and the temperature is already hovering around 90 degrees, and it's probably going to get up to 105 today. So, I should probably put the laptop back in the house and get on with the sweating.

We are also re-thinking the g-sale on a Sunday thing right now. We live in God's country in North Dallas, approximately 2 miles from at least 5-10 of those insanely huge mega-churches. We haven't had a whole lot of traffic yet today. Hopefully it will pick up once the Godless masses (TM) awaken.

The coolest thing I learned, was a great way to make garage sale signs. Take a standard posterboard and fold it in half, and decorate both sides. Then place a brick in a brown paper grocery sack and staple to posterboard to the top of the bag, making a quick wind-resistant two-sided sign.

Gotta go, we've got our first customers of the day. Maybe they're Seventh Day Adventists

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