new career paths

I'm starting to wonder if my current job is really right for me.  Maybe it's just a touch of seasonal depression; it was, after all, a long winter and the commute up and down 94 has not gotten a whole lot more entertaining since last Halloween.  It's nice to see the lights on over Target Field as I make my way south on game days.  But that's a small pleasure when it's gonna be another 20-30 minutes before I get spit out, in slow motion, of the far end of the Lowry Hill Tunnel.

I know that I should have a distinctly better attitude about my work.  I should bask in the honor of serving the EnHenn community and the taxpayers.  While working for peanuts.  And while various overpaid higher-ups concoct ridiculous plans to sell me into even deeper indentured servitude.  What the hell's wrong with me?

OK, so I've got a bad attitude.  I'm not proud of it but it's set my little pea brain to working at fever pitch on coming up with some alternative ways to make the rent.  Something that's stuck in my mind (besides lunch) is a story I heard awhile back about some guy who decided to sell almost all of his possessions online.  And then, after shipping his stuff into new homes, arranging to visit the things he'd just sold and getting to know the new owners.

A few milliseconds of Google search found the story for me.  It goes all the way back to 2000 when John Freyer of Iowa City decided to sell much of his stuff on eBay.  With the help of some of his friends (I picture them as fairly well-lubricated), he put price tags on a bunch of the stuff in his apartment and started posting it for sale to the highest bidder on the Bay.  He got serious about it: registered a website to support the whole thing (allmylifeforsale.com) and ended up writing a book about it.  Coincidentally titled All My Life for Sale.

But the book came later.  He started selling the stuff he'd listed.  His first sale: his toaster.  He found that selling his possessions was changing his life.  For example, after the toaster got sent off, he stopped eating toast.  And he wondered if the buyer was eating more toast than before.  He started including a caveat in his listings' descriptions that he might want to come and visit the items after he'd sold them.

This was a book I had to own.  So I bought a copy.  Online, of course.  I should have paid full price at a local store (like Micawber's in St. Paul---go there soon and buy something) or, honoring the storyline, bought one on eBay.  But either of those routes would have cost more than finding a copy from a 3rd-party seller on Amazon for 30¢ and hitting the "Buy with 1-Click" button.  My credit card was whacked with a $4.29 charge (to include the $3.99 shipping fee) and within a week I had the book in my hands.

It's a great read.  I was a little worried about the book turning out to be some kind of Marxist rant about the emptiness of American consumerism.  Maybe that's a subtext of the book that I'm just not well-versed enough in Marxist rants to recognize.  If John Freyer's a Marxist, he's got to be one of the gentlest and funniest Marxists around.  The book is hilarious.  I had to stop reading yesterday afternoon because Miz Susan was trying to take a nap next to me and I was getting close to uncontrolled laughing.  And I was only a few pages into it.

All My Life for Sale makes for a nice companion piece to the book Material World: A Global Family Portrait which we used to sell the hell out of to unsuspecting Education Department students at Hamline.  That one is a photo essay consisting of pictures of families from all over the world, posed in front of their homes with all their possessions arranged around them.  I'm pretty sure that that's a book with some kind of a Marxist subtext but, once again, I'd be the last guy to cite as an authority on Marx or any of his isms.  I know infinitely more about Groucho Marx than Karl but I'm embarrassed to admit that I don't know all that much about him, either.

Anyway, the concept behind Freyer's AMLfS had me thinking even before the book hit our mail slot.  What if I were to come up with a variation on this theme?  I'm already "visiting" my donations to the Goodwill when I see them on the racks in the store during my weekly (or more often) shopping trips.  So, I'm sorta there already.  But I need to figure out a way to turn this to financial advantage.

I've sold a smattering of miscellaneous stuff on Amazon.  Books I got stuck with after the doorknobs from Lincoln refused to buy everything at the Hamline Bookstore. Duplicate CDs I bought because I was too stupid to remember that I already owned them.  The occasional smart buy that I've spun and made a little money on.  I've got the records of what I sold to whom.  What's to keep me from visiting the new owners (unbeknownst to them, say in the middle of the night when they're asleep or while they're on vacation) and taking back what used to be rightfully mine and then selling it again?

If I'd have been thinking ahead, I'd have saved the return addresses on the packages that have contained all the crap I've bought off of Amazon and eBay.  With that info in hand, I could visit the homes of the people who were foolish enough to sell me stuff to see if there's anything else that I want.  I mean, if I bought one thing from someone, doesn't it stand to reason that maybe they've got something else of interest to me?  In this scenario, I'd be saving money I'd otherwise spend on buying identical junk from somebody who actually wanted to sell it.  Leaving me more money to buy other stuff.  Or to hire a good criminal defense attorney.

I suppose I could start small and try boosting some of my donations off the racks at the Goodwill.  There are at least three things that seem to argue against that.  First, what would I do with the stuff after I recovered it?  About the only thing that I can think of would be to donate it again and sooner or later the IRS would get wise to my double dipping on the charitable donation deductions.  Second, if I were to get busted for shoplifting from the local Goodwill, I'm pretty sure that the cool kids down in the county jail would beat the living beejabbers out of me.  Third, and most convincing of all, is that Miz Susan would certainly not just smack me around but likely kill me if she caught me sneaking the same sorry-ass stuff back into the house that I'd just given away.

one beautiful spring day after another

OUCH.

We're a day or so past mid-April but it would be foolish to think that we should expect something other than mid-December weather.  Maybe it's all our fault here on Laurel Avenue.  Miz Susan and I had just been saying that we needed some rain to green things up and wash away the evidence that several dozen sparrows had spent the winter hanging out in the shrubbery at the end of our back deck.  Whatever this mess is, it should do the trick.  And it will also allow me to postpone getting the car washed for another week or so.  It's bad enough that the Holiday Station can get away with charging us $3.47 a gallon for gas; should it really be allowed to soak us another eight bucks for a quickie carwash?  Which doesn't even include vacuuming the floor mats.  We've got to go down to one end or the other of 7th Street and pay $20 or more for the super deluxe car wash to get the wash with the floor mats extravagance.  Which doesn't even include a tip.  This middle class life style just ain't all it's cracked up to be.

Target Field in all its early season glory.  Really.  It's out there somewhere.

The Twins game got called off on Wednesday and I can't hardly wait to get to the sports section to see what the official cause will be listed as.  Rained out?  Snowed out?  Wintry mixed out?  Whatever it was, it would have been a bad night to be either standing around in the outfield trying to tell the difference between fly balls and baseball-sized snowflakes or sitting in some unprotected seat down the first base line. Either one of those would have carried a high risk of hypothermia.

For once, the baseball gods were smiling on the Twins.  Wednesday's postponement set them up for a day-night doubleheader against the hated Blue Jays.  The Jays usually play at Target Field as if they have the home field advantage.  But yesterday, the Twins won both games including a night cap that could have been mistaken for a 9th-grade scrubs game.  The Twins parlayed at least four walks, three wild pitches and a lone hit (I think) to score six times in the eighth to climb to the 5th best record in the American League.  They might not lose again all year long.

thank god!! spring, at last.

Another beautiful early-April day in the northwest suburbs, 4/3/14.

We're getting whacked again; this time with a predicted 4-9" in the metro.  My heart goes out to the poor souls who are gonna plummet back into severe seasonal affective depression.  But, good golly, what could they have been thinking?  It's not as if anyone with half an ounce of common sense or any historical perspective would be anticipating that they might be able to get out into the yard anytime soon and start hiding eggs for the coming Easter Egg Hunt.  Which, by the way, will take place on April 20th this year.  At our house.  Miz Susan tells me that we're hosting so that settles that.  I'm already plotting on how I might get away with hiding a twelve pack in the backyard for an Easter Beer Hunt.  I'll need some fortification as I tend the big-ass ham from Widmer's while it cooks in the dilapidated Weber kettle and is transformed into Easter Dinner's main course.  If I play my cards right and the weather turns a bit more cooperative than it's being today, I might be able to stay outside all afternoon and avoid getting yelled at for tracking mud into the kitchen.

But I'm counting my eggs and beers before they're found.  This year, I don't see any strong trends leaning to turning Easter into a party on the back deck.  I can hope for that but this winter (apparently still ongoing despite what the calendar says) and last year's would seem to counsel lowered expectations for sunny skies and soft, sweet breezes wafting about.

The most incongruous sight on I-94 eastbound this evening was this big-ass semi and trailer barreling down the road at 60 mph and weaving through multiple lanes of traffic as if it were a little MG convertible. Maybe it's a promising sign that spring is truly on the way despite all the other evidence to the contrary.  I'm reassured that, even with Mother Nature and Old Man Winter hooking up to try to break us, the radishes MUST and WILL go through.  If only I liked radishes.

april fools day...and are we ever.

Spring Break on the North Shore, 2014.

Miz Susan felt the need to get away during her richly deserved Spring Break from the St. Paul Public Schools.  As much as she adores her bosses, both in her building and down the street at district headquarters, and as tempted as she was to volunteer 10 hours a day during her break to pitch in on some deep cleaning at Monroe, she recognized the value of a change of scenery and a little away-time.  Even if the price of that included being stuck in a small motel room or a small car with me for two and a half straight days.  We booked two nights at Blue Fin on the cheap (referred to, euphemistically on www.bluefinbay.com, as a hillside view though, in our case, actually a parking lot and Highway 61 view.  but what the hell, we could catch sight of a little sliver of the lake out the bathroom window if we were willing to kneel on top of the toilet tank.) and away we went on Sunday morning.

Weather forecasts had St. Paul penciled in for pushing the first 60° reading of the season.  How much worse than that could it possibly be a mere 225 miles north by northeast?

On Sunday, not bad at all.  Temps in Tofte in the 40s, some nice sunshine, scenic wind-jammed piles of ice sheets out on the lake.  Miz Susan snapped some great pics including one of me whining when she wouldn't play tether-ball with me.  You can check those out on her Facebook site.

Monday morning, however, was much more cold and raw.  A stiff breeze from the northeast picked up and God only knows what happened to the sun.  I forced Susan to check out some of the shops on the side of the highway that we'd seen seen only in passing by at 60 mph during previous North Shore trips.  She was unimpressed and couldn't get back to the room fast enough for another nap.  She wouldn't even take me up on my offer to check out one or two of the liquor stores which dot the roadside every six to eight miles.

By early evening, the sullen gray clouds opened up for a couple of hours of stinging rain with a noticeable sideways directional component.  It was a good thing that we'd opted for the hotel room at Blue Fin rather than a first try at winter camping.  We'd cooked food ahead and dragged it along with us.  Saved us a few bucks and kept us from braving the elements for an overpriced burger at the restaurant.  My signature seafood mac and cheese (well, OK, Martha Stewart's signature seafood mac and cheese) was great as was a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc which we chilled in a snowbank outside our unit's front door.  The stinging rain let up and we started figuring that we'd dodged the bullet that was splashed all over the WeatherNation channel which had Minnesota getting hammered by blizzard conditions all up and down the Dakota borders.  Are we a couple of idiot tourists or what?

The near-horizontal rain returned by about 7 the next morning but colder; cold enough to coat most of the Camry with a quarter inch of ice within the next hour or so.  I suppose that this kiss from the heavens pretty much qualified as a textbook example of freezing rain.  And if it coated most of the Camry with ice, it also did a damn efficient job of coating most of the other surfaces unlucky enough to be outside.  One of which was the entire stretch of Highway 61 from Tofte down to Duluth.

Being cooped up in a small car with me for several hours is definitely not Miz Susan's idea of a good time but, even more, she despises being cooped up in a small car with me in dicey driving conditions.  Which can stretch those several hours into several more hours.  I'll give her credit though.  She managed to keep her uneasiness under control and didn't try to snatch the steering wheel out of my hands more than two or three times during the drive home.  She contented herself with a running commentary and tally of the dead deer which dotted the roadside every six to eight miles.

Despite our ability to turn a sunny spring break road trip into an exercise in white-knuckled and muttered-curses road rage, we made it home safe and sound.  Susan reserved her worst complaints for the potholes on Hamline Avenue between I-94 and Marshall.  All in all, it was another in a long string of dream vacations. I'd go back in a minute although I'd need to figure out what hot dish to cook up this time.  Maybe my signature cheeseburger chili mac.  Alright, alright.  Rachael Ray's signature cheeseburger chili mac.