Friday Five: Garage Sale!

Over at RevGalBlogPals, two of 'em write: Since will smama is preparing for a joint garage sale with her parents, and Songbird's church had a Yard and Plant Sale last Saturday, we have five enormously important questions we hope you will answer:

1) Are you a garage saler? Not really. I've been in "we have too much stuff" mode for years.

2) If so, are you an immediate buyer or a risk taker who comes back later when prices are lower? I've managed to leave the vast majority of stuff right where it is, no matter the price.

3) Seriously, if you're not a garage saler, you are probably not going to want to play this one.(That wasn't really #3.)

3) This is the real #3: What's the best treasure you've found at a yard or garage sale? Um, well... I found Deluxe Scrabble once when I was about 11 years old. That was nice. My father-in-law is the real garage sale person in the family, though. He likes to refinish furniture he picks up for $5 or $10 (which is how we got our end table and coffee table in the den), or find books and toys for the stockpile at Grandma and Pop's house (for our one nephew who isn't covered in fur).

4)If you've done one yourself, at church or at home, was it worth the effort? I'd never do one myself. There's one for church in a couple of weeks, so we will probably take some stuff and hope that it's worth it. But the real worth-the-effort ones were with my extended family. My grandmother and aunts had a reputation for huge tag sales (no "garage" to it, although the carport area was heavily utilized). You'd turn in your stuff, tagged with the price and your initials, and they'd keep your money in its own envelope as your stuff sold. They'd spread the word at the neighborhood grocery store my aunt owned, so there was plenty of traffic. I got quite a bit of spending money through those sales in my childhood. And you didn't have to worry about what to do with all the stuff afterward, either... my grandparents had a good-sized storage building that would hold it all until the next tag sale came around.

5) Can you bring yourself to haggle? Not very well.

BONUS: For the true aficionado: Please discuss the impact of Ebay, Craig's List, Freecycle, etc... on the church or home yard/garage sale. I try to stay away because I don't need more stuff (see #1). But the Alpha is currently divesting himself of a great many action figures and is selling to folks through other avenues before he starts putting stuff up on eBay (if you're interested, let me know in the comments!).

Eight Years Ago Today

We brought her home.


We didn't know we were getting a puppy that day...

...let alone one so sweet you had to brush your teeth every time you looked at her to keep them from rotting out.


I'd never had a puppy before, ever. (After work today, I came home and changed into jeans and a t-shirt. When I found this picture, I realized I'd chosen the same shirt 8 years ago. Yes, that's when I lost it.)


She always had a very fast tongue. See? The Alpha is still reacting to being licked in the face, and she's already acting like she never did anything.


This couldn't have been her first bark, but we sure felt like that was what it was.


She's been gone more than a month now.

Her ashes, and a lock of her fur, sit on the mantel.

We still miss her terribly.

We did the best we could. And we loved her no matter what.

And we still do.

Friday Five: Vacation Thoughts

Over at RevGalBlogPals, Sally says.... It is a holiday weekend here in the UK, and the weather forecast for much of the country is not good!!! But we can still dream and so with that in mind I bring you this Friday Five.

1. Getting ready for summer, do you use the gradual tanning moisturisers, or are you happy to show your winter skin to the world? Neither, actually. In fact, I didn't even own capri pants until the week before the Big Event cruise. It is pretty much impossible for me to get a tan, so I just try to protect, protect, protect. Which often means I hide, hide, hide.

2.Beach, mountains or chilling by the pool, what/ where is your favourite getaway? Late last summer it was the Rocky Mountains, and the summer before that it was Alaska... so I think it's safe to say you won't often find me at the beach.

3.Are you a summer lover or does the long break become wearing? What long break? The hardest thing for me to get used to after college was not having a significant change of scenery for a few months of every year... after 9 months in our newlywed apartment, my husband and I got this unexplainable urge to start packing. We stuck it out until we were ready for a house, though.

4.Active holidays; hiking swimming sailing, or lazy days? It depends. This long weekend I plan to be mostly lazy.

5.Now to the important subject of food, if you are abroad do you try the local cuisine, or do you prefer to play it safe? I definitely try to go local. But chain restaurants are getting more and more pervasive, so it takes more effort to do so these days.

Guest Blogger: The Boy

Hi, it's me. The Boy. See me here? I rode with a whole car full of thumb-havers last weekend. I was so excited, my muzzle got all blurry. See?


The Typist says I'm not as good at blogging as my sister was. So I don't get my own blog. But I just wanted to say "haaawhhhh" (that's just how Cattle Dogs say things) to everybody out there who has been so nice to us since Cub went on. And before that, too. Lots of nice around here, all the time.

So, I'm done with blogging for now. That's all. Hey! I gotta pee before bed! Do you? I do.

Oh, and I saw a whole bunch of thumb-havers today that The Alpha called "sixth grade girls" walking down the other side of the street and I didn't have a leash on or anything and I still didn't run after them. I'm a good boy, I am.

Stressed much?

So, in the middle of the night last night, I woke up and The Alpha was asking me what kind of dream I was having. I'm a known sleep-talker, so while this occurrence doesn't happen regularly, it's not too surprising, either. I couldn't remember anything I'd been dreaming at all. But I really wish I could've, because here's what The Alpha told me I said in my sleep:

"We need to start a [expletive deleted] insurrection."

A couple of hours later, when the alarm went off, I awoke with quite the knotted-up neck and shoulders. It was so bad that the skin on top of the muscles was burning. Hasn't been like that in years. After an hour-long massage tonight, I'm better, but not well.

I'm just wondering where I'm supposed to be, and when. You know, for the ***ing insurrection.

Oddly Familiar Meme

Diane tagged me for this meme over the weekend:

Rules:
The rules of the game get posted at the beginning.
Each player answers the questions about himself or herself.
At the end of the post, the player then tags five people and posts their names, then goes to their blogs and leaves them a comment, letting them know they’ve been tagged and asking them to read your blog.
Yadayadayada

Ten years ago:
Ten years ago, I was working in a very different place from where I work now. I mean, it was in an office, and it involved sitting at a computer and dealing with printed materials both before and after they were printed, but that's about where it ends. I'm glad to be not-there.

Five things on today's "to do" list:
- Take out the trash (check!)
- Add another blogroll to include bloggers who didn't go on the RevGals Big Event
- Think about when I might go donate blood (another day)
- Think about scheduling termite warranty inspection (call 'em tomorrow?)
- Answer Diane's tag (in progress!)

Things I'd do if I was a billionaire:
- Pay my alma mater to not bring back football
- Pay off my sister's house and make certain she has great medical care
- Remodel my house
- Eradicate malaria (well, I'm already helping...)

Three bad habits:
- Not finishing books
- Eating too many Krispy Kreme doughnuts at one sitting
- Wasting water by taking long showers

Five places I've lived:
- Clinton, Connecticut
- Hot Springs, Arkansas
- Conway, Arkansas
- Dallas, Texas
- My own fantasy world

Five jobs I've had:
- Flower shop delivery driver
- Receptionist
- Junior advertising writer
- PR professional
- Local church staff member

Five people I'm tagging:
Mid-Life Rookie
Zorra
God Guurrlll
ConcreteGodmother
RevHRod

We'll see if I get around to telling them I tagged them tonight....

Friday Five: Grand Tour

Over at RevGalBlogPals, Songbird writes: One of our original ring members, jo(e), wrote yesterday about a trip she and her sisters are taking overseas with their parents, to celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary. Many other RevGals are headed for the Festival of Homiletics in the coming week (click here for information on a RevGals meetup!!). In honor of these upcoming trips, herewith your Grand Tour Friday Five.

Name five places that fall into the following categories:


1) Favorite Destination -- someplace you've visited once or often and would gladly go again:
Alaska, particularly Seward and the Kenai Fjords National Park. Two years after our trip, Northwest Glacier is still the wallpaper on my laptop.

2) Unfavorite Destination -- someplace you wish you had never been (and why):
Hmmm... I wouldn't go so far as wishing I'd never been, but I'm not a big fan of Branson. First off, it's a huge tourist trap, and second, reading a study of it in sociology class didn't help.

3) Fantasy Destination -- someplace to visit if cost and/or time did not matter:
Oh, this is too easy. Back to Alaska! This time, we'd skip Fairbanks (nothing personal, Fairbanks... you're just the most boring town in your state) and go inside the Arctic Circle instead. We'd also take a pretty significant side trip to Churchill, Manitoba to do a Tundra Buggy tour.... Oh, and back to Denali National Park, of course. And Talkeetna, where we never did actually see Denali (a.k.a. Mt. McKinley) because it was covered in clouds, and our flight around the peaks got canceled due to the low visibility.

4) Fictional Destination -- someplace from a book or movie or other art or media form you would love to visit, although it exists only in imagination:
Hogwarts. 'Nuff said.

5) Funny Destination -- the funniest place name you've ever visited or want to visit:
Well, this Arkansas native has been to both Booger Hollow (pronounced Booger Holler) and Toad Suck (inspiration for the Toad Suck Daze festival). I'd also like to visit Chicken, Alaska. The story is that they wanted to name it after the state bird, the willow ptarmigan, but they couldn't agree on how to spell ptarmigan. So, Chicken it is.

Because we're grown.

That's why we can decide that even though there are just two of us, twenty-four doughnuts is just right when the BOGO coupon is set to expire tonight. Just too good to pass up.

(They're not all gone yet... but we did have to eat the first few while they were still hot.)

Because we're grown on the outside, and twelve on the inside.

Books

We got some really nice books a few weeks ago, too.


This blue one is from Diane and Scout.

Flowers

Delivered to our door three weeks ago:

From Bandy and her mom...


...and from niece, sister, brother-in-law.

The Typist types on...

Well, we are still grieving our girl. Three weeks now. But I can't bear to blog where she did.

So, here I am. I do expect occasional guest appearances by The Boy, that dog who has always taken the role of second banana, or second fiddle, or even second bananafiddle. (He's that good... he can do both at once.) He's not quite as eloquent as his sister was, though.

Not much to write at this point -- much of life has been unbloggable lately, and I don't want this whole blog to be about dog grief -- but I felt it was time to begin finding my new voice.