The second fun bit came tonight while Sue, Emelia and I were in the living room together. We were all folding laundry. Emelia did well with her pajamas so I gave her the diaper changing pad cover. I knew it was difficult and gave it to her to see what she would do. She had it for about 10 seconds and brought it over saying that she couldn’t fold it, but she was struggling for the words. I said, “It’s shaped funny, huh?”. She replies, “Yeah, funny. Too fucking funny.” Sue and I took a double take as asked her what she said. She wouldn’t repeated it. We almost couldn’t control ourselves. When we could speak without laughing like hyenas we talked to her about not using that word.

It was a neighborhood yard sale, so we were guaranteed plenty of traffic and much like two years ago when we first did this it was busy as expected. Sue took Emelia to swimming class, while Caitlin and I setup and tended our table. Later one Sue took both girls out for the day leaving me home to continue with social engineering and research. We ended up getting rid of plenty of junk that was lying around the house, made a few bucks, had a few good conversations, made some people happy and learned more about the dirty side of people.

We didn’t have much to sell and what we had wasn’t worth much. Some of it was left over from our yard sale two years ago. I’m happy to say almost all of that even went this time. The big ticket item was the dryer. I’ve procrastinated for nearly seven months and decided to drag it out for the yard sale just in case. The rest of the stuff were various household stuff and small electronics (15+ years old).

Thankfully Sue stayed up with me the night before to help price each item. We also filled a few “free” boxes, which did very well. We even sold a few things that Amy had to get rid of. We started off later that most, which means we were out setting up by 8am. The vultures were already out and circling the neighborhood around 6:30. And by vultures I mean the “early birds”. One guy even had the guts enough to stop and dig through my boxes before I had them all out of the house. I knew what he wanted, but asked him anyway. I prompted replied that I have no jewelry, rare coins, military paraphernalia or anything of the sort. Having done this before I knew his type and what he was looking for.

The other vultures stopped by after Caitlin helped setup and they were rude as usual. A couple said hi, but most took a gander, ignored my greeting then hopped back in their cars and took off. The spinster crowd usually are second to arrive as usual. Next up were the normals. People that follow instructions and arrive when the yard sale starts at 9am.

For the most part most people didn’t haggle. The prices were too low to negotiate, although some did try. One guy haggled over 25 cents and ended up paying 2.75 for something. He payed with a $20. Idiot. I had some other characters show up and had a few decent conversations. I was in good spirits and chatty so it was a nice day to deal with people.

The dryer was definitely the biggest draw, but nobody wanted to pay more than $75 for it. We had some dirt bags yelling down the street prices. No deal. In the end Sue ended up selling it for $100 to and older couple that were buying it for their daughter, who I believe was out of work. They were nice people and I’m happy that the dryer went to them. I would have been upset if the dirt bags ended up paying me what I asked. This felt like more of a good deed than a sale.

By 3pm I was sunburned and most of the stuff was sold. I kept the free boxes full as I learned what people didn’t even look at. I packed up the remaining items actually worth money into one box and put the rest out to the corner of the driveway.

The real vultures come out after 3pm when the sale ends and the free stuff is out. We had plenty of pickers stop by. One guy drove his nasty looking truck over, opened the door, picked out things and littler threw them into the cab of the truck. I figure he was doing some early Christmas shopping.

The prize goes to the car that arrived shortly after. Picture a mini van with both sliding doors open, slowly driving around the circle. They stopped not too far from our stuff and a kid jumped out. The girl picked up the first box, brought it over to each car door so that the people in the van could dig through it. Then she returned the box to the curb. She did this for each box. In the end they took a bunch of stuff and then slowly moved on their way. It was a sight to see.

In the end, if you ignore the money we got for the dryer we did pretty well for ourselves. In fact we made the exact same amount of money on our stuff as I did selling Amy’s stuff. A total of $23.25 each. At about 7 hours of work that means I earned $3.33 and hour. I think I could have made more money collecting cans and returning them, but the real goal wasn’t to make money. I’m doing what I can to purge the house of crap we don’t need. We followed the yard sale up with a trip to the library to donate books.

And for now, goodnight.

You really have to wonder about the quality of some people’s brains. Who in their right mind puts humongous wheels on a POS car. One of the wheels probably cost more than the entire car. This is one of two cars like this that I’ve seen in the area. The other has wheels that may even be larger, but the car rides much higher than this one. The other car is an even older POS. If I had to guess I would say it was an early ‘80s Caprice (much older than this one). It’s not easy to see in the photo, but the wheel wells are cut just enough to give about 3/4” of clearance between the wheel well and the tires. I’d love to see the guy try to turn the wheels or hit a bump in this thing. BTW this was seen on a school campus. I believe it was somebody working there, not attending as a student.

After our short chat about the kids Emelia and I headed to the building to read through travel brochures and peruse the food court. When we got back to the car the other family was still there, only now the mother/wife returned and they were busy reorganizing the car. The interesting thing was that it seemed they were fully loaded with bottles of all sorts. The two year old was busy playing with five gallon size water jugs while the parents organized smaller (gallon and smaller) water bottles amongst various plastic shopping bags. For the life of me I can’t figure out what they were doing, but it was harmless enough. I’m sure they have a reason for holding on to all of the bottles when they are clearly on their trip home, but it is eluding my imagination. Maybe they will be able to redeem them for a nice hand full of change when they get home. It’s anybody’s guess.

I blindly upgraded this site to WordPress 2.7 beta 3. So far I like the new admin interface. Let’s hope things don’t change again any time soon. Relearning an interface is a PITA.

Little girl was in the bathroom with me and suddenly started poking me with something all the while saying “三， 三， 三”. Sure enough she was poking with with the foam “3″ that she plays with during bath time. I’m glad to see she’s learning something.

The little one is starting to become a little obstinate about learning Chinese. I still think that there is great value in her learning it as a second language, but there is little I can do to teach her. We tried out something last night by putting away all of her English books and leaving out only Chinese ones. She refused to sit down for book time and found other things to do before bed. I guess the best we can do for now is just talk to her in Chinese as often as possible.

Emelia has taken a strong liking to her giraffe during the past two weeks. She calls it her “baby” and just has to have it with her. Sometimes she does odd things like try to put it in the garbage, but most of the time she protects it like a mother. It’s funny to see, but scary all the same. I don’t want her to get too attached to something.

She’s also taken to picking up and holding all her toys (giraffe, small towel like animal and her taggies book) when she wakes up and cries in her crib. It’s like she grabs them all before escaping, but she can’t get out. This is odd since she never paid any of these things any attention for as long as she has been in her crib. Now, she is protective of them.

Our second little one is still baking nicely. She’s quite a bit more active than Emelia was when she was in the womb. This one seems to be active all day long, instead of just after Sue eats (as that was Emelia’s active time). And by active I mean moving and punching her way around Sue’s tummy. She sat next to me a couple times and I’ve been bumped by the little one. I guess she’s eager to get out. I can’t wait to see what she looks like and how she behaves.

A new take on washing your hands. Doggie-style public sinks in Chongqing, China. This one comes via Shanghaiist.

It must be an industry term.

Heavy smoking makes bibles too expensive

Chinese men are smoking more heavily and that has made the bibles worldwide more expensive, I read in a rather Christian newspaper from the Netherlands. For cigarettes the same kind of paper is being used as for printing the bibles and this smoking habit is not only killing the smokers, but also the sales of bibles.

The German Bible Association has complained about this in the German weekly Der Spiegel. Sales of the bible in Europe are declining, but it is unsure whether only the price is an issue here.

So, if I read that correctly good ole bible thumpers are never without a hefty stash of rolling papers. All you smokers out there should keep that in mind.

84 year old woman has sex with 11 year old boy

I didn’t make any mistake with the ages. An 84 year old woman in Oregon confessed to having sex with a 11 year old boy. He was a foster child in her care. I’m speechless.

5 year girl gives birth to 6lb baby boy (NSFW)

This appears to be an old story and at first I was thinking urban legend, but there is more than one site with this information, one of which is an urban legend site that claims this is a true story.

Apparently, this little girl started menstruating when she was 3 years old (or 8 months old, depending on who you ask) and had fully developed breasts and ovaries by age 5. Her parents thought she had an abdominal tumor, brought her to the hospital which identified the tumor as a child. No word on who the father was. The original story is here.

Toddler fights

Women were caught in video goading a toddler to fight another kid. One woman said, “I didn’t see any harm in toughening them up. I done the same with my own children.” I done be dumbfounded why people like this are allowed to keep their kids. Imagine what they do with the kids when nobody is around filming.

The Flat Earth Society

This is a forum where people that still think the earth is flat come to talk and beat up all those lies that scientists and NASA are spreading around about the earth being round.