SoapZone Community Message Board

Yesterday, I went to 5 different places for various reasons. At three of the places, there were long lines and people in front of me buying mind-boggling amounts of product (the woman at JoAnn Fabric in front of me very literally had her cart mounded over with skeins of yarn, and the couple in front of me at Bath and Body Works were, I hope, buying products for a bunch of employees or ALL their family members because nobody needs an entire basket full of scents, lotions and candles). My last stop was for a gyro; the place is small and while the workers were hustling, there were four of us in there waiting for food plus another four picking up orders...it took them almost 20 minutes to make my gyro and fries and when I got home, I discovered they'd forgotten the tzatziki sauce, which is kind of the entire point of a gyro.

But back to HPB...I'm always looking for ways to clean out the house AND make a little extra $$, but I don't want to sell online (though I'm eventually going to have to, I think). The last time I took stuff to HPB to sell, I had a bag of at least 20 Star Trek tie-in paperbacks which had cost me over $100 altogether. They gave me $5 for the lot. This time, I had a beautiful hard cover "coffee table" book about the show Supernatural and a similar book about Harry Potter. Both had various inserts, which were all there, and were in pristine condition, having been carefully read once and then put away. Each book originally sold for $50. I also had a season of Stargate: Atlantis, a season of Psych and a DVD with one of the Stargate movies in the bag. Again, there were people ahead of me with TONS of items to be looked at, so it took them about 15 minutes to get to my items...but at least I was in a bookstore with plenty to look at <g>. Just before it was my turn to hear my offer, I heard the guy in front of me yell (yes, YELL) that they'd "wasted <my> time", and he stormed out of there with some of the items he'd tried to sell. When it was my turn, I was told that my two pristine coffee table books, two seasons of TV shows on DVD and one DVD movie were worth...$2.98. Are you kidding me? I knew I'd be low-balled but again, all the items altogether originally cost about $225 and they can't even give me $10? I politely said thanks but no thanks and brought everything home.

But to end on a positive note...Saturday after work, I came home to find Dad had taken his ax to the smaller branches of the tree that was down in the back and reduced the fallen tree to its trunk. I helped him drag the branches, which he'd piled onto a tarp, up to the side of the house, and we burned them in the fire pit and roasted hot dogs for dinner. Dad asked me to text his sister to see if her son's chainsaw was at her house (she borrows it a lot), and Auntie said no but she'd ask to borrow it at Sunday dinner the next night. So Dad then decides to drive his Kia Soul to the back of the back yard, tie a rope around the trunk and move the tree trunk so that it's not entangled with two of the live trees back there . I was sure he'd get the car stuck in our backyard, which wasn't wet but is usually pretty spongey. He was partly sure the endeavor would end with his rear bumper being ripped off. Both of us were pleasantly surprised when everything went smoothly. Better still...the next door neighbor who's only been our neighbor for about 15 months, was also outside. I've been slightly suspicious of him for a few reasons but he completely changed my mind about him Saturday night. He told us he had a chainsaw, and he'd been planning on asking us if he could chop up the tree in exchange for keeping the wood for his fireplace and fire pit. He actually felt bad that he'd waited too long and Dad had already "done the hard part, as the neighbor said. We told him yeah, absolutely, so yesterday he went out and neatly sliced up the tree trunk and stacked the wood in his yard. No more downed tree in our back yard!

Which is more than I can say for most of my neighbors...tomorrow, it will be three weeks since the tornado touched down at the corner of my street and the adjoining street on our block. There are still plenty of trees down, and every day, there are trucks out working to remove them. I'm still very, very grateful there wasn't more damage done, and very little done to our property.