Going To Goodwill (When I Thought of Staying Home)

It's one of those rainy, dreary days when one almost feels like curling up on the couch, wrapped in a quilt, with a good book or movie. A cup of tea and homemade cookies wouldn't be a bad idea to go with said book or movie. And if one has a fireplace with available wood, that'd be great.

Before you ask, no, I'm not in the frigid north, where snow has been piling up on top of snow, on top of even more snow and horrible temperatures. I'm in sunny Florida, except that it's not sunny. It's cold (by Florida standards) and dreary and rainy. The high today is supposed to be 50 degrees this evening, 57 degrees tomorrow afternoon. (The meteorologist for WFLA, Tampa's NBC affiliate, just mentioned the "freezing rain;" the flip side is that it's also supposed to warm up in a couple of days.) My daughter, M.H., who spent 15 years living in Rhode Island with her husband and daughter, has informed me that it's finally nice out, at least temperature-wise. I still say it's cold.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. I figured I'd do some tidying-up, as well as some writing, forgetting that I'd mentioned to M.H. that yes, we could go to the Goodwill retail store where her brother, my son M., works.

She remembered, though. She figured we'd pick up some stuff to sell on ebay or at a local music store. M. had picked up DVDs and CDs at the outlet store he works at with the idea of selling them. The retail store sells DVDs and CDs for 60-cents a pound, giving an enterprising person a chance for a decent mark-up. Earlier this week, he'd brought out the stuff he'd bought over the past month or so and checked with Amazon and Ebay to see what similar items were going for. Anything that had a decent mark-up, he posted. The rest he brought to the music store, sold a bunch of stuff, then sold the rest at a pawn shop across the street. Before you humph about it, he managed to turn maybe $5 worth of movies and CDs into $28 and change...and that's not including the stuff he has posted online! M.H. figured that if he could do it, so could we.

When M.H. called this morning, I sighed. I really didn't want to go out, but figured, well, why not. "Sure," I told her. "Come on over. We'll see what happens."

The retail store was a little farther than I'd remembered. It had been years since I'd been there, and while I knew exactly where it is and how to get there, when you don't go somewhere on a fairly regular basis, distances become a little warped. M.H., her husband B., and I talked about this on the way there.

"How much farther is it?" she asked. We were coming up to a traffic light at Ninth Street; the store wasn't too far beyond Fourth Street.

"Don't tell me streets!" she huffed. "Tell me how long 'til we get there!" Apparently, that's how they give directions in Rhode Island. M.H. and B. talked about hearing directions that went, "Turn right where the old Blah-blah restaurant used to be...yeah, it's the new Dunkin' Donuts now...and go for another two minutes..." I'd lived in New England for a number of years and had heard directions like that. How had I forgotten?

When we finally arrived, M.H. found a parking space and we headed in. Even with the chilly, rainy weather, there were still people wandering in and out of the store, which was basically part of a warehouse. Actually, Goodwill takes up the entire building, but has it segmented off into different spaces: two stores, along with other stuff, all warehouse-ish.

Even though M. had described the store fairly well, the reality was a little different than I'd imagined. It also turned out we probably should have arrived hours earlier, as much of the good stuff was already gone.

We sighed and got to work picking through bins. For a while, any CDs and DVDs I ran across got stuffed into the oversized shopping bags. At one point, an old man walked up to me, handing over a stack of CD cases.

"I decided I don't want these, and since you're buying a lot of music," he said before wandering off to stand in one of the two checkout lines. It seemed a little strange, but then, it seemed that a lot of the normal shopping rules didn't seem to apply here. You don't walk up to someone in, say, Publix and say, "I notice you're buying a lot of cans of tomato soup, so you might as well have the ones I picked up, too."

I glanced in the CD cases the man had handed me--maybe eight or ten of them--and every single case was empty! I'd already run across an empty CD and DVD case already, but the fact that he'd handed me this many empty ones...I put them down near a cash register.

In the end, while we didn't get quite as much stuff to sell as we'd anticipated, we did end up with a good start. M.H. even ended up with a working vacuum for $2 and a small flat-screen TV. (Note to self: Next time, we'll need an earlier start.)

After getting home, I plopped the bag of stuff I'd bought on the dining room table while M.H. tested the TV and vacuum. The TV didn't work, but the vacuum did. (At last report, the TV apparently needed a fuse, which M.H. was trying to find. We'll see how well it works.) After putting her stuff back in the trunk, M.H. and B. left. The rain started back, colder, drearier, and definitely looking like it would've been a snow-day, had we been up north.

Back inside, J. was pulling stuff from the bag and looking through the pile, shaking his head.

"You didn't check this stuff too closely, did you?" he asked. Apparently there were a couple of mis-placed CDs: an Eric Clapton CD rested in half of a Rolling Stones case; Pink Floyd rested in a Rage Against the Machine. Two double-CD cases sported one CD. I sighed. (Another note to self: Make sure to check the CDs and DVDs a little closer to be on the safe side.) After fixing myself a cup of tea, I posted most of what I'd bought on ebay.

I now have cookie dough setting up. I made several kinds of cookie dough, including my Grandma Hallock's oatmeal cookies and a bowl of gingerbread men dough. Should be ready to bake this evening. I wish I'd fixed the dough before going out so I could send some home with M.H. The stories those cookies could tell...

Here's to homemade cookies and tea on a rainy evening after a day doing stuff I hadn't quite planned. A change of plans can be a good thing...this afternoon was.

New Year's Resolutions, or How Do You Make God Laugh?

It's New Year's day - the time when many people make resolutions. I'm one of those people who do that. Over the year, I've learned to make my resolutions a little more realistic. Don't always make it all the way through the year, but I do try.

So, what are my New Year's resolutions this year? Hit the gym at least twice a week. Walk (working up to running) at least three days a week. Start eating healthy. Working a budget. Kickstarting my production company, rather than letting it simply limp along (wow, sounds like working up a business plan, contacting the SBA, etc). And a few other things that really need to be worked on that, if I don't sit down and decide that's it, it's now or never, because this stuff's not happening by itself!, it'll never get done.

Two of the things I had resolved included exercising/walking/running and taking more photography. Even set up a brain dump (or, rather, photography dump) blog for the photography so that I could then decide what I want to put my website. (I also posted on another photography blog I'd come up with maybe a year ago but never posted to until this morning. That one will probably be deleted, since the name is too similar to a site that I love going to. But take a look at it and let me know which background you like before I delete it: the beach background or the plain background. Yes, you, the reader...leave a comment, please!) I'd planned to start the walking and photography today.

When I got up this morning, I discovered that the plumbing was acting up - a lot. On the plus side, the bathtub holds a lot of water. The down side is...you guessed it...stuff was backing up into the tub. The washer was backing up into the tub. The kitchen sink was backing up into the tub. Stuff was backing up into the tub. (That's as far as we're going with that!) So, of course, I called the landlord. On New Year's Day. At 8:00 a.m. Still haven't heard back, and it's almost 10:30. I'm sure they'll be pleased (sarcasm, here). Of course, I could have called them when I had an inkling that things might be amuck...but I doubt they would've liked hearing from me at 11:45 p.m. on New Year's Eve.

The walk can wait until later today. The photography? I've posted one of my older photos. The rest of my resolutions are still doable. Things happen...What was it John Lennon said? "Life is what happens while you are busy making other plans." How true.

Happy New Year! Be safe.