Color me: annoyed

I am in an annoyed mood. I guess that is my right as a Cancer sun sign as we have many moods. Today I attended another auction. Again I was skunked.

This auction was an estate auction of a farm. It had stuff I wanted. I arrived an hour after it started after first stopping at a bicycle store to buy a new bicycle inner tube and patch kit. The non-glue patch kit is not sealing the puncture and the tire goes flat after a couple of days when the sticky bond fails. I went to use my spare inner tube and found it also had a puncture. What?!

The farm being auctioned was an old run down place with plenty of old rundown items. The grain trucks and some of the pickups were from the 1950s and 1960s. The buildings were all old and not kept up. No paint; very weathered. Trees were growing against buildings from where birds "planted" them and were untrimmed. When looking around out back I found a tree growing up through an old plow. Weeds and tall grass everywhere. You'd think the owners would worry about a fire with all that tall dry grass. The fences were barely fences. I had the feeling this has not been a working farm/ranch for some time now. My uncles tease me about the condition of my fences. My fences look great compared to the fences at this farm.

When I arrived the auctioneer was still selling the tools and small stuff from an out building. The crowd was not large and most people looked to be farmers. The winning bids were not high. Quite a number of items did not get bids and were tossed into a pile. He later sold the pile for $10. The auctioneer had to sell the pile as "only take what you want" as several people said they would only bid if they didn't have to take everything.

The cattle de-horners were sold before I arrived. The gates were sold an hour or so after I arrived. There was an assortment of metal tube gates and flat metal gates in various lengths and various piles. The metal tube gates went for more than I wanted to pay.

For the flat metal gates the bidding was on a grouping of two gates with the winning bidder to decide if he wanted one or both gates. The winning bidder not only wanted the two gates, he also wanted all the gates in the second pile. The auctioneer agreed. Not only did this throw me for a loop, it also did another couple as we both apparently had decided to wait to bid on choice from the second and larger pile of gates. Afterwards the couple asked the winning bidder if they could buy one of the gates and he declined as he said he needed them all for his corral.

So no gates. Then again I haven't decided how badly I want the gates. They would be just more stuff laying around to be used at a future date. I have rolls and rolls of field fence, barb wire, and posts laying around. What's the point of having it all laying around if I don't get around to rebuilding my fences? This "wanting/not wanting" is making me crazy and contributing to my feeling annoyed.

The other item I wanted were a couple sections of harrows. While many farm items were old and rundown, surprisingly the harrows were in good shape. There were six of them. There were only two bidders: me and another couple. I quit at $45. Of course, they then decided to buy all six sections. *sigh*

Today was a mostly cloudy cool day. It was chilly standing around at the auction - which didn't improve my mood.

The farm auction was well on the south side of Kalispell. I wanted to also attend a ski swap/sale. That was in Whitefish however - the north end of the valley. From one extreme to another. By the time I was done with the auction I felt it was too late to attend the ski sale as I thought it would be almost over. Tonight I read an ad and found the sale was to go to 8 pm tonight. So after the auction there was time to attend the ski sale. Of course by the time I read the ad it was too late.

My lawnmower wouldn't start. It is harder to start on colder days. I use starting fluid to kick start it. Today the starting fluid wouldn't spray. *sigh* I went to Walmart to buy a new can of starting fluid. I couldn't find any. I couldn't find any employee in the automotive section to help me. I found a guy in the hardware section but he said he had no clue as the auto department was not his area. The auto guy was on break. I eventually found where the starting fluid was suppose to be. The shelf was empty. When the employee returned I had him look in the back room for starting fluid as the shelves are restocked each night. Nothing. And the time was too late to go to an auto store as they were all closed.

The drivers in the Valley are horrible. And not just the locals as I saw plenty of stupid driving behavior from vehicles with out-of-county license plates. "Get out of my way!"

So... nothing was accomplished today and plenty of effort was spent doing so. With Winter coming soon it sets me on edge when I don't get stuff done. Maybe tomorrow will be better - or maybe it'll rain.