Monday, September 27, 2010

Estate sale is done

The estate garage sale is over.  Even though I originally planned to have the sale only on Friday and Saturday, and advertised it as such, we put out the signs on Sunday and were open for business most of the day.  And we got a number of people stopping in based on our signs.  It also helped that a half block away another house had a garage sale on Saturday and Sunday.

We did well.  Even though we have lots of stuff left, we also sold lots of stuff.  We made over $300 even though we sold many things for $1 or less.

Some things may have been sold for less than what we could have gotten.  One lady who bought some of mom's perfume told us that we needed to charge more for some of the other perfume items.  Instead of 50 cents she suggested we charge $5.  Oh...!  I have no clue as to what "women stuff" costs.

Today I finished putting the items away.  I threw some stuff.  I have a pile to donate to the rehab thrift store.  And the rest will go into the garage attic until another garage sale (hopefully next year).  Because I didn't have table space to display everything I didn't set out stuff culled from mom's bedroom until space opened up.  Even then, I still didn't set out all of the stuff from the bedroom.  Next time.

A surprise to me was that I sold quite a number of record albums, though I suppose the price of 25 cents each helped.  I also sold two 8-track tapes.  The other four I tossed in the garbage today even though I have fond memories of listening to Jimmy Buffet sing "Son of a son of a sailor", or listening to Joe Cocker.

Most people who attended the garage sale were upbeat and friendly and the weather cooperated all weekend.  How can one top sun, 70s, and little to no wind?

The rooms look a little emptier now.

Sunday, September 26, 2010

Estate sale turkey

While I was running the estate sale Saturday afternoon several wild turkeys wandered by.



A couple of old items at the estate sale were an adding machine and a typewriter.  Neither sold.  Imagine that!

Friday, September 24, 2010

Estate sale

I've been busy this past week going through more of mom's stuff in order to hold an estate (garage) sale.

I got plenty of stuff, actually more than I need, for a sale as I had created a "pile" of stuff in my mom's room and a "pile" for stuff in the office with stuff from the office and my room (which was used as an office overflow room once I moved out).  My brother and I also had "leftovers" from a previous long-ago garage sale.  We had more leftovers than I remembered as some items were stored in the garage's attic in addition to the stuff I knew was in the basement.

More was in the basement than I remembered!


Thursday was spent setting up the tables in the garage and placing the items on them.  Compounding the effort was an all day light rain and cold temperatures.  I ended up wearing a hat, t-shirt, flannel shirt and a coat.  I also changed to shoes with a thicker sole as my feet were getting cold from standing on a cold concrete floor.

I worked on the setup until 11:30 pm.  I got everything placed but the stuff from mom's room.  As the day went on and table space opened up I brought more stuff out from mom's room.  In the afternoon shortly after I brought out the ice cap, it was sold.

The sale started at 9 am and when I looked out the window at 8:30 am I found a half dozen cars lining the street waiting for me to open.  Thank goodness I didn't have the ad run until Friday morning.  If the ad ran Thursday I would have had these "professional" garage-salers at my place Thursday night as I was setting up.

Out I went at 8:40 am.   I had opened one garage door and started to get ready.  I had a few minutes before one person drove up and came to the garage.  Once he did the rest quickly followed.

I survived.

Later during a lull one of my neighbors watched the garage and I was able to go put up signs up and down the street.  Later another neighbor offered use of her table as I had boxes of books on the ground as I had no more table space.

I did ok.  I sold lots.  More than what I sold at my sale in Kalispell.  And perhaps with a few less people coming to this sale.  But I have lots of stuff left to sell.

Tomorrow is another day and my sale starts again at 9 am.   This time I have my brother to help me all day as he doesn't work on Saturday.

Here are photos I took during a lull late morning.



Wednesday, September 22, 2010

Winco products

In with a heating pad for joints was this advertisement for other Winco products.

Another blog tracked down the location of the company and posted the information and photos on their blog.  Even though the company they located was called "The Quality Cosmetics Corporation, manufacturer of Monique hair and skin products" they were located at the same address as Winco, that is: 310-328 Dean St., Brooklyn, N.Y.







Isn't electricity wonderful?

Tuesday, September 21, 2010

Davol ice cap

Another old item I found in mom's dresser today...  a davol ice cap.  It looks to be new to hardly used and is in the original box.


I seen some, in the original box, listed on ebay where one can "buy it now" at prices ranging from $5.89 to $9.99.

Monday, September 20, 2010

Hair dryers

Going through more of my mom's stuff I came across three old fashioned hair dryers.  Do women use hair dryers like these anymore where she would put a plastic bonnet over her hair?


First up is the Lady Sunbeam.  I have memories of mom using this dryer when I was a wee lad. This hair dryer still works.


I don't remember mom using the GE Super Speed Dryer.  It also works.




Finally is the Lady Dazey.  No memories of this one either and it doesn't work or blow air.

Thursday, September 16, 2010

Back to Dakota

I am back in North Dakota visiting my brother.  Wednesday I took the train from Montana.

My trip was good.  The 12+ hrs passed quickly even if the train was 15-20 minutes late to Minot.  I had only 3 hrs sleep the night before so in the afternoon I slept hard on the train.

By coincidence I ended up sitting in the same car and seat that I had gotten for Tammy when she returned home the beginning of the month.  When Tammy returned to Minnesota she was assigned to a car without electrical plug-ins for phone and computers.  So I had checked the car ahead of hers and discovered it had electrical outlets along the seats and also had many more open seats. So I moved her there.

In the morning I went to the observation car to read the newspaper. Lots of people - mainly retirees - were filling the seats.  You'd think the rest of the cars were full, which was not the case.

Also in the observation car Amtrak had a historical volunteer from the Yukon Gold Rush historical society (no idea where that is located) who explained the area over (at times loud) a loudspeaker. He was very good and very knowledgeable about Glacier Park and Montana.  I even learned a few things.

As the observation car was a little crowded a young woman asked if she could sit at my table.  Sure.  She was bicycling part way across the U.S. before starting officer school for the Marines in Virginia.  She and her boyfriend had bicycled from Seattle to Whitefish.  He would return to Seattle on that evening's train and she was taking this train to St Paul, MN where she will continue her ride to Virginia, alone part of the way and with friends or a sister on other parts.

In addition to having bicycling in common she and I also had in common experiences with hiking among the Hill tribes of Thailand and visiting a Burma border town in the Golden Triangle.

Typical of young people now-a-days is the texting while conversing with you.     Apparently the young have learned to (or must?!) multi-task, even if studies show it is not efficient and each task suffers.

When she spoke with me, and had to explain things, she put the phone down and closed it.  I am not sure she even consciously realized she had picked the phone up the times I droned on.   I figure it was because of texts from her boyfriend.  She had told me it was hard to leave him.  She also told me she enjoyed our conversation.  Probably also a habit the young have to reassure people they are not ignoring them while texting.

Other than our conversation I mainly slept or read magazines.  I barely glanced at the scenery outside other than to note the clouds or lack of them at various times.  In North Dakota fires flared from pipes at several oil pump sites and it was actually cool to see in the dusk.  While I have traveled this land numerous times over the decade I still was surprised at my lack of interest in the scenery.  I do enjoy seeing the open expanse of the Plains.

At Stanley, ND a middle aged man got on the train and was heading to Chicago.  I gathered from his cell phone conversation this was the first time he had ridden on the train as he was describing the seats and the experience to the other person.  He also described his job and living conditions.  As expected from someone getting on at Stanley he worked in the oil fields.  He lived in a trailer with 12 other men.  Six bunk beds were on one side and 6 bunk beds were on the other with the kitchen and dining area in the middle.  He said living conditions were made harder as these men never cleaned or picked up anything.  "And they're grown men", he said.

Before I left Montana I spoke with a woman whose husband was now also working in Stanley. When I told her I was heading to Minot she asked if I knew of any places to live around here as that is the hardest thing to find right now.  She also told me lots of men have moved from the Flathead Valley to North Dakota to work. (The latest North Dakota Job Service data shows about 7,000 people have moved to North Dakota from out of state to work in the drilling business).  Many of the men she knew from the Flathead have left their families and houses behind; partly because it is hard to sell homes right now, and partly because of the difficulty of finding a place to live in NW North Dakota.  The fellow on the train told the person he was talking to he hoped to eventually find an apartment so she could come join him here.

From all this you'd think people were talking about living and working in the Arctic or some other remote place,  though to many non-North Dakotans it is probably the same. The fellow on the train was stressing that the temperature in the morning the other day was already down to 43 degrees!  Ya... we'll see how tough these people are after a winter here.

Here is a recent article about oil activity and Minot: Ward County waits for oil

I've been here just one day and it seems busier.  I also read that the number of fares-paying airline passengers boarding at Minot International Airport was up 44 percent in August and flights have been added.  Quite different from the Flathead airport where the numbers are lower.

Wednesday, September 15, 2010

Sept 14 sunset

Here are some photos from Tuesday night's sunset.







Tuesday, September 14, 2010

Beaver lake

Today I took a photo of the "lake" created by the new beaver dam.  Normally this is a dry field.

In front of the lone tree on the left side is a brown pile.  This is the remains of the beaver dam that was removed from the culvert some weeks ago.  The creek is hidden in the grass and is on this side of the fence seen in front of the "lake".


I also trapped three more pocket gophers today, and with that I have now "cleared" the hayfield of pocket gophers.  ...Or at least of the ones I know exist out there.

Monday, September 13, 2010

Lost and found chain

Eventually I walk most of the ranch during the year in my search for gophers or weeds or whatever project I have going on.  So whenever I lose something I am confident I will find it again (even if it takes me almost three years!)

This past April when I drug the harrow around the hayfield and pasture I lost part of a chain.  Today I found it when moving one of my pocket gopher traps.



Not a lot going on here.  Some days I work on the garage door, shortening it or filing one side so it won't rub again the side of the garage.  As long as I remember the door never closed completely so I don't know if it is because it wasn't installed right or whether over the many years the garage settled.

I also am about done caulking the cracks and holes in the garage.  Whenever I think I only need just one more tube of caulk I find some other holes or cracks.  Today I rode my bicycle to Walmart and bought another tube of caulk and... yup, I now could use one more tube.

After Saturday's clouds (which made for a cool and cloudy 12 mile hike to two lookouts) we had a beautiful day here today and yesterday.  I even had the house's windows open in the afternoon (our morning temperatures start out in the low to mid 30s).  Yesterday I rode my bicycle to a garage sale down the road and found it was at Tony's house.  I hadn't seen him in almost three years and we ended up chatting for hours.

I am close to trapping out the pocket gophers in the hayfield.  Yesterday I moved one trap to my south neighbor's field as one gopher appears to be trying to move into that pasture now that those horses are gone for the year.  And I found some fresh dirt mounds back close to the yard.  They are near the road so the new pocket gophers may have migrated from the east neighbor's field across the road.

The beavers did not rebuild their dam inside the culvert across the road.  But I see the plowed field east of the culvert is getting flooded so apparently the beavers moved down the creek to build a new dam.

Thursday, September 09, 2010

Where Tammy works

This is where Tammy works at the Mayo Clinic.

Wednesday, September 08, 2010

Garage extension work

When Tammy was here last week she helped me repair my garage's extension.  The garage was built long ago (1940s?) when cars were smaller.  Sometime when cars got longer the previous owners made this extension to the garage to allow the longer cars to fit.

The side plywood on the extension had deteriorated over the years to a point where the wood was so weak I figured I could punch through the wood if I wanted. The wood was also porous and allowed the snow to blow in.

Before completing the painting of the garage I had to fix these areas.



Once the weather improves I will caulk and seal the holes and cracks and maybe this year the garage will be snow free inside.

Tuesday, September 07, 2010

Bonfire 3

The last night Tammy was here - Saturday night - she and I had another bonfire and we burnt another tree stump.

Before our bonfire we attended a free community  BBQ at a local Kalispell Park (Lawrence Park) held by a local group of people who are working at establishing a new church in the Flathead Valley: The Way.

When we arrived we found a small group of interesting people.   Randy, the leader, also worked on a few of the census operations and we compared experiences.  Randy and Caleb appeared to be quite adventurous and hiked and climbed a number of mountains in the area.  Caleb was part of the Cops on Top team who reached the summit of Denali in Alaska this past May.

Randy and Caleb also had climbed to the top of Heaven's Peak in Glacier Park.  Impressive.

By the time we got our bonfire prepared and lit it was 9 pm and getting dark.

This tree stump was a foot or more above ground, unlike the past several stumps which were only at ground level.  I didn't have time to dig around another stump.  This stump however was starting to rot and a good candidate for burning now.

With this stump I also finished burning the boxes and paper I decided to get rid of from when I sorted through stuff for the garage sale. I also burned the extra papers and manuals from my census work as they are obsolete and useless now.  The local census office had sent far too many extra copies of blank work forms to us crew leaders.

The weather this evening was different as it was a little windy at times.  Our area had trees blocking most of the wind but occasionally the wind would whip around from this or that direction.  While the grass was semi-tall it also was green and refused to burn beyond what the main fire could reach from the tree stump.  Good.




It was 1 am by the time the flames quit.



The stump had burned down to ground level but continued to smolder.  The next morning, after I returned from taking Tammy to the train station, I checked the stump.  The area was still hot and smoldering.  However during the day we had off-and-on rain showers with some being heavy.  By late afternoon the smoke rising from the stump was much less.

Monday, from the house, I could still see a little smoke rising from the stump.  We had a few brief rain showers in the afternoon.  When I checked the stump late afternoon a little smoke was still rising from smoldering areas under all the ash.

The fire had followed the stump's roots and for several roots smoke came from the holes underground.