Auction

I go to estate, rummage and garage sales and find wonderful bargains there.  I like going to thrift shops, especially when they have bag sales.  I cheerfully stuff those bags full of name brand clothes, hardly used.

I almost never go to auctions or flea markets.

I've found that vendors at flea markets know exactly what they are selling and ask high prices.  I find no bargains and often have to pay a fee to get into the market.  Not for me.

Auctions are even worse because excited crowds get into bidding wars.  My father used to go to them and came home with boxes of junk that stayed in the basement until after he died.

Today, because a friend was closing out his parents' estate, Gary took me to an auction. A big auction. Cars were lined up and down the roadway and filled farm fields.

This couple had lived in the same house for at least sixty years and hadn't thrown anything away.  The house, double car garage, shed and barn were filled with decades of stuff. We walked around the farmyard looking at box after box.  

There was so much of this that it was a two ring circus with one set of auctioneers in front of the garage and another in front of the shed.

Everything was being sold, even a bunch of burlap bags. People bid on everything no matter how much how shoddy it was. A plastic pheasant statue came up and the auctioneers started the bidding at $10 and the bids kept going up from there.  Unbelievable.  

I was told that an old stack of comic books went for $425.

I told Gary to take a look at everything and think about his own hoarding ways.  I don't know that it made much difference.

We left without bidding on anything.  I'll stick to rummage sales instead.  

Happy Anniversary!!

Today marks the second anniversary of this blog, started in a Fox Valley Technical College workshop taught by Nikki Kallio.  By the end of that morning, I sent out my first post. In those early days, I had four or five readers, but over the years that has changed dramatically.  Today I have readers from around the globe as shown by this list of "hits" from the past week:

United States	153
Russia	21
France	4
Ukraine	4
United Kingdom	3
Indonesia	2
Japan	2
Poland	2
Argentina	1
Australia	1

This blog has become my journal. Sometimes I have exciting news for my readers sometimes it's just another slow day. I've taken them along on my storytelling tours, let them look at my garden, tell them about my cat.  I don't know that I've kept any secrets at all, even letting the world know about my colonoscopy.

Gary doesn't seem to mind.

This blog led to a second with Wade Peterson, Black Coffee Fiction.  http://blackcoffeefiction.blogspot.com
featuring our weekly short stories.  This week it's Wade's turn about a meat cleaver, a violent little piece.  Next week, I'll try my hand at a ghost story.

That blog led to our collection of stories which is available as an e-book and in another two weeks, as a paperback.  The book led us down yet another path. Because of our experiences, Wade and I have been invited to present another Fox Valley Technical College workshop in the spring on the topic of writing a fiction blog.

I wonder if one of the students in our workshop will use it as a jump start to new endeavors. We hope so.

Just Like That

It seemed like it was going to be a quiet winter, just me and this computer and fingers tapping away on stories. Then things began to change.

Wade and I got our book done and sent off to be proofed.  We'll get the results a week from tomorrow. We'll have the paperback books in our hands by the first week in November. We have already set up the first book signing for November 14 at Sissy's.  I've been working on the publicity for that, so today I stopped at the library to talk to Colette.  She will be joining us at Sissy's with her own book, The Witch of Crabapple Castle.  She's doing the poster for the event so we discussed that. Susan Manzke will sign Words in My Pocket the same day.  I have to have the press releases done by next week.

I came home and called Ben, at Copper Rock North, the coffee shop where Wade and I have met so many times as we worked on our stories.  Ben said we could do a book signing at the Copper Rock, too, on November 17.  That means a whole new set of press releases and posters.  No problem!

Then I heard from a librarian in Mississippi.  I am getting closer to a winter tour to the Gulf of Mexico. I should get confirmation on that by tomorrow.

Follow that with an e-mail from the Power of the Pen director.  Power of the Pen is a series of Fox Valley Technical College workshops on writing.  Wade and I are invited to present on writing a short story blog which is so, so exciting.

Then my friends agreed on a date for a meeting in Illinois to replace the one I had to cancel this month.  At the end of April, we'll be at Pere Marquette State Park, and of course, I have to re-schedule a tour to go with that meeting.  It's how I pay for my travels.

With all that I have to find time to organize a summer reading program tour for July.

I have to get my Love Through the Decades book ready for publication by Valentine's Day.

There's Thanksgiving Day with my family.  There's the Saturday after Thanksgiving with friends.  There's my annual Solstice Party to plan.  Christmas Eve, Christmas Day.  Plans, plans, plans.

It is not going to be a quiet winter after all.  

Walking in the Rain

Tonight Gary and I took a walk in the mist to wear off supper.  We sang Johnny Ray's 1950's song "Just Walking in the Rain" as we strolled along.  It really wasn't raining that hard, just a fine English mist on a warm evening.

Rain or no, I need to get back to walking.  Because of the hot summer, I didn't walk as much as I wanted to, only going out after dark when it was cool enough to walk a mile or two.  Later, I had a nose bleed problem that kept me close to home, near ice packs and tissues.

I felt such envy when my cousin and his friends hiked on the Pacific Crest Trail, managing 20 miles a day.

But now with my nose cauterized and cooler weather, I'm walking again and again, I am making strides on my imaginary trip around the world. Tonight I took out my map of Europe and marked the miles I walked over the summer.  I left Belgrade in May and it took me until this week to reach Budapest. I am 143 miles to Vienna.

Even with interruptions, I should make it to Vienna in a couple of months.  If I could get back to walking six or seven miles a day as I did in my prime, I could do it in a couple of weeks, but that isn't likely.

So I walk in the rain now and as the year comes to a close,  in the snow.

Farmers' Markets

Today was the last of Seymour's farmers' markets for the season.  Gary and I went over to buy some squash and bought both butternut and acorn varieties.  But that was only priming the pump.  I found parsnips, first I've seen this year.  The vendor started talking about preparing them by first boiling then frying them in butter.  But then Gary said, "We added maple syrup in Illinois," and I remembered that my father used to do that, too.  I consider it overkill because parsnips are sweet enough.

Gary bought some Roma tomatoes, and I told him that I had just finished using the last of tomatoes from my garden in soups and didn't want any more, but he wanted BLTs for supper. They went in the bag.

It was a lovely fall day so off we went to check the swamps for birds, but there were very few, just scattered juncos. We went to look at other farmers' markets in the area.  

By the time we came home, we had added a head of cabbage, two green peppers, two more squash, and broccoli.  I went out to the garden to dig up more onions and found out that the cherry tomatoes weren't done yet either.

The produce was wonderful but then I realized I don't have any more containers. Looks like I'll be shopping tomorrow, too.  

Coming in for the Winter

When the last of the produce comes in from the garden (today the onions), it's time for the critters to look for shelter.

In an old house like this there are so many places for mice to sneak in and in the thirty years I've lived here, that has been the case.  I could lay down mousetraps, but instead, I have a cat. If those little beasties only knew the truth, that old Rascal spends his days sleeping, that at night he is on my bed and not prowling, they would party on in the kitchen. I think it is the smell of kitty litter that keeps then at bay.

It is also the time when the spiders seem to be craving warmth.  I find them all over the house. I don't mind them most of the time, but it's now spider bite time. I can't seem to get through a single day with a painful bite on some part of my anatomy.  Gary told me to apply a drop of ammonia, and it seems to work.

The critter that takes up the most room is Gary.  He has left the forests for the winter and wanders around saying, "Where's the lake?  There should be a lake!"   For the past week, he has been putting away camping gear.  Until the end of October, he will be repairing tools, sewing up jackets, polishing lamp glass.  In November, he will begin looking at camping magazines. Stacks of these show up in the bathroom.

I know of one wife who hides the magazines to get her husband's attention.  

In December, Gary will hint about holiday presents related to camping.

In January, we'll be at the RV/Camping Show.  In February, it's Canoecopia in Madison.  In both shows, we'll pick up brochures and maps about possible summer destinations. With any luck, he doesn't buy a new camper or a fifth canoe.

In March, we may have some sunny days to go look at campsites.  This past March we actually were able to get the canoe out on the Wolf River.  By April, Gary will be convincing me that no matter what the weather, we ought to get the camper cleaned out.  If nothing else, we can sit on lawn chairs in front of it at the Manzke farm and dream.

Then comes May and my critter of a man will disappear into the forests again.

May the spiders go with him.

PBS

With another downpour all day, tonight it was television for us.

I've been watching nothing but public television, one show after another. First was Bill Moyers, who interviewed environmental photographer James Balog who has been mounting expeditions to look at evaporating glaciers. His soon to be released documentary Chasing Ice will be out soon.

Next came Call the Midwives, a series about British midwives working out of a nunnery after World War II. There were some interesting insights about the beginning of socialized medicine.

Then it was Upstairs, Downstairs, Series 2.  The previous series from the 1970s  took the residents of Eaton Place from the sinking of the Titanic through the end of WWI.  The present series brings the new staff to the beginning of WWII.  Tonight, the first Jewish children arrived in England.

Now I'm watching Garrow's Law about an 18th century lawyer. Again, a great British period piece.

One great interviewer and three British series, and during the whole evening there was not a single political ad to misinform and irritate me.  How pleasant to avoid politics for an entire evening.

Presidential candidate Mitt Romney says that the United States should cut off public television financing something that would do next to nothing to cure the national debt. His plan is that PBS should pay its way through advertising.

As I watch public television this evening, I think about what it would be like once the Super PACs get hold of public television and fill the programming with disgusting attack ads.

There's to be a Million Muppet March on Washington DC in November.  I am so tempted to tag along.