Just the Bad and the Ugly

Remember my fondness for Etsy that I posted not long ago? I still feel that same fondness, however, there is an ugly side to Etsy that to be fair I must also discuss. Following are a list of Etsy items that beg the question…. “what the hell?” As you look at them you might also be asking yourself a lot of hell questions. Such as “who the hell?” is buying this stuff and “how the hell?” did they think of this stuff and “why the hell?” did they think of this stuff and then the not to be left out “where the hell?” did they come up with these prices. Take a look and let me know which ones you might be in the market for. I am most interested in the WHO the hell question.

  Gun Safety Sock Monkey $25

 

 

 

Alice Not in Wonderland 
and Friends $50

 

 

The Kanitschiwas Chiefinspectress
Lindsey $110

 

 

 

Red Cross Aorta Doll $225

Not Bad

I started some of my auctions. The weaving magazines are going really well. Out of an entire box of magazines I chose the most promising 5 and put them up on eBay individually. The first one has 662 hits right now. It’s a very collectible version of the original Spin-Off magazine that is still in print today. This was the second printed edition of it and since I can’t find reference of a first edition, I am guessing the first one was just a black and white stapled paper version. I still need to put the weaving tools up, but these are doing well. Not bad for a $10 box of magazines.

Magazine One
Magazine Two
Magazine Three
Magazine Four
Magazine Five

I am Sanford

(With today’s blog entry I will finally be up to date moving my old blog to my new location.)

I love finding things to buy and sell on eBay. I used to do it all the time. I never tire of finding things that I can sell. I could find something every single day. These things are everywhere. Eventually, I get lazy and stop actually putting the things I find up online to sell. (This is my husband’s chief complaint with my Jedi eBay capabilities.) The pictures, the shipping, the questions, the descriptions. It can be a lot of work. Finding things is where my real talent lies. In fact, it may be my overall best skill. I can walk into an estate sale or garage sale, or a consignment shop and roughly tell you which items will be successful online. I might have to start wearing a blindfold just to make it more challenging.

I started another blog called PiggyBankBlog. The goal was to take .50 cents and see what I could turn it into by just buying things I find locally and selling them online. I am on my second auction and I am at about $40 (it hasn’t ended yet). The next auction will be more challenging. It is a fun project.  It is going kind of slow though, just watching my one little auction.  I find that I am back to my old ways of finding stuff everywhere I go to resell online. Today, not being able to resist anymore, I bought two things to list online. I was tempted to purchase more but restrained myself. Plus I need to sell some of the stuff I amassed last year about this time.

1. Box of wood and metal weaving tools for weavers. $25
2. Box of weaving magazines from the 70’s through 90’s. $10

I’ll let you know how it goes.

Oh Etsy, How I Love You!

If you’ve never heard of Etsy you are probably completely unaware of the Hand Made Revolution taking place right smack dab in the middle of your urban borough. Etsy is a web site that promotes and sells all goods hand made. I know what you are thinking. You are picturing your grandmother’s hand made pot holders and knitted cozies and wondering what all the fuss is about. Etsy may have a few of those items, but if they do, they are hidden behind the amazing variety of beautiful things that will make you question how Walmart stays in business.

Not only is it a beautiful site, but many of the sellers are happy to customize their products for you. Check it out.

Savor creates soap that looks so delicious their customers testify that they curse all day in the hopes their mothers will overhear.

LoopyBoopy is a marriage of creepy
and adorable so successful that Lyle
Lovett and Julia Roberts could learn
a thing or two.

Papered Together has a line of letter pressed stationary and thank you notes you’ll send to yourself to compliment your good taste.

MyLoveyDove: ok, I can not resist a new business venture. I teamed up with my aunt to create this shop. Check out her amazing art work!

Seismic Monitor

I was browsing the web today and ran across this site that charts seismic activity around the globe. This is incredible. Apparently there are earth quakes everyday and I had no idea.

http://www.iris.edu/seismon/bigmap/index.phtml

Once when I was in California I got into a conversation with a bank teller. He noticed that my drivers license at the time was from the Midwest and said that he couldn’t believe people lived there with all the tornados. I was surprised he felt that way, especially since with all the earthquakes CA experiences I have been expecting it to fall off into the ocean since I was a kid. According to this web site, it’s just a matter of days.

The Library

Have you ever noticed that librarians are really trusting? It’s like they don’t listen to the news at all. They must always have their head stuck in a book that doesn’t mention the current state of the world. They let you come into the library and fill out a little 3×5 card with minimal information and then leave with as many books and movies as you can carry.

If I were a librarian (which will never happen because it takes a bajillion years of college above and beyond the basic four) I would not let anyone leave with a book. I would tell them that after they washed their hands they could sit QUIETLY at one of the tables and read it. And I would also make them promise not to mess up the book and to return it to the shelf they got it from. After all, who wants to spend all day refiling all those books, especially if you have all those years of college.

Entrepreneurial Spirit

I am an entrepreneur by heart. Not by practice mind you. Just by heart. Whenever I see a real estate sign advertising commercial space for lease or an empty lot, I begin dreaming about what type of business I could put there that would make a fortune. I can picture the layout of the business and the decorations I would use. I dream about cash registers and sometimes deep fryers or coin laundry machines. Occasionally it will be a business with a service and then the dreams are more along the lines of computers, telephones and scheduling books, but rarely that is the case. Usually it is some sort of goods that I will be selling. It will be something that someone walks in and purchases or does right there in the rented space. They of course will pay a fortune for the product and they will tell all of their friends how wonderful the experience was.

I can usually picture the advertising process and how people will arrive in droves. They will be amazed at my brilliant ads and they will compliment my wonderful business sense. I will be rich from the experience and in my old age I will explain the exciting lifestyle to my grandchildren while they sit at my feet glued to my every word.

I come up with a new business at least once a month. I have only followed through on a few of them and all of those were the do-it-from-home, very-low-up-front-cost kind of businesses. So far, they have all failed. But I am sure that was just circumstance or climate or something and that if I were to try them again now they would be successful.

I also come up with business ideas for my friends and family. They have not once taken my advice, despite the pictures of grandeur I paint for them.

I am sure they will all be successful and I can imagine how wonderful it will feel to say to others “that was all my idea and it made them bajillionaires”. I can picture the strangers I will be talking to and how impressed they will be with my brilliance. People will come from miles away to ask me what they should do with their lives and I will look them over and say “hmmm, you should be a baker and open a little shop over on Winston Street. Hang on and I’ll get my notes.”

Sometimes though I am relieved that they do not take my advice since it might create resentment when they buy their first mansion or take their first ski trip to Switzerland all because they followed my advice. I don’t like to envision them drinking champagne on their private jet and laughing while I sit in my little apartment watching the travel channel.

Life is a Fast Train

I have decided I would like to be a good cook again. Not today of course. It sounds like way too much trouble to do today. But maybe when we get into the new house next month. I say this every once and awhile. I get on a tangent to learn how to cook some great dishes. I can picture people talking about me and they will say, “you know, she makes the best…” whatever I happen to make. That would be nice for people to want to come to your house and eat your food. Friendly in a Norman Rockwell kind of way. Nice.

I would like to do everything. You know that kid you ask “what do you want to be when you grow up?” and they answer a fireman, a doctor, a zamboni driver and a zoo keeper. That is me. When I was growing up, at some point I wanted to be all of the following: a mailman, a mechanic, a lawyer, a veterinarian, a zoo keeper, a writer, a photographer, an artist, an architect, an astronaut, a pilot, a contractor, a designer, a museum guide, a travel agent, and now you can add a chef. Come to think of it, you can add a zamboni driver also. That does sound like fun. Life is too short.

Sugar is Evil, In a Fantastic Sort of Way

Sugar is evil. In a fantastic sort of way. I could live on sugar. Not straight sugar of course, that might be over the top. Add a little butter and maybe some nuts though and I could hold up in a bomb shelter for months. You would think I’d weigh 500 lbs, but I don’t. Not yet anyway. Why is it that everything that is really yummy is bad for you? Your doctors will tell you not to eat all the yummy things and so will your scale. But, if I am having a bad day, a coke and Snickers will always make it better. There is probably some deep psychological issue there. However, finding out what it is and curing it would require hiring and listening to quite a few “don’t eat the yummy things” speeches from probably numerous psychiatrists who charge exorbitant prices per hour. I would rather spend that money on milk duds and tootsie rolls.

Last year I joined weight watchers and while I had a good experience there overall I had to change meetings a couple of times to get a good speaker. If you’ve never experienced a weight watchers meeting, the speakers rely on the members to keep the meeting going. They ask questions designed to motivate you and they expect the members to respond voluntarily. Every Tuesday at 10:00 am I would go to a meeting that was supposed to motivate me to lose the extra pounds and make healthy choices that would allow me to keep the weight off and live a longer life. Instead, I would leave the meeting armed with a list of ideas for sweets that I had never even considered. One week a woman explained how she missed melting chocolate candy bars over Oreo’s. I had never thought of doing that. Another time I learned how you can turn a simple can of condensed sweetened milk into a solid can of caramel. Which happens to be fantastic. After a few weeks I realized I was increasing the amount of weight I needed to watch.

A Forest of Blogs

I’ve been wondering, is a blog like a tree in the forest? You know, the ones that fall without noise? If no one reads the blog, does it exist? There are lots of blogs out there, each of them with their own stories. Is anyone actually reading them?

I have to send messages to my friends to force them to read my blog. When you really think about it, I have a friendship with my blog. It’s kind of a great friendship. I can tell it anything and it always listens. It doesn’t interrupt. It’s accepting of everything. And it seems so understanding. Sometimes my friendship with my telephone tries to jeopardize my friendship with my blog. My phone will ring and make noise, just trying to keep me from spending time with my blog. It lights up and shows me numbers and names. My television does the same thing. It’s gets together with my tivo and changes the channel to loud programs that will get my attention.

My blog never seems to care though. It just sits patiently waiting, whether I come back immediately or don’t come back for a week. In fact, maybe I should be wondering, does my blog care? It hardly ever sends me messages. And if I don’t spend time with it for a week, what exactly is it doing? Is it spending time with other people? Telling them all of my stories? Who are these people? And what do they say? I wish I knew.