Early Bird Sale...

 

Today was the day that Joan determined would be our "tool day."

If you said, "Aren't you a tool everyday, Jim?" you get no bonus points, even though you are not totally wrong.  We have tools in our car, tools in the cargo trailer, tools in the house, tools in the storage area under the house.  If I had a dollar for every tool I have... I'd have some dollars.

The first thing we needed to do was go through the various sets of wrenches and sockets to make sure I have a set for the house and another for the car.  With that done, we still had several large bins of tools.  A nice 3/4 hp router, a Rotozip, a Dremel, and bunches of hand tools.  We bundled wrenches to sell as sets.  How about a solar panel?  I bet you could use a pulley system to raise things up in your garage... bought for $119 (I was going to use it to raise up bicycles in Steph and Dan's garage a few years ago, but they sold their bicycles) - yours for only $20!

The plan is to get this all priced so I can sell it at a table at Fiesta Day on Saturday.  That was the plan.  My neighbor's nephew (who bought a bunch of stuff from us a few days ago) saw Joan out on the deck and asked, "Do you have more stuff for sale?"  She is a natural born salesperson - she was showing him all kinds of tools and stuff when I came out.  "Name a prices for these things," she said to me.  I said, "$20 for this set, $15 for that set, $10 for these wrenches..."

He said "I want to buy a couple of those tool sets for Bobby..."  Robert (Bobby) is my neighbor.  I made a trip to the garbage for stuff we didn't want or want to sell.  While emptying the garbage, I got a call from Robert, "I want to buy your stuff..."

I said, "You are a salesman's dream.  I'll be back home in 5 minutes."  Robert bought a bunch of the boat stuff from me a couple days ago.  When I got back, Joan and Robert were deciding on what he was taking... I said, "Your nephew was going to buy some of this for you..."

He said, "Yeah, that's what I thought about that stuff you sold him a few days ago, and he kept most of the good stuff for himself."  A few minutes later, Nick (Robert's brother-in-law and father of the nephew showed up at our deck and asked, "You still have that router for sale?"

Between the 3 of them, they took about 75% of what I was going to sell for tools at Fiesta Day.  I'll still have some tools, camera stuff (mostly GoPro), and some motorcycle gear.  Less stuff that I have haul to our Event Center.

To add to the fun: another line of storms rolling through.  Will the fun never end??  From about 3:00 to 4:15, it looked really nasty to the north.  We put away stuff on the deck and came in to check weather - switching to the one weather guy we trust, that channel had interrupted regular programming to show folks what was going on with the storms in the area...

Even Tim the weatherman said, "In all the years I've been here in the Valley, I have never seen a weather pattern like this.  We are told that as we switch from a La Niña system to an El Niño, things can be very unsettled like this... but this has been going on for a month now."

It wasn't just me.  More hail reported in the Valley and in Brownsville.  Strong gusty winds (gusts above 50 mph), lightning, and more rain.  Making for more flood warnings.  Damaging hail warnings.  So, that's fun.

By 4:30, the worst of it had passed.  For now.