Up around noon. It was cold in here, 56 degrees. Ken had come by last night with more boxes and more stuff to sell. Fortunately I had the stuff I wanted to list last night all photo'd and in a couple of boxes where Ken, who has the effect of setting off a small bomb in the place, would not dislodge them or make them disappear. (He makes things disappear, like a bag of 4 nice Telefunken tubes that last visit. They're just plain gone.)
Then I showed Ken this old British TV comedy I'd found on YouTube called Steptoe And Son about a guy and his father running some kind of rag-and-bone business, in the early 60s, complete with a horse-and-cart. The son buys a bunch of dentures from a dental clinic and "takes a bath" coming out in the negative, and it ends with the son having bought a bunch of gas masks, where it's supposed he'll have the same results. Ken got some laughs out of that and said that it's very risky buying something when you don't know for sure what it's market value is. I agreed.
After Ken left I put the stuff he'd brought by in the warehouse where I don't walk anyway, and set about taking apart some valves and stuff. The valves themselves were very used and we already have some of the same type with less hours on them that are not selling. But the copper/brass fittings sell well, and these weird level switches sell quite well. They were really on there tight but I'd come up with a system involving a long pair of Channel-Loks probably older than I am, and a Crescent wrench. It was a case of stop thinking and start turning those wrenches.
Then I tried to list the things on Ebay and got exactly one listed, when Ebay stopped my uploading photos. I'd never seen that before but I knew enough to call it quits.
I packed 10 things I could take in a bag without having to use the bike trailer and got out of here at 6, dropped them off at the post office then went over to 99 Ranch because I'd not been there for a while and wanted to go.
I got sake of course, and a bunch of other things like sardines, snacks, some kind of Chinese roasted chili pepper oil I'd seen talked up on YouTube, and a beer. I was asking for it, shopping there on a Friday night and moreover, the Friday night before Superb Owl Sunday, but it was downright pleasant. I waited in line for quite a while but had an interesting conversation between a couple of young 6-foot-plus Chinese guys to listen to. The funniest part was where they said of one friend that if he organized a party, no one would come. Poor guy!
I got up to the checker and she was a young Chinese gal, and very nice. I wanted to gush about how the store's improved because it really has since the last time I was there. There are a lot of things I want to try like some of the lamb and they have ground duck and duck gizzards ... but of course I had to settle for just being very nice, and told here I didn't need a bag because I've got bags on my bike and I've got a big box of bags at home so I don't need any more, and she got a laugh out of that, and it was all very nice. When I was loading things into the bike bags, I thought I might not have been charged for the jar of chili in oil, and sure enough, checking back here, I was not. Oops. At least I put the $1 coupon she gave me on the message board out front so someone else can use it because I can never seem to be back during the right time window to use them.
I got back here and had spicy peanuts, smoked dried cuttlefish, and a package of "8 Mate" arare for dinner. With the beer. I'd been going nuts trying to find "8 mate" and it was so nice to have it again. It's arare in 8 little packets and one packet is just the right amount.
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