Last night I packed everything that needed to be packed, sorted through my paint stuff and put a lot of random cans of paint, along with some boxes I'll never use, out by the trash enclosure. Also moved the big tall book shelf and cleared another strip of floor etc. in the loft and painted it.
I can't work there during the day because it's like a sauna up there. So it's a nightly paint session, ideally. It's a lot less hot at 4AM.
I woke up at about 3:30, and was surprised that there have been no Ebay sales overnight. I've talked about how I was wiped out in the 2008 crash, which Ken sailed through OK, and Ken and I have both made it through the covid crash, which a lot of people did not - hence all the new homeless people now.
I realize now that I lost everything in 2008 because that was a house-price crash. People no longer getting "paid" $50k or more a year to live in their house, stopped being so. They no longer had money to buy stuff from me. My sales went from 6 or 7 thousand a month to about $1500.
Ken didn't lose everything because he works in the medical field, inventing things. The medical field was almost untouched by the 2008 crash. Ken was able to just keep inventing along, and didn't end up homeless, his whole family surviving in some camp somewhere.
The covid crash was a crash in jobs that involved contact with others. The medical field was fine, and the housing market got a bit of a boost, as people both moved out of expensive areas because they could work from home, and upgraded to houses with an extra room or two, for a home office and an "education room" for their kids.
This is why we have San Francisco and Manhattan level rents in places like Denver and Austin now.
Well, the US now has a "let it rip" covid policy, the PPP loan gift to the wealthy has been largely spent, no more stimulus checks to the working class, and non-medical things are crashing. Housing, crypto currencies, the NFT scam, etc.
Medical is still doing fine and it's been the one bright spot in our Ebay sales - the stuff I've been pulling out of that one dumpster. The number showing our sales over the last 30 days looks good, but nothing sold overnight. That's a bit unusual. Usually on a Monday I wake up to at least a few things having sold.
Real estate is setting up to tank even bigger and harder than in 2008.
There's also something going on with cars and car repossessions are spiking. For those who could still afford to own and operate a car, prices have been crazily high - people have bought a car, driven it a few years, then sold it for more than they paid new. Used car prices have been higher than new car prices used to be. Now the party's over - especially as the guy who bought that $80 SUV might have felt he could afford it because he had millions in cryptocurrencies - and tow truck operators are probably keeping busy now.
The problem is, if real estate is going to tank, I'd expect our non-medical-item Ebay sales to do the same. Interesting times ahead.
I'd packed everything that had to be sent last night - 8 things including one really large thing - and headed out early. I did my post office and FedEx drop-offs, and the "organic" dumpster behind H Mart had a number of things but the one thing I could reach were bundles of chives so I took two.
I rode back here directly, and checked the bountiful dumpster - nothing. I came back here and loaded up a bunch of painting stuff I'd told Tom I'd give him - a large roller and paint brushes and those foam brush things and a bunch of cans of various paints and primers. I'd gone through the stuff last night and all I wanted to keep was the paint I was using and a little can of spackle. Tom had said he wanted to do some painting around his place so I'd said I'll bring my extra stuff by.
I decided I wanted to ride up Rogers Avenue and wow, that place is swarming with zombies. Zombies staggering around in the street and riding bikes in aimless circles and yelling and screaming at each other, male and female. It was a real scene, that I remarked on when I delivered the stuff to Tom. He said it's a zoo like that even in the middle of the night these days.
Tom and I settled in for a bullshit session, and his favorite crow came around and he tossed it peanuts. What's funny is a crow called in the distance and this crow jumped up and took off in a hurry. This kind of surprised Tom but I said, "Didn't you hear that crow call in the distance?" As we talked a female zombie came walking up the street and walked by, barefoot and dead-eyed like they are. And after a while, walked back.
After hanging out with Tom, I rode back here and put the bike and trailer away. I'd cleaned the bathroom floor thoroughly and had a fan blowing on it to dry, and now I got out the Johnson paste wax and applied a coat of wax. I left that to dry with the fan blowing while I went back out and loaded the bike trailer with boxes I'd thrown into the trash enclosure. I took those over by the bridge and dropped 'em off, came back for some other stuff I'd put out by Bayshore that had not been picked up and had in fact attracted more stuff, put that all in a big box and left that by the bridge too.
I got back here and used a soft shirt to hand-buff the bathroom floor. I have some buffing pads for my drill but with everything topsy-turvy in the loft I'm not sure where my drill was so hand-polishing it was. I even took this little decorated wooden box I keep my shaving stuff in and gave it a coat of varnish which it's needed. And cleaned the bathroom and sink, because Ken had made noises last week about coming by tonight, but in fact he didn't show up. This might be good because right now the place smells like floor wax and varnish.
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