December 4

.

Our first snow of this season.

Family room roof (last seen with ripped off shingles all over it!), behind a gone-to-seed weed.

You can tell that these shingles are in excellent shape -- perfect symmetry; no warping or worn-away corners.........





Our downtown Kiwanis service club runs a thrift store. We used to go there every single week. It is my very favorite thrift store, with a bit of everything, most of it at an excellent price. It is a major factor in my owning too much of everything......

I do much better about not buying stuff when I am not presented with tons of really cheap Good Stuff. In my current de-aquisition mode, I have been avoiding the Kiwanis.

Last week we went through the family room closet, and did some serious triage on the games and puzzles. (Most of which came from the Kiwanis, and had never been out of the closet since they went in, many moons ago.)

Yesterday the Kiwanis had their annual Christmas sale. I taped every box shut (well, not the puzzles that had never -- by anyone! -- been opened), and marked prices on the ones that didn't have prices, so I could carry a large amount of it back to the Kiwanis and unload it directly onto the sale tables (rather than in the donation area forcing some volunteer to sort, price, deliver to the sale area).

Gotta love these enormous IKEA bags......................





Some of these games were rather heavier than I had been thinking they were, especially in the aggregate.





I am not a tall person. I was alone. It's too bad there isn't video of me trying to negotiate doors. Or stagger down the street. The bags' handles were *just* long enough that I couldn't carry them, handles in hands, without flexing my arms a bit so the bags wouldn't drag. Bummer. So I had the bags at my elbows on my bent arms. My better half offered to help me carry out to the car. I said "Thanks, but no thanks" -- if I couldn't get to the car by myself, I surely couldn't get from the car into the Kiwanis........

I did set one bag down on the neighbor's grass in order to unlock the minivan, but otherwise, getting everything into the car was not too bad (after managing to get out of the house; that was the tricky part of the early phase of the operation!).

Naturally our very favorite downtown parking lot, that Huron, First, Washington, Ashley block with the lovely plantings, which, coincidentally, is kittycorner from the Kiwanis, was full. I had anticipated that it might be.................

I lucked out, though, and found a place on the street, not too far west on Washington.

It was work to accomplish, but I managed to get all of this to the Kiwanis, get it up the stairs to the Christmas Extravaganza section, and get it spread out on the appropriate tables (puzzles here, adult games there, little-kid stuff somewhere else).

Whew!

Glad to get that volume of stuff out of the house!

.