selling and buying

The yard sale Saturday went well, netting us a modest bit of cash in small bills to spend on burritos and/or strippers. No one bought my computer desk, even when marked down to $8, so I posted it for sale on Craigslist for $20 this morning. Within half an hour I got six responses, and they keep rolling in. Responding to the various queries is a bit more of a pain than a yard sale, but it's definitely more profitable. I'm thinking maybe we should have done this with a few other pieces of furniture, and then we'd have money for even more burritos and strippers.

Now that I've sold some possessions, it's time to think about buying some new ones, natch! Specifically for me, a bed. I'm working on painting a headboard I got cheap at a thrift store last year, so I need a mattress. Sears.com has some nicely priced sets: a full mattress and box spring for ~$300. I ran to the local Sears at lunch today to try some out for comfort, but their selection sucked. The only had a couple of mattresses on display, and most of them were $500-900. "WTF? " I thought. A little Google searching and the always enlightening Seth Stevenson gave me the straight dope: all mattresses are basically the same, and it doesn't really matter what kind of mattress you sleep on anyway, so buy the cheapest one available. And so I happily shall.

makin' like the computer peoples

One of the things I'm selling at the yard sale tomorrow is my old Compaq PC that my parents bought for me in 1999 for college. It was never a great computer, but it's held up surprisingly well over the years. I hope someone will want to pay $5 for the component parts (monitor, box, accessories) or $15 for the whole package. I like to think it would be a good old computer for someone who just needs to do word processing and access the Interwebs, but I'd be just as happy to hand it over to someone who wants to make art out of it or take out their work-related frustrations on it with a baseball bat a la Office Space.

I had a notion I'd want to wipe all my data off the hard drive, and the ever-knowledgeable and patient Jason! pointed me to Darik's Boot and Nuke. It all seemed very esoteric, but after a couple of tries DBAN started up and wiped everything from my hard drive. This morning I reinstalled Windows 2000 Pro so someone can use the PC for general PC things if they wish. I backed up the drivers for my sound card and ethernet card before wiping the hard drive, but I'm not sure if I need to reinstall them, or if I do, where to put them.

Overall, I'm rather proud of myself, though I imagine this sort of thing is laughably simple to the initiated.

yard sale

We're having a yard sale this Saturday, July 21. Starts at 8:00 a.m and should go till noon or so. Come buy our stuff. There will even be a pile of free stuff that will not require buying.

What can you buy from us? Furniture of various sorts, lamps, housewares, a light fixture, one of those push lawnmower things, suitcases, exciting crafty things, etc.

Tell your friends.

we have an apartment

Apartment hunting in Boston was harrowing. Its real estate market gets second place for insanity, falling behind only NYC. We tried for about a week to find a place without an agent, then finally gave up and latched on to the very friendly people at this place. Yes, those ladies are the owners, and they are as crazy as they look.

When I walked into the office, the woman on the left who looks kind of like Lily Tomlin walked up to me and said, "Allison! How are you?! You don't look 5 months pregnant!" In case you are not aware, my name is not Allison, and I am not pregnant.

The woman on the right is married to the bassist from the J. Giles band. As crazy as it is to have to pay an agent simply to show you an apartment to rent, I was pretty happy to give these people my money.

The place is quite nice, too: 3rd floor of the classic Boston triple-decker, hardwoods, 2 bedrooms, and nearly as spacious as the place we're in now. As you can perhaps imagine, the rent is about equal to a mortgage payment on a pretty nice little house in Ex-industrial City.

The least starts September 1. Our lease here ends July 31. For intervening month, we shall be living in cardboard boxes, or perhaps a van by the river.

transit woes

Being in Boston for a week and a half (more on that later) has already spoiled me: I am completely put out by the lameness of Geometrically-shaped Region's public transportation. I haven't had much need to take it, and the only time I have - the special express from Ex-industrial City to the State Fair - was very satisfying. However, circumstances are such that I will be living with my parents in Sprawling Suburban Helltown for about a month while I wait I'm working in Ex-Industrial City. I really want to sell my car to get some cash, and I really don't want to have to make a 25-minute (one-way) commute twice a day.

I checked out the website of the local transit authority, which is only buses. First of all, the so-called trip planner they link to is pretty crappy as well as totally depressing: according to their calculations, it will take me 1 hour and 18 minutes to travel from my parents house to the main transit terminal, which is only about 7 miles from their house. Mind you, this is not 1 hour and 18 minutes to work, which is semi-reasonable: I'd have another 30 minutes on the bus before reaching my final destination. Plus, I'd have to walk 2.4 miles to the nearest bus stop, which doesn't have so much as a bench to sit on.

I could ride my bike to the main terminal and then take the bus, which would give me that double whammy of exercise and getting to work accomplished in one fell swoop. 7 miles of bike riding in the southern summer heat and humidity would definitely necessitate showering, though, and I don't have access to any shower facilities at work.

Transit system, you are lame.