Saturday, April 21, 2018

Yard Sales Up to Eleven

Began an absolutely gorgeous spring morning with corn meal mush and a half of a grapefruit. Ran an episode of Fairie Tale Theatre while I ate and got organized. "The Emperor's New Clothes" brings a pair of con-men to the court of a vain ruler. He only cares about his clothes, so much that he taxes his people to finance his outrageous wardrobe and spent so much on his army's uniform, he can only afford one man. The hucksters take advantage of the emperor and court's vanity, claiming that they have created an invisible cloth that only wise men can see. Naturally, no one in the court, including the emperor, wants to appear to be a fool. But you know what they say about "out of the mouths of babes.."

Headed out around 9:30 and spent the next three hours riding around Audubon, checking out the first town-wide yard sales of the season. My first stop was at a house on one of the side streets between Nicholson Road and Market Street. I found How to Train Your Dragon 2 on DVD (which I've been wanting to get for a while - I do have the first one) among kids' DVDs, a book of meditations for women, and dug an orange and brown floral owl holding a felt book out of a small pile of collectible stuffed animals. Evidently, Starbucks put out stuffed animals in the late 2000's, including my little fellow. His fabric is orange and brown flowers; between his colors and the book, he might be nice for fall and back-to-school.

My other major find on the White Horse Pike side of Audubon was a sale with at least six boxes of records. It took some digging, but I came up with:

Diana Ross - Diana Ross

Billy Joel - Songs from the Attic

By 11 AM, the White Horse Pike side of Audubon was a mess. I dodged tons of cars looking for sales on back roads that were never intended for heavy traffic. After I saw a woman on a bike scream at one of the cars for cutting her off and nearly running her over, I decided it was time to find another, quieter part of town. I headed down Pine to the other side of Audubon, stopping at the WaWa on the White Horse Pike to get a soft pretzel and a watermelon Perrier.

While the Cuthbert Road side of Audubon was still fairly busy, it wasn't as bad as the other side of town. One yard sale had a box of really interesting DVDs. I ended up with This Is Spinal Tap.

As I was leaving, I saw a red head peeking out of a box of stuffed animals. I pulled out an 18-inch doll - not American Girl, but Target's version, Our Generation. While the doll had the same dour and dull face as most OG dolls, it was livened by waist-length hair the color of flame done in a few little braids around her head (like AG's Julie) and stunning turquoise eyes. She wore a blue Swiss-lace dress, a narrow double "leather" belt, and a crocheted vest. Between her slightly hippie-ish looks and her hair and eyes making her resemble a certain Disney mermaid, I named her Ariel Cassandra Wilson. I was surprised at how good of shape she was in. Her Rapunzel hair was badly tangled, but her limbs were tight, and I suspected her clothes were her original ones.)

(Online research at Target and Google this evening revealed that she's an older version of the current Hair Play Peyton doll. Evidently, she has a knob in the back of her head that can be used to pull in the braids until they're the length you desire. I'll take a better look at her head tomorrow. Oh, and she's staying Ariel Cassandra. I'm not really big on "Peyton.")

I rode around for another hour after I found Ariel, but the only other thing I picked up was a new American Girl brush. The old one I picked up from AG in 2014 had thin bristles and kept falling apart every time I tried to brush the dolls' hair. This one must be slightly older - it has stiffer bristles and had no trouble with most of the snarls in Ariel's bright orange mane.

Since I was on that side of Cuthbert Road anyway, I stopped at Friendly's for lunch. Needless to say, given it was around 12:30, they were packed. I managed to get a small booth right in front. Had an apple chicken salad for the lunch combo meal, with chocolate ice cream drenched in strawberry syrup and a mountain of whipped topping for dessert.

Headed home after that. I initially went back out to bring Khai his birthday present. No one seemed to be home but the dogs by 2, so I just went back to my place. Called Rose - she'd gone out to run errands, but she did invite me to a ham dinner later.

Worked on writing for a few hours. Leia manages to evade the stormtroopers by leading them into a pond, but she ends up lost in the woods again. Yoda puts in another appearance on a branch overhead, this time warning her away from Bespin and that its charming host may not have their best intentions in mind. Leia agrees, but they really have nowhere else to go. Yoda helps her and Luke lift a tree that's blocking their path and returns them to Han, Cyril and Artello.

Rose had dinner ready around 5. We had a huge ham with brown sugar glaze, cranberry sauce, and pineapple. Khai also had carrots, which he loves. We were originally going to have asparagus as well, but Rose said they were too sandy and tossed them. Little Finley watched her mother work in her high chair while she ate blueberry puffs. She's getting so big! She watched me the whole time we were at the dinner table. Maybe she's not used to my glasses.

(Incidentally, it sounds like Rose is going to pick me up for the wedding around 3 next Saturday. Good. That will give me time to get stuff done, including checking out Haddon Heights' town-wide yard sale.)

I kept an eye on Khai for a half-hour while Rose took Finley to go get milk from WaWa. We played with his Megablocks (sturdy, thick transulcent plastic with magnets on the side to make them fit together easily) and he played with his Pokemon figures, including his new Raichu. Khai put on a couple of episodes of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, which apparently his sister loves. We did their version of A Christmas Carol, "A Hearth's Warming Tale" as well as an episode where Rarity's new clothes shop in Manehattan opens...and her friends are worried that they may have caused a journalist to give her a bad review.

After I got home, I played Wii Sports for a little while. Mainly focused on baseball, golf, and tennis. I'm getting somewhat better at hitting home runs, which means I can actually hit two, maybe three home runs on occasion. I'm better at hitting short, quick throws.

 Finished out the night with more Lego Star Wars. Completed the remaining character and minikit challenges. The only one I didn't get in under 5 minutes was Bespin - and I got that one the second time. I got some of the minikit challenges in under a minute! Started the bounty hunter challenge, but that didn't go as well. I'll try that again another time.

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