Now Playing - All A Dream by Norah Jones
Life -
The next few days were a bit blurry, we continued sorting through the shed, taking time out to eat Mexican food, chat with friends and family, eat more Mexican food, dividing boxes of books and comics and generally working or moving around from 6:30am to 1 or 2 in the morning.
The shed got finished, mostly, everything re-boxes neatly and labeled and re-stacked, this time with a protective layer of plastic over things. We had a few nice meals with people, took a couple retrospective drives around town, and generally wondered whether it was really supposed to count as a vacation if we never really had time to catch our breath.
Saturday and Sunday we had our yard sale, the first day in the yard of the house and the second in the parking lot of Rich's music store; Budget Audio Video. We did well. There was still a TON of stuff left - far more than I'd imagined m- enough for three weeks of yard sales, but we made around $200 each day and moved enough that we felt successful. The rest was neatly packed away for my mom to use in a charity yard sale later this summer. A hint - even if all you have is a bunch of terrible, ratty comics - find a short box to have at your sale - we made $60 off of them at .75 each or 5/$3 and more importantly, the word Comics! on the sign brought a whole passel of folks our way. The clothes, on the other hand did nothing. I think we sold an old Eagles jersey and a t-shirt. Out of a few dozen large bags of clothes, we made less than two bones. Bah.
My mom was a huge help and it was a lot of fun spending so much quality time with her and her quirky little dog. Looking back, it's disappointing how much time we spent prepping and running the thing, but it's comforting to know that our remaining boxes are stacked better and the profits from the sale helped offset the money we didn't have but spent on plane tickets out.
On the subject of Budget Audio Video - We were actually quite worried about being there. My wife grew up working in her dad's store. I worked there. We met many friends there. I amassed a ridiculous collection of DVDs and CDs there. It was a huge part of our lives for a long time and while we were in Maine, Rich made the difficult decision to downgrade the store into semi retirement mode. He rented out 2/3 of the building and cut back on his stock dramatically; no longer carrying new CDs, doing special orders and selling a larger portion of their stock online. For the last few years, their profits had been shrinking, the business harder to find and he'd been getting more and more traffic for his audio and video transferring services.
It was the right move to make, but Linz and I were worried. We'd heard he was a little depressed initially with long time customers' reactions to the new store - it had been in the old form for over 30 years, after all. I loved the new store. It has a small, hole in the wall vibe with plenty of vinyl and a couple walls of used CDs and DVDs and a large area in back for their online sales and conversion processes. I'll always miss the old Budget Tapes and Records, but Budget Audio/Video is pretty awesome.
The shed got finished, mostly, everything re-boxes neatly and labeled and re-stacked, this time with a protective layer of plastic over things. We had a few nice meals with people, took a couple retrospective drives around town, and generally wondered whether it was really supposed to count as a vacation if we never really had time to catch our breath.
Saturday and Sunday we had our yard sale, the first day in the yard of the house and the second in the parking lot of Rich's music store; Budget Audio Video. We did well. There was still a TON of stuff left - far more than I'd imagined m- enough for three weeks of yard sales, but we made around $200 each day and moved enough that we felt successful. The rest was neatly packed away for my mom to use in a charity yard sale later this summer. A hint - even if all you have is a bunch of terrible, ratty comics - find a short box to have at your sale - we made $60 off of them at .75 each or 5/$3 and more importantly, the word Comics! on the sign brought a whole passel of folks our way. The clothes, on the other hand did nothing. I think we sold an old Eagles jersey and a t-shirt. Out of a few dozen large bags of clothes, we made less than two bones. Bah.
My mom was a huge help and it was a lot of fun spending so much quality time with her and her quirky little dog. Looking back, it's disappointing how much time we spent prepping and running the thing, but it's comforting to know that our remaining boxes are stacked better and the profits from the sale helped offset the money we didn't have but spent on plane tickets out.
On the subject of Budget Audio Video - We were actually quite worried about being there. My wife grew up working in her dad's store. I worked there. We met many friends there. I amassed a ridiculous collection of DVDs and CDs there. It was a huge part of our lives for a long time and while we were in Maine, Rich made the difficult decision to downgrade the store into semi retirement mode. He rented out 2/3 of the building and cut back on his stock dramatically; no longer carrying new CDs, doing special orders and selling a larger portion of their stock online. For the last few years, their profits had been shrinking, the business harder to find and he'd been getting more and more traffic for his audio and video transferring services.
It was the right move to make, but Linz and I were worried. We'd heard he was a little depressed initially with long time customers' reactions to the new store - it had been in the old form for over 30 years, after all. I loved the new store. It has a small, hole in the wall vibe with plenty of vinyl and a couple walls of used CDs and DVDs and a large area in back for their online sales and conversion processes. I'll always miss the old Budget Tapes and Records, but Budget Audio/Video is pretty awesome.
The ROUS FAMILY -
