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Friday Funny September 20, 2019 Garage Sale-ing

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Happy Friday! As the end of summer draws near, it is a great time to get rid of some of that stuff that has been taking up space in the basement (and magically growing!) by having a garage sale. (My wife has planned for this weekend.) After a garage sales way back in 1990, I started thinking, always a questionable activity for me, I put my thoughts into words and even managed to have it published in the local newspaper in Evansville where I worked at the time.  I did manage to make the front page of the same paper doing a lizard impersonation but that is a story for another day.  This week I have dusted off the garage sale piece just for you..

Enjoy!

Garage Sale-ing

Along with the warm evenings, cookouts and baseball games, summer brings garage sale-ing.

The object of the garage sale is to try to get someone else to actually give you money for the junk that you are ready to throw away. You go through the boxes that have been collecting dust and feeding moths for the last five years and you display it in the garage, or on the porch, or in the yard in hopes that someone will happen by who actually wants it.

I have been to a few garage sales and I have actually found a few good deals, but recently we decided to have our own sale. Believe me, there is a big difference between going to a garage sale and holding your own.

The process of determining what treasures would actually be offered provided some interesting discussion between my wife, who does not find sentimental value of much use, hence was willing to sell our wedding album, and myself, a packrat who can find a reason for keeping my third grade spelling test. But, with give and take, we survived the process (I gave and she took it).

One of the essential ingredients for a successful garage sale is the classified ad. In the ad, you put all the vital information: any special items you have, your address and the times for the sale. It is important to put the time in so that people will know to come two hours early and get you out of bed to allow them to have first shot at the treasures you’re willing to part with. I’m concerned about people who have nothing better to do than go to garage sales at 5:30 in the morning.

Now you’re outside, half-awake, half-dressed and still waiting for your first cup of coffee. The fun begins! People you do not even know, total strangers seeking bargains from your outdoor bonanza, pull up, get out of the car and start rummaging through your personal belonging. I would have never thought that this could happen in America.

They look at your clothes, your furniture, your comic books you’ve taken care of for twenty years, and haggle over the price. It is like they are judging every detail of your life. The articles people purchase are interesting.

Generally you can sell anything that is broken: small appliances, toys, lawn mowers, you name it. But if it is in good condition, they will be skeptical. Clothes tend to do well. Someone will come who is three times your size, hold up your clothes to see if they fit and still buy them. People will pour over items searching diligently for any type of break or imperfection before they are willing to invest one dollar in a picture frame you paid $10 for, but never used. The sale can be a dangerous time for small children. Every time they venture out of the house, someone will grab a toy out of their little hand and offer you 50 cents.

And the day drags on. You fight off the hot sun; you fight off the bugs and at times you fight off your customers. You watch people trample your flowers and listen to them complain about your prices. You see them carry off a piece of your life.

When it is all over, you count up your money, subtract the price of the ad, divide by the number of hours worked, and you realize you made about 37 cents an hour for all the effort. Yet, you’re proud to be a part of the free enterprise system. The sale is over and a lot of your junk is gone, probably destined to show up at someone else’s garage sale in the future.

In a strange way, I even enjoyed it. I realized I can part with a few things and survive and just maybe some of that junk might actually do someone else some good. My wife even let me keep our wedding album, but I had to buy it at the garage sale.

Happy Sale-ing!

THOUGHT FOR THE WEEK

“Ashes to ashes.  Garage sale to garage sale.” ~ John Green

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Friday Funny August 9, 2019 Memorable Commercial Slogans

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Happy Friday!  This week I want to test your memory just a little bit.  See if you can recall the product that goes along with these classic commercial slogans.  Answers are at the bottom.

Enjoy! 

1.  A LITTLE DAB’LL DO YA  

2.  BE ALL YOU CAN BE

3.  BETCHA CAN’T EAT JUST ONE

4.  CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW?

5.  DOES SHE…OR DOESN’T SHE?

6.  DON’T LEAVE HOME WITHOUT IT

7.  DOUBLE YOUR PLEASURE, DOUBLE YOUR FUN

8.  HAVE IT YOUR WAY

9.  GOOD TO THE LAST DROP

10.  I CAN’T BELIEVE I ATE THE WHOLE THING

11.  I LIKED IT SO MUCH, I BOUGHT THE COMPANY

12.  IT TAKES A LICKING AND KEEPS ON TICKING

13.  IT TAKES A TOUGH MAN TO MAKE A TENDER CHICKEN  

14.  IT’S THE REAL THING

15.  LET YOUR FINGERS DO THE WALKING

16.  LOOK MA, NO CAVITIES!

17.   PLOP, PLOP, FIZZ, FIZZ, OH WHAT A RELIEF IT IS

18.  PUT A TIGER IN YOUR TANK

19.  WE TRY HARDER

20.  WHEN YOU CARE ENOUGH TO SEND THE VERY BEST

21.  WHERE’S THE BEEF?

22.  TIME TO MAKE THE DOUGHNUTS

23.  STRONG ENOUGH FOR A MAN, BUT MADE FOR A WOMAN

24.  EVER EAT A PINE TREE?

25.  THEY’RE GR-R-R-R-EAT!

 

 

1.    Brylcreem

2.    The US Army

3.    Lays

4.     Verizon

5.    Clairol

6.     American Express

7.    Wrigley’s Doublemint

8.    Burger King

9.   Maxwell House

10.  Alka Seltzer

11.   Remington

12.  Timex

13.   Perdue

14.  Coca Cola

15.  Yellow Pages

16. Crest Toothpaste

17. Alka Seltzer

18. Esso/Exxon

19. Avis

20. Hallmark

21. Wendy’s

22. Dunkin’ Doughnuts

23. Secret

24. Post Grape Nuts

25. Kellogg’s Frosted Flakes

THOUGHT FOR THE WEEK

The trouble with us in America isn’t that the poetry of life has turned to prose, but that it has turned to advertising copy. ~Louis Kronenberger

http://WWW.QUOTEGARDEN.COM

Friday Funny June 7, 2019 Dialing Up Some Laughter

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Happy Friday and welcome to June! I think we had the same phone (with a rotary dial) from the time I was born until I went away to college.  Now, you cannot get a cell phone to last the two years that it takes to pay for it.  It appears that it is just about time to replace my cell phones which had me looking for a little phone-related humor this week.

Enjoy!

I was once in a job interview when the hiring manager handed me his laptop and said, “I want you to try and sell this to me.” Well, I got up, put it under my arm, walked out of the building and went home. About an hour later, he called my cell and said, “Bring my computer back right now!” I said, “$250 and it is yours.”

I recently went to a movie. I choose an aisle seat because it feels a little roomier. Just as the feature was about to start, a lady gets up from the center of the row got up and starts working her way out. “Excuse me, sorry, oops, excuse me, pardon me, …” By the time she got to me, I was getting a bit perturbed, so I asked, “Couldn’t you have done this a little earlier?” “No!” she said in a loud whisper. “The ‘TURN OFF YOUR CELL PHONE PLEASE’ message just flashed up on the screen and I left mine in the car.”

How can you tell which one of your friends has the newest iPhone? Don’t worry, they’ll be sure to let you know.

I accidentally dropped my cell phone from the balcony on the twentieth floor, fortunately it was in airplane mode.

Phones are getting thinner and smarter. People, well that is another story…

If you cross a telephone with an iron would you get a smooth operator?

Would a lobster answer the phone by saying “shello”?

Did the cell phone need to wear glasses because it had lost its contacts?

Chuck Norris’ phone never auto corrects him.

Chuck Norris can text using a rotary phone.

Chuck Norris doesn’t dial the wrong number, you pick up the wrong phone.

Thought for the Week

“Whoever said there is freedom of speech has not seen my cell phone bill.”

 

Odd Song Lyrics from the 1970’s – MacArthur Park

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Musically I am and probably always will be stuck in the 1970’s.  It is the soundtrack of my youth.  The 1970’s had a lot of good songs and a lot of bad songs.  But if you remember “American Bandstand” they all “had a good beat, I’ll give it an 85…”

The 1970’s gave us disco and many may never forgive the decade for that.  “MacArthur Park” was a song originally released in 1968 by Richard Harris which  peaked at number two on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.  In 1978, Donna Summer re-released it with a disco beat and made it to number 1 on the Billboard chart.

Here is a portion of the lyrics:

Someone left the cake out in the rain
I don’t think that I can take it
’cause it took so long to bake it
And I’ll never have that recipe again
Oh, nooooo

Several questions come to mind:

  1. Why was the cake left out in the rain?  Who leaves a cake in the rain? Why didn’t she put it in a Tupperware cake container?
  2. Why did this cake that much longer to bake than a normal cake? Was it extra big?  Was it extra fluffy?
  3. Why will she never have that recipe again?  Why didn’t she write it down? (Today, I am certain she could find that recipe on the internet!)
  4. Taking us back to #1 above – if this was such a special cake that took an extraordinarily long time to bake with a once in a lifetime recipe, shouldn’t she have taken note of the weather forecast and made sure that it was not left out in the rain?

The song had a good beat, I will give it an 85, but inquiring minds want to know.

 

Baseball Fever 2019

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If you know me, you probably know that the greatest passions of my life are baseball, God and family – not in that order.  So, with Opening Day upon us, my thoughts have once again turned to baseball.  If you have been following this blog for a long-time, what follows is something you may have seen before.  But this time of year, I wanted to share it again.

There is an ailment that I have been afflicted with for as far back as I can remember. As a very young boy, I was exposed to baseball and, like most boys growing up in Southwestern Ohio in the 1970’s, I caught a bad case of baseball fever. Baseball fever, like many other fevers, can cause one to lose touch with reality and to act in odd ways. As a child, I was prone to spend countless hours during the summer playing the game of baseball. If I could not find any fellow sufferers to share in a game, I would spend hours simply throwing a baseball against the back wall of my elementary school. This exercise was often accompanied by the delusion that I was pitching in the seventh game of the World Series and that the outcome hung on each and every pitch. Night brought little relief as the fever led me to sit on the front porch with my father and brother and listen to Al or Marty and the ‘ole left-hander describe a baseball game on the radio, hoping to hear phrases like “that one is OUTTA here!” and “THIS one belongs to the Reds.” On days when the weather was bad, I would spend my time studying little pieces of cardboard and memorizing the numbers and facts printed on the back or perhaps recreating the picture on the front of how each player held a bat or wound up to throw the ball. I would beg my father for some change so I could run up to the drugstore and buy more of these pieces of cardboard and the cardboard-like gum that came with them. In those days a quarter could be exchanged for five packs of baseball cards with each pack containing five cards and a stick of gum. Over the years, I have constantly guarded these treasures from harmful disasters like house cleanings and garage sales.

There were some days when baseball fever had me in a state of delirious splendor. On these very wonderful occasions, my father would take me to magical places called Crosley Field or Riverfront Stadium where I had the grand privilege of watching my heroes play this game I had come to love.

As years went on, the fever never went away. It would subside for a time, but it would always return in the spring. I moved out of Ohio for a number of years, but every year we would return to visit family and the trip would always coincide, mysteriously, with a home stand. This would invisibly, irresistibly draw me and my father, and later my sons back to a place where others gathered to watch these chosen men who somehow were fortunate enough to earn their living by playing this child’s game.

Fortune smiled and I was able to move back to Southwestern Ohio. For several years I could look out from the building in downtown Cincinnati I worked in and gaze across at Riverfront Stadium, that place I went to as a youth to see men named Morgan, Rose, Bench, Perez, Foster, Griffey, Concpecion, Geronimo, Gullet and others. Sometimes at lunch I would walk around the stadium and I could almost hear the cheers of days gone by. I was able to see Great American Ballpark rise up and take form and have seen Larkin, Casey, Griffey Jr., Votto, Phillips, Suarez, Lorenzen and Gennett build the memories of a new era.

Now it is spring once again. With spring comes not only green grass and flowers, but the return of baseball fever. This is one ailment that they have not yet found a cure for and I hope they never do.

A Very Difficult Valentine’s Day

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Valentine’s Day is almost here and you may still be searching for that perfect gift, planning that perfect evening or looking for just the right words to express how you feel.  

Over the years, my perception of Valentine’s Day has changed quite a bit.  I remember back in grade school, Valentine’s Day meant getting candy from Mom and, like Charlie Brown, hoping to get a Valentine Card from that “cute red-haired girl” in class.  Disappointments were mild in those days because I  got a card from EVERY girl as well as every boy in the class.

In the dating years, Valentine’s Day brought more pressure and expectations in trying to come up with the perfect card or the perfect gift for the girl I was dating if she was near enough to see or trying to come up with just the right phrase to put in a card to communicate my feelings to that special someone who was a thousand miles away physically but near to my heart.

After marriage, the focus of Valentine’s Day shifted again and as the years went on, the excitement and expectations began to wane and the routine became swinging by to pick up candy and flowers.  In recent years it has meant skipping the candy as we have become a little more calorie conscious. Yes, Valentine’s Day is still celebrated, but differently.

As my understanding of the day has changed over the years, I have come to realize that Valentine’s Day has become a day of reflection – a day to reflect on love – on love lost, love gained and love long remembered.

Valentine’s Day last year was indeed a day of reflection and it was my worst Valentine’s Day. It was also one of the most difficult days of my life.  It was the day we buried my Father.  As we prepared and reflected for the service, I was reminded that one of the best examples of love I have seen in my life was given to me by my Father.  It was not the squoosy, heart-skip-a-beat love like one might feel on a first date, that is a feeling and feeling can be fleeting.  The the kind of love that I saw in my Dad was love that is present every day in a million small ways.  It is the love that works long hours to provide a roof, food and clothes to a family.  It is a love that does not seek its own or draw attention to itself.  It is the love that keeps a marriage going strong for more than sixty-five years.  It is a love that sacrifices, puts others first, and just keeps giving. It was a love that never gave up and never stopped.

As the song from the 60’s told us 

“What the world needs now is love, sweet love
It’s the only thing that there’s just too little of
What the world needs now is love, sweet love
No, not just for some but for everyone”

That is the type of love the world indeed needs now and the love that was modeled by my Father.  A little over a year ago, when we met at the funeral home to discuss the arrangements it appeared that Wednesday would work, it was brought up that the service would be Valentine’s Day.  My Mom’s response was that was OK because, “he was the love of my life.”  Burying my Dad on Valentine’s Day was not easy, but it was OK because I know that along with my Mom, my Brother, my Sister and I were the loves of his life.  

Friday Funny February 1, 2019 Happy Groundhog Day!

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Happy Friday!  Happy Super Bowl Weekend! and Happy Groundhog Day!  I hope you are staying warm in these days of the Polar Vortex!  Maybe we will get some good news from our friendly neighborhood groundhog this weekend!

Enjoy!

Tomorrow is Groundhog Day which has got to be one of the stranger days that we “observe.”  At various locations from New York to Colorado people will gather before the sun comes up to determine whether or not a rodent will see his shadow and somehow this translates into how much more winter we will have.  This “holiday” has been around for a couple of hundred years and supposedly has its origins in ancient European weather lore where instead of a large ground squirrel, the weather was predicted by a badger or a bear.  

There will be at least 25 Groundhog Day celebrations featuring 25 different groundhogs this weekend.  Some of these groundhogs will not see their shadows and thus predict an early spring.  However other groundhogs will see their shadow and predict six more weeks of winter.  Now I will not be going to Punxsutawney, PA to see Punxsutawney Phil or even to Marion, OH to see Buckeye Chuck, I will stay warm under the covers of my bed Saturday morning.  I just looked at the calendar and noticed that it is about seven weeks until spring.

Yet groundhogs are not the only folks venturing out this weekend, here are a few that you might miss.

If Tom Brady sees his shadow does that mean he will play six more seasons?

If a US Senator sees his shadow does that means six more years of spending.?

If Brenda Snipes sees her shadow does that means six more weeks of counting votes in Broward County?

If Mark Zuckerburg sees his shadow will he also see your shadow as well?

If Cincinnati Bengals Owner Mike Brown sees his shadow does that mean it will be six more weeks before the Bengals name a Head Coach?

If Cincinnati Reds Manager David Bell sees his shadow does that mean it is eight weeks until Opening Day?

Will New Orleans Saints Receiver Tommylee Lewis see his shadow or the shadow of a  Rams Defensive Back?

If Kim Kardashian sees her shadow would I care?

Thought for the Week

The groundhog is like most other prophets; it delivers its prediction and then disappears. ~ Bill Vaughan http://www.brainyquote.com