Klowns in my Koffee

Daily Kup
Another beastly hot day in Wonderland. (A chorus chants, "It's not the heat, it's the humidity ...") In a nod to the looming giant house painting project, I warmed up by painting the garage interior. It was still so hot that the paint dried too quickly to be smooth but fortunately this is just a garage. Being the cheap person that I am, the final coat will come from one of the many mystery gallons in my tool room. Heads or tails? Yes, it looks like a sunny "McDonalds" bright yellow is the winner.

About two weeks ago, I went to the annual garage sale given by the Wayzata and Minnetonka School Districts. Every summer, both school districts drag all their excess "stuff" to an ice arena and sell it for pennies on the dollar. At 1 PM, everything is half-priced and, after 2 PM, anything left is free. The kids, including the college one, insisted that we really, REALLY needed a set of gym lockers. There was one set of three rusty lockers painted bright blue. Like water on a rock, the kids dripped justifications on my unwilling nature. Eventually, they agreed to take full responsibility for cleaning up and painting the foundling lockers and I found myself coming back at 2 PM. There was a woman opening the a locker door. I ran to the locker, said, "Excuse me" and grabbed the locker as though I was going to carry it off. Except that they were too heavy for me to lift, so I just stood there looking like I was trying to lift them. But she went away.

Here is a short list of what we bought from the garage sale for $4 total: A set of three full-size lockers, a cordless screwdriver set, 2 Mavica digital cameras, a broiler pan, a lab scale, 3 binders, 5 VHS movies, 3 video adaptors, safety glasses, a book, a ream of construction paper, and a few other things that escape me right now. Not bad. Since I'm trying to remove more junk than I take in, I left the 8' seed starting racks, the french horn, about 40 VCRS, numerous sets of orchestra arrangements with full parts, and those big old ropes that they hang from gym ceilings.

Back to the garage. The lockers are now a shiny black (2 cans of primer and 8 cans of paint) and ready for their new home -- holding sports equipment next to the back door. But there was a beaten-up cabinet in that location. When the cabinet was moved, it was obvious that the wall needed repair. When the wall was repaired, then the patches stuck out. So now I'm painting. All for a set of "free" lockers.