Yard Sale

This fall the wife decided "we" needed to have a fall cleaning of the burrow. This spontaneous house cleaning coincided with her announcement she needed a crafting room for her and her lady friends. The target for this cleaning effort was, yes you guessed right, my “man burrow.” My favorite chair, popcorn bowls, big game seed storage baskets and treasure chest table … had to go.

My wife didn’t trust me to run the yard sale. She thinks I would do something to sabotage it, so, I could keep everything. She gave me twenty bucks and sent me to the  Blackbird Tavern to watch the big game. Well, this ought to be interesting. I set up a camera and microphone to record everything.

[wife] "I need to make these items irresistible to customers. Let’s start by fixing that nasty beer and  popcorn smell in this chair. I have the perfect thing to fix that!"

[wife] "Let’s encourage customers to come in by serving some snacks."

 

Seriously, the ratty junk these chipmunks try to pawn off on others. This should be illegal.

 

[customer #1] “You never get free snacks at a yard sale. I better stuff my cheeks.”

[wife] “Excuse me young man, didn’t your mother teach you any manners?”
[customer #1] “Sorry ma’am, I beg your pardon. I will running along, now.”

 

[wife] This looks like a serious customer who wants to buy.

[customer #2[ ‘This is strange. What sane ‘munk serves snacks in a chair?”

[customer #2] “I better check under the chair. What is the seller
trying to hide by distracting customers with free snacks.”

[customer #2] “One leg is shorter than the other three. The chair is tipping if you shift your weight the wrong way. This lady wants a 100 seeds for this. She thinks she can pull the fur over my eyes!”

[customer #3] “Wow, this would be great to watch the superbowl in. Let’s see if this passes the sniff test?”

[customer #3] “Yuck, this smells like my grade school teacher’s perfume!”

[customer #3] “I’am out of here!”

[wife] “I spent 25 bucks on snacks and perfume, I didn’t sell a single thing. I don’t understand what went wrong. Time for plan B, I’ll just have a new room excavated for my craft room.”

Vinnie's Latest Projects

I have had a lot of fans emailing and texting me asking for an update on my cousin Vinnie’s latest projects. Why folks find Vinnie irresistibly fascinating is totally baffling to me.

Vinnie has moved out of his university lab. According to Vinnie, he couldn’t take the stale sunflower seeds they were selling at the snack bar. (University officials claim, it as about the electric bill for his super computer.) Having been to the sad excuse for a snack bar at the university, I am taking Vinnie’s side on this one. I met him at his new facilities, a renovated woodworking shop in Rhode Island. The snack bar at this place is just amazing. They serve Godiva sunflower seeds, 60% cocoa chocolate bars, and something called a cheese doodle. These cheese doodles are addictive.

Since moving to his new space, worker productivity has been up a 150% (along with a 20% increase in waistline). He just hired a vice president of brilliant ideas. This is what he calls his research and development department. The VP is Doug the Dodo (as in the extinct flightless bird). Apparently, being from a species that is officially extinct has certain unique tax advantages. Vinnie lured him away from a lucrative job as head of the Writing Staff at an international ebook publisher.

Vinnie has two big projects going on at the moment. The first is the trans-Merrimac River Critter Tunnel. A dramatic increase in boat traffic along the Merrimac River has brought critters of all kinds into conflict with humans and their boats. After intense negotiations, the humans agreed to finance a tunnel under the river, if the critters would handle all of the engineering. Vinnie designed a custom dredging machine that cuts a trench in the river bottom into which a high tech tube (i.e. the tunnel) is being buried. The tube is big enough for a moose to pass through and Vinnie had to hire some humans and their big tractors to move it into place.

The custom built dredge tunneling machine

 It is equipped with circular tunnel cutter blade system.

 
Sections of the trans-Merrimac River tunnel being moved into position.

 Doug’s first assignment was to come up with a way to transport everyone living at the Woodpile, plus ten cases of Guiness sunflower ale, to a grand opening party at Vinnie’s new facilities. Sounds easy? The catch was, the mode of transportation must be able to travel across the pond in front of the Woodpile, down the Powwow River to the Merrimac River, navigate the treacherous currents of the river until they reached the ocean, travel by ocean to the Tomaquag River in Rhode Island … finally arriving at Vinnie’s new place.

Doug pondered this seemly impossible assignment while listening to the Beatles playing on vintage vinyl records. He had a moment of inspiration listening to “yellow submarine.” Here is what he came up with:

A submersible vehicle capable of working in a wide range of watery environments.

The control tower

 

It has two motors that work at depths of 180 meters.

 

A sleek aerodynamic shape

 Doug’s trademark sense of humor, he gave his creation a face.