Showing posts with label hoarding. Show all posts
Showing posts with label hoarding. Show all posts

Tuesday, August 8, 2017

Anybody Else Want to Live in the Books for Less Warehouse?

August didn't use to be a month I got excited about. It had a couple of important birthdays (grandmother's and two cousins'), but it didn't really have much else going on. It has two national holidays that don't really impact our family much since we homeschool and work from home. It had about an average rating, excitement-wise. I didn't dread it, but it wasn't really a month I looked forward to either... until Books for Less started having its month-long warehouse sale. Now, August is one of my favorite months of the year.

I like warehouses. I want one of my own. But to fill that warehouse with cheap used books? It's like paradise 10 miles and an hour away (Manila traffic!). It's like a slice of heaven that sends me into sneezing fits. No allergy can deter this very determined bibliophile, however, especially since the book lover in question is also a cheeseparing one whose only indulgence is books, lol.

I've been taking advantage of this warehouse sale since 2013. The first time I went, the sale was held in the last half of June and the first half of July. I think it became an annual August thing the year after.

My first time, there were maybe fewer than ten other browsers. The following year, there were significantly more shoppers. The same for the following year. I think we went sometime in the middle of the month both times. And then, last year, there was so much hype about it that I was afraid that if we went later in the month, the pickings would be slim, so we went on the first Saturday of August, and it was totally insane!

My sister and I braved the crush of that crowd. It wasn't enjoyable browsing. but I was resolute about scoring good books for cheap, so we forged on. The checkout lines were a nightmare, but we emerged from the warehouse triumphant.

I didn't want to go through that again, so I told my husband we were going on a weekday, hopefully at an hour where most people were at work or in school. We ended up going after lunch Friday last week, the first week of the sale. It was mildly humming when we got there, and became more bustling as schools let out.

This year, the books were all worth Php 20 (about USD .40), which I found awesome because it was so much easier to stick to my budget. There was also no need to do any rigorous mental math and gut-wrenching editing pre-checkout since I didn't have to look at price stickers. If it appealed to me, it went sailing into the cardboard box that served as my shopping basket.



Let me share what I scored. I divided them into the following categories: homeschool, Christmas (apparently, I'm obsessed with the holiday), hobbies and interests, stories and children's books, and piano.

Homeschool



Christmas


Hobbies and Interests



Stories and Children's Books



Piano



Buying books makes me giddy with happiness, so you can bet I was on a high last Friday. It's Tuesday and the feeling still lingers, lol. Are you the same?

PS - The Books for Less warehouse had eggplant plants lining up the drive, which makes the place even more awesome in my book.

Tuesday, May 9, 2017

Hoarders and Birders

Last Saturday was interesting. It was the day of our church's first ever summer yard sale. We've always held a yard sale every December for almost two decades now, but this year, we're shooting for two events.

My daughter was also supposed to have drawing and painting classes in the morning, but both were canceled. It was marked in the theater (venue) calendar, too. My bad for not checking the thing out, but the teachers should definitely have informed their classes. Most of the students showed up. What a way to desecrate a Saturday morning, lol. We could have had a more "chill" start to the day. And for us homeschoolers not used to the morning prep rush, that was probably even more annoying.

We spent most of the day at church, where I spotted several of my books being sold. I had left them at my parents' house in my old room, which has been turned into the new kitchen. I had a brief struggle over that because I never sell my own books. I'd sell those that I'd bought for the express purpose of selling, but never books in my own collection. In the end, I was okay with letting them go. It was just my natural impulse to cling.

I also spotted a Betty Neels book that I missed when I was rounding the lot of them up from my mom's collection, so I had to go buy it from the yard sale. I didn't mind. The money goes to the church, and it was all of ten pesos, lol. Betty Neels is a fave of mine from my mom's romance paperback era, her and Essie Summers.

I was shocked to see my dad's fishing rods though. I'd been counting on borrowing them when I finally went fishing. They used to be his stepfather's, something Dad held onto for twenty years, but I guess my folks are serious about de-cluttering these days. I whined at my husband to buy the rods, but he sensibly pointed out, "When do we ever go fishing?" He's obviously not the hoarder in the family. I want those rods though. They're totally useful for the lifestyle we have in my head.

After the yard sale, we headed up to Timberland in the mountains of San Mateo for some birding and view-binging. We saw the usual maya (Eurasian Tree Sparrow), a couple of pied fan tails, a crested mynah, and this guy, a lifer (first sighting ever of this kind of bird) for us.


You can't see it, but the back is a layer of brilliant blue and black.


That's his profile, so definitely a kingfisher. According to my pocket guide, it's a brown-breasted kingfisher.


That's his front. It could be orange, red, or brown, but the sunset made it seem fiery red to our eyes.


Here's a view. I wish I lived here, but there's no Internet connection yet for homes. And it's far. And expensive, so I'll just keep on being a (Marikina) valley girl.