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The past few weeks Erin and I have been selling lots of our superfluous crap. We've been selling stuff on E-Bay and Craigslist, and we also had a big tag-sale. Our apartment is reasonably big and was until very recently overflowing with stuff and we want to move with just our car and a little 4 X 8 U-Haul cargo trailer, so EVERYTHING MUST GO!! This move, by the way, is happening in about three weeks. Zow!
Anyway, the last thing to sell was on Ebay. A few years ago I found a big horn in the trash. The kind of horn you play. A musical instrument of some sort, euphonium or baritone, I don't know which. I don't even know if there is a difference. I *think* it was a euphonium, because the OTHER horn that I (or Jordan? We were both there, I can't remember who found it) got out of the trash, years and years ago, everyone called it a baritone (despite the fact that Dylan had helpfully written "eat this tuba" in green paint-pen on the bottom of it), and it looked like a little tuba, whereas the newly found instrument, although not UNLIKE a small tuba, was definitely it's own thing. Anyway. A few years ago I found this horn, this euphionium, in the trash up the street from us. It had plastic tubes taped to the valves and ribbons tied around it and a toilet plunger fixed to the bell with drywall screws. Some genius, I think, had made 'art' out of it. It was in a pretty pathetic state, but not too pathetic for me to bring home. I cleaned it up as best as I could, removed the stupidness that was stuck to it and set it next to a bookshelf, where it sat patiently, until this last spell of auction listings. For kicks I put it up on Ebay, explaining very clearly what was wrong with it, and how messed up it was, and how I didn't know anything about horns but I knew that this one had been abused. I put an opening price at $4.99 + shipping and figured even if I didn't make any money on it it was better to send it to someone who wanted it than to just throw it away again. Long story shortened: it got 20+ bids, and finally sold for $98.18. Over $100 with shipping and handling. Note to self: always pick stupid things out of the trash to sell on Ebay. So, today I went at lunch I went to the post office to mail the euphonium. I don't know if you have been to the post office lately, but they have machines now that let you weigh and stamp and insure mail, and they are very very simple to use, and they are basically the best thing to happen to shipping in a long time. I love them. But boy, what a bunch of morons were in line today. These people (and I mean PEOPLE, there are 3 machines in the branch I went to, and a line of 3 more people in addition to me, AND a postal clerk and EVERY ONE of them seemed to have the brain power of a dead oyster) acted as if they had never seen ANY sort of a machine before, let alone an automatic postage machine. I'm suprised they all made it through the revolving door. And having the postal clerk there made it even worse, because instead of interfacing with the machines (which are remarkeably well programmed, kudos to the USPS) the people would interface with the (signifigantly less well informed) employee who would tell them (usually incorrectly) what to do. Argh! It would go something like: moron: It says 'enter destination zip code', what the hell does THAT mean?! and so forth. It was pretty excruciating to watch. My favorite part was when, after about ten minutes of this some guy, some urban cowboy hipster dimwit, walked in, elbowed PAST the line of people waiting to smash into this mail machine accident, strolled right up to an OCCUPIED machine (occupied, as a matter of fact, by both a customer AND the postal clerk who was doing her best to confuse the costumer) and tried to figure out why the machine seemed like it was already in use. When the line (which he had bypassed) started grumbling at him and a smattering of "there's a LINE here, jackass" type admonishments finally woke him up he smoothly stepped aside and waved his arm at the girl in front of me as if to say "There's a free machine right here, sweetheart. What are you, blind?" Oy. |
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