Last weekend I headed down to Roseburg to help with my Grandma's estate sale. She's up in Portland now because she can't live alone anymore, so basically her house and stuff were just sitting there. So my mom went down a week early along with her sister and brother... and they sorted and set up the whole sale. So when we came on Friday night everything was ready to go for the next morning. There was a lot of stuff too... it filled three rooms in the house and the whole front yard basically.

The temperature on Saturday was 104 degrees with high humidity. It reminded me of the Florida humidity last year which caused me to say:

"It's really disgusting. You're covered with moisture when you first step outside and it's like breathing in a suana. I don't know why anybody would want to live there."

Touche Thomas from a year ago. But Oregon rarely gets this high of humidity, normally its very low, so let's call it an abnormality. An abnormality with 104 degree heat and working outside for 7 hours. Oops.

Well my aunt fucked up the ad in the paper... it was supposed to start at 10 but all the classifieds said 9. So we thought just the Roseburg paper screwed up, but it turns out it was our fault. Anyways we had a lot of bellyaching 60 year olds threatening to leave, but we stood firm on the 10:00 time. They weren't going to leave... we knew it and they knew it. They wanted their hands on some sweet, sweet delicious antique furniture.

When we opened the gate at 10:00, we had old women (and men) actually RUNNING to the house. They were frantic to get first pick. It was kinda funny actually. One woman burst into the house and shouted "WHERE IS THE BEDROOM!?!?!" She then proceeded to dash into the bedroom and hug a piece of furniture yelling "I WANT THIS ONE!". There were people stationed at each area with triplicate receipt book so they could write the item down on the person's "tab" for that room and put a "sold" sticker on the piece they wanted. Basically the first 15 minutes were hell for the people working stations.

Finally after a half hour or so all the crazy people had gotten what they wanted and things calmed down. I was working the cash box outside, so I took their money and gave them change if necessary. Some people spent in excess of a thousand dollars, it was insane. Lots of people would whip out a stack of $100 bills and slap them on the little table I had. I checked all of them and they were all legit though, so touche rich people.

Anyways it lasted both Saturday and Sunday. We thought Sunday was going to be a calmer day, but alas, no. All the bargain shoppers swarmed in, wanted to get stuff for as cheap as they wanted. By that time we just wanted to get rid of the rest of it (since it was picked over anyways) so we cut lots of deals. Some people were just buying absolute crap that you knew what just going to sit in their barn/storage unit. But oh well, at least it wasn't our problem anymore and we got money for it.

Another interesting thing was the ebb and flow of the sale. For twenty minutes not a soul would be there (especially Sunday) then all of a sudden like 20 people would storm in and be high maintainence.

The rewarding part was getting to swim in the Umpqua River once the sale was over at 4. It was the perfect temperature... and damn... that felt good. On Sunday I left the sale at like 2 during a slow period and took my aunt and uncle's black lab to the river. It was really hot so that poor thing was dying. She was so happy when I started walking towards the gate that leads to the road that a half mile later is at the river... she was flipping out, whining, bouncing up and down, trying to pry the gate open herself with her head... anyways we walked down there and she bounded into the water, flying through the air for several feet before bellyflopping in. It was pretty cute.

So we swam around, she was so cute, she'd swim up to you and sniff you with her cute whiddle nose and even let you grab onto her and go for a ride. Labs love water. So anyways I threw some sticks to her (she goes nuts) and we walked around the other side of the bank for a bit but the rocks were so fucking hot from the sun it burned my feet.

Anyways, me and my dad left Sunday night since we had to work the next morning, and my mom followed shortly after on Monday afternoon. We're having another sale in a couple of weeks to get rid of the rest of the stuff/stuck in the barns/old sewing stuff. This one will be a "garage" sale though and shouldn't be as hectic.