Annie's off on her normal Tuesday hike today, so Bella turned on the charm and gave me the big, big doe eyes. I tried to resist. I tried really hard. I woke up late, making our usual hike uncertain. I wasn't sure if we'd be back at the house in time for a call I had in the morning, so neither Bella, nor Shadow (who was at home with Blue), nor I went for our hike this morning.

Since Doyle said he'd be late into work, I didn't think he'd notice initially that there was a little tan doggie wandering under the desks. Bella spoiled my surprise by greeting him at the door, tail wagging and mouth grinning.

Unlike for previous visits, I managed to keep Bella from making lots of noise. She still clicked as her nails tapped on the ground when we walked down the halls. She didn't howl when I went to the bathroom, as she had done last visit, as I took her into the bathroom with me each time I went. Keeping her from going into the other stall when I was doing my business, however, was much more difficult. I can just imagine how scandalized another woman in the bathroom would be seeing a dog slide under the stall wall and come greet her.

Yeah, that would make friends and influence people.

Way back when, a couple years out of college, I moved into an apartment with a friend of mine who needed housing for only two months. She had graduated from Tech, which had a late school-year-end date, and heading off to Dartmouth, which had an early school-year-start date. Since she had a summer job where I was working, it made sense to room with her.

To do so, however meant I needed to move out of my one bedroom house. That place was preyty awesome, though the rats, flys and post-earthquake tilt made it less desirable as time went on.

So, my friend and I slapped down a security deposit, paid our first and last month's rent, and moved in.

Thirty days later, we gave notice. Twenty nine days later, the painters arrived to paint the apartment. They came in, looked at the walls, and asked how long I had been in the apartment. I answered, "two months," then asked why they asked me.

"Because this apartment doesn't need painting."

Which didn't matter to the property manager. They had it pointlessly painted, and took the cost out of my security deposit. I was angry. Was? Bah. I'm still annoyed by it. They spent the money needlesly because it wasn't their money.

Today I received the security deposits back from housing from Nationals. In past years, we've received the full amount back. This year, we didn't.

One of the damage costs was for excessive cleaning, which I expected, presumably from a wine spill (who puts white carpeting in a party rental?). The other was for a window replacement. And here's where my two stories merge.

The other charge was for a window repair. The window broke sometime during one of the storms that ran through the area when we were there. We were unfortunate enough to be in the place when the window actually broke, but were not the cause of the window breaking.

Didn't matter, we have to pay for it anyway.

Which annoys me to no end.

I have to wonder if I should write to them requesting a full refund of the deposit, citing non-responsibility for the window breakage, or just let it go. I was told about the breaking, and the amount when I called to see if we were getting our deposits back before I sent out "you owe me this much for housing," so I'm not actually out any money personally (okay, that's not quite true, I'm out $300 / 30 people = $10 for the non-return of deposits, but not out the full amount of $300).

I just don't know if this is going to be another one of those turns-my-stomach a decade afterward because someone shanghai'd money from me.

Or maybe writing about it will be a catharsis of both.

This morning's workout, although really hard to get to because I really really really just wanted to sleep, was pretty easy. We did a lot of running for a warmup, which makes me miss the jumping jacks warmups even more, followed by the usual squats, leg swings, twists, thrusts, mountain climbers, sprints and skydivers. I took my time with the hamstring stretches, as both of my hamstrings are tight as of late.

Today's workout was 3 rounds of:

8 runs on the track (i.e. 8 x 40 yards, running, not sprinting)
12 weighted situp stands
21 kettleball swings
12 pull ups

The 8 runs on the track were thankfully not sprints. Except for one, I ran them all at a good clip, working on keeping my knees up and my form good. It's not much more effort to run with good strides than it is to jog, so might as well run.

The weighted situps started standing holding a weight plate out from the chest about 6". We then squated, sat, rolled backward, lifting the weight over our head, and pulling our legs up and our feet straight over our head. Then, using core muscles, pull the legs back down, pull the weight back down to chest level, sit up, tuck feet under us and stand up. Much easier to do than to describe. Kris went with the 25# plate. I used the 10# plate because the 25# plate was too much. I would have preferred an 18# plate, as 10 was too light.

The kettleball swings and pull ups were normal.

I managed to finish the workout, though part of that was because I wasn't showering before the train ride back home. First one I've finished in a while.

Yesterday's garage sale was harder on me emotionally than I expected it to be. I managed to deflect much of the impact by playing with Mirabelle, but the fundamental issue was still there. Non-eloquently speaking, the garage sale was about selling off an old woman's lifetime of cruft. She had children and grandchildren who could manage to do the actual work, which is good. I can't imagine the emotional weight of disposing a lifetime's worth of memories in a weekend.

Which is not to say that's what really happened, but in some way it was. Beth's grandmother was the original owner of the house, it having been built by Beth's grandfather. Every detail of the house was an imprint from their actions, each nook and cranny and built-in. So was all of the stuff we piled on tables, or hauled out of boxes, or rummaged through in the garage. It was years and years, decades rather, of stuff accumulated into a big pile, to be disposed by strangers, bought by strangers, taken away by strangers.

I came home and looked at all of my stuff. I've been following the William Morris quote with my crap: "Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful." Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Much has memories attached to it.

I tried to clean out some of the stuff, but wasn't completely successful. I'm more motivated now, after the garage sale. I'd rather be the one to throw out, give away, sell or otherwise divest myself of my stuff, than to know 30, 50, 80 years from now some stranger is going to do it, some stranger is going to look at my possessions and think, what crap.

P.S. Andy's home. Arrived today.

Beth hosted today's multi-family garage/estate sale at her grandmother's house today. Martha, Chookie, Brynne, Megan, Mark, Steffi and I all contributed stuff (gah, I so want to write "crap") to the furniture, knick-knacks, memories and crap piles of Beth's grandmother. I arrived at 8:30 in the morning to find Beth coordinating the sale with a half dozen early buyers rushing in to get the best selection on the garage sale deals. Little did they know that all the good stuff was buried in the bottom of the boxes scattered around the house, garage and driveway, to be pulled out at various times during the day to refill the stashes. We're sneaky like that.

Steffi had by far the best crap. She managed to sell 80% of her stuff by noon, including still-fashionable clothes and many useful household times. Martha had the best sell today with the sale of a bridesmaid dress with matching shoes. Mark and Megan freed themselves from various pieces of garage-sale-bought furniture, some of the items selling for as much as they bought them for. Brynne and her mother brought stuff over for the sale, but didn't stay to watch the items disappear.

When I arrived in the morning, there was a woman who had started piling items to buy. For the next hour, she would walk to the back of driveway, pick through a pile or two, walk back to her pile near the front, and repeat the process, her pile growing by the minute. After buying all of her piled stuff, she left, only to return a half hour later to begin the piling process again. She wouldn't move more than about 10 feet without finding something else to buy.

One woman I tried to help in the morning had just bought a partial set of dishes. They were cute dishes, 4 plates, 4 saucers and a couple cups, but nothing spectacular. I brought her newsprint to wrap her new dishes in, handing her a sheet before pulling another out of the pile and reaching for a plate to wrap.

You would have thought I was stealing the woman's child. She grabbed the dishes and made to slap my hand away, as she snatched the paper from my hand to wrap the dishes herself. Uh, okay, I thought, backing away slowly. I hadn't realized you were so attached to your new $5 set of dishes. Uh, enjoy!

Other people were also of note in an odd sort of way: the guy who sat staring at a box of 100 manilla folders, debating if they were were worth the 50¢ asking price; the old lady who sat in the back corner for hours looking through four giant sewing boxes for that one particular button; the man with his eight year old son buying a pile of items hand selected by the child; the young girl letting me know the items on the table marked "GOOD OLD STUFF: MAKE OFFER" were not for sale; the guy who refused to buy the trash can I had for sale because I said it was $3 instead of $1 (because $3 was sure to break the bank, you know).

I did find a number of interesting maps that might make fun buttons. I'll try them out and see.

Part of the excitement of the day was the indoor cat which had escaped the confines of its house, only to spend the next six hours stuck between the exhaust manifold and the engine compartment firewall. Neither car owner, nor the cat owner, nor animal control could extract the cat from the hole he had wedged itself into. After hearing the cat howl for hours, Mark went to save the day, pushing the cat forward through the engine compartment instead of pulling it backwards from its wedged spot.

Shame no one told him to CATCH the cat once it was released. Cheers went up after Mark extracted the cat, and disappointment followed when the cat ran off. Again.

I spent much of the day with Mirabelle. We opened and closed doors. We opened and closed water sprinklers. We opened and closed more doors. We went up stairs, and down stairs. We went inside and outside. Mirabelle went up and down, depending on her placement relative to my head. We had a good time.

In the end, I made about $5. Mark and Megan made a couple hundred dollars. Beth maybe three times that. More importantly, all of us have less crap than we did before.

And that's a good thing.