In which our protagonist discovers poker to be more profitable than a yard sale.

I'm rather surprised by this, but we (Joe, Doug, and myself) weren't able to get into the Washington Wild Things game on Friday. Selling out a baseball game is such an alien concept to me that I was a little unraveled by that. Add to that Joe and I were about to go down to the last regular season game for the Ohio Valley Greyhounds on Saturday, but reread that the game was an away game just before we left. I'll toss this article in here. Here is why we love NIFL in a nutshell. No matter how weird you think the league can get, it will top itself.

The folks had a yard sale on Saturday. Being overstuffed with crap in my apartment, I offered up a large amount of books, several prizes won at trash tournaments, and a pair of tables which I had been using as a coffee table and stereo stand.

Here are the things that did not sell:
1984-era Macintosh. (I was tempted to hold back the two training tapes (casettes!))
Most of the curriculum of Cornell's History 242 and History 251 courses.
Anything I had previously won at a tournament, including:
A Yellow Submarine blue Meanie
Whatizit? the mascot of the '96 Olympics
Novelizations of the films Worth Winning and O Heavenly Dog
Multiple tasteless books (put in the sale only for the amusing embarassment my parents would have in selling it, of course they got me back
by noting that I should take it back since the leftovers were going to Washington City Mission.)

I did not put Jar Jar up for bid, he has already taken a header off of Architect's Leap at CMU, if my sources are correct.

I contemplated putting a Benet's in there, figuring, well, what more damage could another embittered Benet's memorizer do to the game? But I forgot to take it, and I forgot the sale wouldn't have been frequented by quiz bowlers.

Apparently my father was not clear on the concept, according to my mother, as he then traded most of his old computer parts for a set of old radio parts. This is especially ironic, folks, given that the main reason he was selling the stuff at the yard sale was to get rid of clutter in the garage. Now he's got a brand new set of clutter...

Anyway, since my cousin from Chicago was in for the fourth, we had to have Sunday dinner with poker following. I mention this only for the reason that my parents pretty much saw their yard sale profits get sucked into the game (I whipsawed from down $20 at one point back to even.), and for the reason that I finally landed a straight flush, AND kept the face straight enough to keep people in the game.

Finally, I'll throw in this article on lightning bugs (Pennsylvania's State Insect, mostly due to its resemblance to our state bird, the flasher-crested road barrel.). They're basically one of three natural phenomena I can use to tell the calendar, as they seem to start flying on July 1, and not one day earlier.

While we're here, we'll put one of those plugs in for this page: for all those questions about state birds, flowers, and other burnt legislation time. Trite perhaps, but useful.