Estate Sale Jackpot

Two estate sales today, but one was about 40 miles away and the pictures didn't show anything great.  The other one also had nothing in the pics calling my name, but at 7 miles, was a lot closer.  There were some things in the pics that looked interesting, not in the "wanna buy it" way, but in a "that would be neat to see" way - a rock collection, including fossilized dino dung, for example.  And there were two gemstone bonsai that were absolutely gorgeous.  Out of my price range, but very nice to admire in person.

 This one is made of strings of some sort of gemstone beads.  It was gorgeous, and I can't imagine the time it took to make. 

But, I did hit the jackpot.  I found these:

Those are true old-fashioned Christmas cactus, Schlumbergera buckleyi, which are very hard to find.  The "Christmas cactus" sold in stores over the holidays are really Thanksgiving cactus (Schlumbergera truncata) - you can tell from the shape of the stems.  True Christmas cactus can be found online, if you want to pay dozens of dollars for a plant and hope it survives the shipping, or you may be lucky enough to know someone who'll share a cutting that you can root.  Or, you can accidentally find a pair of them at an estate sale.  One of these looks really good, the other one was in the cold garage and is not great, but should survive. 

20 for 2020 - February

Updated the list of goals a bit.   And then the bullet/numbered list went all kaboom.

1.  Watch 20 movies (theater or TV, doesn't matter)
2. Get on treadmill or walk outside 3 times per week
3. Declutter 20 things per month (at least)
4. Blog 20 times per month - this one might be hard
5. Post 20 times on the hobby forum I'm a member of
6. Send 20 postcards
7. Watch 20 old things (2019 or earlier) from the TiVo, with the goal of getting it to at least 20% free space
8. Listen to 20 "new" CDs ("new" being haven't heard before, not newly-purchased)
9. Check out 20 new authors (short stories count)
10. Take good showable pictures of 20 model horses
11. Hang 20 pictures or pieces of art on the walls
12. Send 20 greeting cards
13. Finish 20 coloring pages
14. Repaint 20 Stablemates (not sure on this one)
15. Try 20 new recipes
16. Read 20 magazines from the backlog every month (incoming doesn't count)
17.  Mend 20 things (clothing or not)
18.  Put together 20 jigsaw puzzles or LEGO sets
19.  Read 20 minutes per day
20.   Get pedometer count over 6,000 at least 5 days a week

The progress:

•  Watched Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban at the theater
• took 3 boxes of stuff to the school rummage sale
• blogged at least 4 times
• Posted on Blab at least once
• no postcards
• no old TiVo yet
• no new artists listened to, but I have library discs to listen to
• no new authors yet
• no show pics
• nothing hanging
• no cards
• no coloring pages
• painted a bay Andalusian and a pink and purple nail polish pony
• no new food
• took at least 30 magazines to Upscale
• no mending
• Frozen 50-piece puzzle - to make sure all the pieces were there before donating
• reading, pretty much
• pedometer, not so much

More progress - a little

The cassette conversion project is improving.  I found a vintage boombox at an estate sale last week.  Only $8, the cassette and CD work, and it has an AC power cord, so I won't be reliant on batteries.  The borrowed player runs on C cells, which aren't cheap, and I don't have a reusable set or charger for that size. 

And, I found a downloadable version of the manual for the gizmo, since the printed version it came with is in about 5 point type and waaaay too tiny to read easily. 

20 things for 2020

A couple of blog-friends are doing a "20 things for 2020" sort of goal, so I've tried to come up with 20 goals for the year.  Mine are a combo of fun, hobby, decluttering, and just random stuff.  So, here goes:

1.  Watch 20 movies (theater or TV, doesn't matter)
2. Get on treadmill or walk outside 3 times per week
3. Declutter 20 things per month (at least)
4. Blog 20 times per month - this one might be hard
5. Post 20 times on the hobby forum I'm a member of
6. Send 20 postcards
7. Watch 20 old things (2019 or earlier) from the TiVo, with the goal of getting it to at least 20% free space
8. Listen to 20 "new" CDs ("new" being haven't heard before, not newly-purchased)
9. Check out 20 new authors (short stories count)
10. Take good showable pictures of 20 model horses
11. Hang 20 pictures or pieces of art on the walls
12. Send 20 greeting cards
13. Finish 20 coloring pages
14. Repaint 20 Stablemates (not sure on this one)
15. Try 20 new recipes
16. Read 20 magazines from the backlog every month (incoming doesn't count)
17.  Mend 20 things (clothing or not)
18.  Put together 20 jigsaw puzzles or LEGO sets
19.  Read 20 minutes per day
20.   Get pedometer count over 6,000 at least 5 days a week

I would add reading books, but I'm going to read at least 24 for the Read Harder challenge, so it's taken care of.

The plan continues

The big cassette conversion plan is continuing.  I managed to find and borrow a working cassette player, although it doesn't have an AC power cord and I hope it doesn't eat batteries like popcorn.  The Nerilka's Story cassettes both work.  The other audiobooks on cassette are sorted - quite a few are available at the library, so I can borrow those, which cuts down on the stack that needs to be converted.  And I ordered the cable gizmo from Amazon, which surprisingly came with free next-day shipping.  Now I just need to download Audacity and figure out how to work it.

So, not tomorrow (because I have a dentist appointment, a volunteer shift at school, and three estate sales to possibly shop at) but this weekend, I can get started converting these things to a more stable format.

February Prime Reads

Prime Reads for February

1. Contemporary Fiction - In An Instant - Dead teen's ghost lingers with her family
2. Psychological suspense - The Silence
3. Memoir - A Drop of Midnight - Not interested in the hip-hop artist, so meh
4. Thriller - A Killer's Wife - meh
5. Historical Fiction - This Terrible Beauty- Post WWII
6. Mystery - Hide Away - Called a "thriller" in the subtitle
7. Fantasy - The Killing Fog
8. Picture Book - World So Wide

So.  Once again, not a big thriller/psych suspense fan, and picture books don't do well as e-books for me.   That knocks 4 off the possiblilites.  The memoir by someone I've never heard of doesn't sound interesting, neither does the fantasy or the contemporary fiction.  Hist Fict is the most interesting one, and even it isn't high on my list.  Oh well.