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yard sale LCD monitor
Saturday, August 23 2008
It being Saturday, I went yard saling with Penny and David, mostly in the Woodstock/Zena area. We always have a great time, though Penny and David seem to be able to stand about a half hour more yard saling than I can. There is an inherent biological limit to our saling, one related to the fact that at some point we stop at Bread Alone for coffee and to-go breakfast and none of the yard sales provide restrooms.
Before before today's yard saling, I'd been thinking about the things I've never seen at a yard sale. The technology being sold is always at least six or seven years out of date, so I've never (for example) seen an LCD computer monitor. Today, though, I came upon my first yard sale LCD. It was a clunky primitive 14 inch model with a Dell logo, having a resolution of only 1024 by 768. But it only cost me $10 and is the perfect replacement for the 14 inch CRT monitor attached to the exposed-motherboard workstation I use for occasional esoteric computer tasks. With as little bulk as they have, you can never have too many.
Our yard saling ultimately took us down Sawkill Road to Uptown Kingston, and from there we headed back to Hurley. We tried to hit some yard sales in the hill above (to the east of) Hurley Avenue in old Hurley, but we couldn't find the sales referred to by the posted signs. I've driven past the streets to that neighborhood hundreds of times, but I had no idea there was so much suburbia up there on the hill. It's a prosperous neighborhood, but nothing up there is the slightest bit tasteful. It looks like it could be a neighborhood comprised exclusively of lottery winners. (Mind you, not every lottery winner has zero taste; Penny and David have a great æsthetic sense and they won $30 on a scratch-off ticket today.)
I'd heard that Ray and Nancy might or might not be coming up sometime this weekend, and usually when there's any doubt about it they don't materialize. So it came as something of a surprise when I was taking a bath this evening and they arrived, along with Nancy's sister Linda. They hadn't called or anything; Ray had only sent Gretchen a vaguely-worded email. I aborted my bath and went into host mode.
We ended up dining at the Reservoir Inn, which is one of my favorite restaurants. It's a little overpriced and there's lots of veal on the menu, but the place has a great atmosphere and the staff have the kind of friendliness that doesn't make one uncomfortable. Tonight the Reservoir Inn even had live music. I knew from the looks of these middle aged white guys that they were a white boy jazz ensemble, and sure enough they were. Their sound was based around a set of vibraphones played by a short guy with a large nose, a small chin, and incredibly long grey hair. Applause protocol naturally followed the jazz model (applause encouraged, even within numbers). It's the exact opposite of the classical model (applause welcome only at the end of complete works, and you're an idiot if you applaud between movements).
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