Reading

You know what?  I love to read!  I've always have and I know I always will.  The problem is that I never seem to have the time to read.  Other than the Newspaper I've gone years without reading a book.  That has all changed over the past year or so.  My oldest daughter has me back into it.  She constantly reads and has read as long as she's been able to read.  There was a book called "The Passage" by Justin Cronin that my daughter convinced me to read.  It was part one of a three part trilogy.  That, my friends, was one of the best decisions that I've made in awhile.  Amazing book!  I've read part two but the problem is part three doesn't come out until sometime in 2014 and I have to wait! D'oh!  Oh well.  The latest book craze that I have now is "The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo" which is another three part trilogy with the potential to become even more books in the series.  From what my daughter tells me is the author, Stieg Larsson, has passed away after writing the third book but he has left the plot outline of like 10 other books in the series.  Someone else would have to write the book but with the plot outline it would still be basically Larsson's book.  All I know is as good as "The Passage" was these books are even better!  I can't put them down!  "The Girl with the dragon Tattoo" is a hard book to get into but once you're there I promise you won't be able to put it down!

Kijiji Intervention???

Well its been a while since I last wrote but I now have a new obsession, KIJIJI! I love it! You can sell things and buy things and for the past couple of months I've been doing both. So far I think I'm breaking about even and may even be up $5 or so?  I see it as a way to up grade my old stuff and to get rid of stuff I don't use taking up space in my garage. I even bought my car through Kijiji and I feel that I got it for a steal!  I hardly ever buy anything new now. My wife thinks I'm obsessed and has joked with my daughter that they are going to have to have a Kijiji intervention for me but I'm having fun with it, so where's the harm? Take today for example. I sold my old gas powered weed wacker that was seriously taking up space in my garage that I literally haven't used in three or four years. It was a two stroke, the kind where you had to mix oil with the gas and let me tell you I am NOT good mixing oil with gas! I could never get it right and it would be smoking like no ones business! I used to have an old Lawn Boy lawn mower once that I used to have to mix oil in it and man the smoke that came from it when I mowed was something else! I mean it was almost embarrassing to mow with all the smoke coming out of it! Anyway I'm getting a bit off track right now so this guy buys the weed wacker from me and I could tell he KNEW how to mix his oil in gas, would treat it right, get it to work great, and get much better use out of it than I ever did. I swear I owned it for over 10 years and I'm pretty sure I've only used it like five or six times! So he gives me $40 and I was pretty stoked thinking that $40 was going towards my golf fund for the summer. Wrong! Cue Kijiji! Yep I got on Kijiji and I found an add selling an electric hedge trimmer for $35. I emailed the guy and offered him $20.  He emailed me bad saying no, stating he wanted the full $35. I noticed his other adds and saw a sweet lawn fertilizer spreader for $15 so I emailed him again and offered him $30 for both the spreader and trimmer.  Again he emailed me back saying no but said he'd throw in the spreader for free if I paid the full $35 for the trimmer. I liked that deal and took it because I was actually prepared to pay $40 for the both of them. So I get to the guys place and he looked older than Moses. His house was sold and he was moving into a seniors complex. I actually liked this old guy and gave him his $35 and he tried to sell me some other things but nothing tickled my fancy but ss I was leaving his garage I noticed this small electric weed wacker and I asked him "how much"?  He said $5, I couldn't give him the $5 quick enough! So I spent all of the $40 I made today but I feel like I'm ahead of the game. I turned an old gas powered weed wacker that I haven't used in years, that frustrated the hell out of me, and was an awkward piece of crap to store in the garage into a hedge trimmer, fertilizer spreader, and another weed wacker that is easy enough that I will actually use it! Anyway when I got home I got a call from the guy who bought my weed wacker and my heart sunk because I though he wanted his money back but he was calling to thank me because he got it working great and saved him a ton of money by not having to buy a new one. Yes today was a good day and that wouldn't have happened without Kijiji! The day was even better because when I got home I used the hedge trimmer and I went on a trimming rampage on out three ceder bushes.  What fun!