This sentence intentionally left

Saturday, Rebecca did a great deal of mollocking, while I did a small amount of scranletting. The yard's looking in uncommonly decent shape. Rebecca planted a modest tomato plant maybe three weeks ago. It is now huginormous, with inch thick tendrils and green fruit that practically swell before your eyes. The thing is growing so fast, I expect to be replaced by a pod person any minute now.
That evening, we went to hear Verdi's Requiem at Royce Hall. We had seats at dead-center in the back of the balcony. Royce Hall isn't that huge, so the sound and view were great. Colleenky was performing, and with a bit of eyestrain, we could recognize her.
Apart from the loud part that gets ripped off for commercials and film-scores, I don't think I'd ever heard it before. It's interesting to have a religious text set to rather secular-ish operatic music. Hard to imagine going to a funeral and thinking, "Gosh, my uncle's dead, but at least we have some fine soloists!"
Speaking of which, the bass/baritone, In Joon Jang, was fantastic. His deep rolling steady voice was a wonder to behear.
The performance also had a nice bit of staging for the 'tuba mirum', with some trumpets up on the balcony to answer the trumpets in the orchestra.
I confess the repeated cries of 'Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus' that bounced about the chorus in that section made me think of 'Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus, Baked Beans, Sausage and Sanctus'.

Sunday, we hit the Rose Bowl Flea Market, with the results you've already seen. Through the afternoon and evening, I listed a shitload of crap on ebay, mostly Roman coins and Arkham House books.

For today, I'm gonna go have lunch with a high school friend I probably haven't seen in ten years.

refresh refresh refresh refresh

My ebay auctions are about a day old. Half the lots have bids and the total value is up to $132.75. It's a big relief that it's gotten off to a good start. When I do one of my usual mini-garage sales on ebay, most of my junk sits around with no bids for the first 4 or 5 days.
It's interesting to see the difference between bidders and 'watchers'. One auction has no bids, but 7 people are watching it. It's a nice coin, and I expect it to go for a fair amount, but right now it looks like it would sit around getting dusty on a shelf at the 99 cent store. With any luck, the seven watchers will all try to snipe it in the last 5 minutes in a ruthless bidding frenzy. Of course, I generally use 'watching' just to keep track of things I already own to see what they fetch.
Vicy versy, some of the auctions with multiple bids have no watchers.

Anyway, lunch with my high school chum Bill was pretty neat. Did a breakneck catch-up job on our lives over some tasty food at El Cholo. He still sees a few other schoolmates for the occasional poker game, but this was my first contact with a high school friend in 10 years or so. He asked me about my dormfriends from UCLA.... Well, with the obvious exception of Rebecca, I don't keep in touch with any of them, either. So the moral of this story is, if you've known me for more than a year or two, and I still give a shit about you, consider yourself lucky.