Cost of Livings High, And Going Up

I blame my Dad.  I really do.  For my looks, my mannerisms, and my vocal rhythms.  However, today I blame him for my activities last Saturday.  During my pre-teen and early teen years, every now and then my father would wake me up around 6:45 am and only say "We're leaving in ten minutes.  Be ready."  Thankfully, we were never heading to a speed-dating convention or a social gathering where looks or smell mattered, because 10 minutes to get ready meant 7 more minutes of sleep and three minutes of changing my clothes, finding a hat and brushing my teeth.  Shower?  Yeah, that wasn't happening.  I was gross, but I was young and not interested in dating, so I feel it can be overlooked.  I might be wrong about that.

Regardless, by 6:55 am we were in the car.  More often then not we would go to an auction.  Not like a Sotheby's auction of fine art or exotic real estate.  I mean an auction where they sold folding chairs by the dozen.  Where you both loose wrenches by the box.  Where you could buy an industrial safe and the forklift to carry it away.  That type of auction.  It combined my Dad's job - running a business - with his hobby - finding a good deal.  He would bring me along mostly to spend time with him, but I think to also show me that you can save money on any purchase, if you kept your eyes open.

Case in point: At one auction they had a lot of 8 sport-style walkman's.  Not discman's.  Walkman's.  This was about a year before the cassette completely died, so the writing was clearly on the wall.  The lot came up and no one was bidding on it.  My dad threw a $10 bill at it, and took it home.  That next Christmas, a number of cousins received these under their trees.  At least they had a built-in radio, so they weren't completely useless.  We had a half full box of these walkman's sitting in my dad's office for at least 3 years.  To this day, I'm not sure what happened to the remainder of them.  It doesn't really matter because he paid $10 for Christmas gifts to like 4 or 5 cousins.  That's a bargain.  He could have used the rest for skeet, or donated them to the Smithsonian's collection of antiquated technologies, and it would have still been a steal.

This all leads me to Saturday.  Saturday morning, I informed the Betrothed (yep, she's no longer the Girlfriend, she has been promoted, and I simply don't like saying the word 'Fiance', so it's Bethrothed) that we were going to meet some of Provo's finest.  We were heading to a storage auction.  Remember how I said that I would only spend three minutes getting ready?  I feel like that was 2 minutes more than anyone else who showed up to those events.  This morning was no different.  If you weren't wearing at least 2 pieces of denim, or one piece of camo, you were over dressed.  If you didn't urinate beside your car, you were fancy.  If you showed up in anything other than a suburban or truck, you were putting on airs.  I brought the Betrothed.  I had also showered and I think shaved.  We were like two ice cubes in a sand pit.

They had three units going for sale.  Being that I had spent months going to these things in Florida, I developed a game called "How much will it go for?"  Additionally, I would play "How much am I willing to pay for it?", but the first number always exceeded the second number.  The first unit was empty except 2 20" rims and some old car batteries. I said I'd throw $20 at it.  Someone else got it for $20.  The next one had a table and some chairs, a mannikin and an old TV.  I said it would go for $150, but I wouldn't pay more than $125.  Sure enough, went for $150.  The last one looked like a garage vomited into a storage locker.  Two fridges, some assorted furniture and miscellaneous items.  I thought it would go for $450.  Dude jumped the bid from $50 to $400 and everyone else backed off.  And that was the end of it.  I was thoroughly entertained the whole time.  The Betrothed laughed herself to tears (no, literally tears came out of her eyes) at the guy who bought the last one.  Between his track pants with the vented legs, in case he worked up a sweat, or the sweatshirt barely covering his tremendous girth, or the U of U beanie with fake, white, spikey hair coming out of the top, this guy was a class act.  Just a sight to behold.

That was the morning.  Later that evening the Betrothed's ward had a Christmas party and auction to raise funds for a sub-for-Santa-esque program.  Good food and a show?  Don't mind if I do.  One of the items up for bids was a wedding/birthday cake from one of the Stake Relief Society leaders.  I'm pretty sure I was the only engaged person in the room, so I bid on it.  A couple other people bid, but when I went to $40, it was just me and the second counselor in the bishopric.  He went to $45, so I went to $50.  He then went to $60, and I thought, "it's for a good cause" and went to $75, thinking that would end things.  He then bid $90.  I backed off.  Now, at the time, I didn't realize that wedding cakes go for like $300.  I thought they went for like $100-$150.  Had I know that, I probably would have kept going.  But instead, I stopped and he won it at $90.  His wife turned back to us from across the room and mouthed "We're buying it for your wedding."  Turns out, that was their plan from the start.  And I ran the guy up another $30.  Thanks.

We called the baker, who the Betrothed has known for a while and she informed us to just pick out whatever cake we wanted.  Just send her a picture and she'll make it.  The Betrothed asked what I wanted the cake to be like.  I said "Tasty".  I stand by that.  Make it look like whatever you want, but make sure I enjoy eating it.  I'm sure we'll have a tasting of some sort down the road.  The big day is still more than 3 months off, so we have a lot of stuff to line up between now and then. But things are starting to get busy.

Word.