Journal: February 24, 2012

That's all folks.  For the next two days, I'm officially unemployed.  Wow, right?  Today was the last day at my job.  I had my final talk with my manager, submitted my final expense reports - expense reports right up until the last minute, haha - that's me.  I started gathering all of the things that need to be sent back.  It's quite a bit.  Stew will take it to the UPS store next week for me - he's great.


We headed to the auction tonight in Bel Air.  I'd never been to an auction before and didn't know what to expect.  I learned a lot, mostly, you need a game plan.  I was making too many spur of the moment purchases so by the time the items came up that I really wanted, I had already spent my budgeted amount.  I did score some items that will look nice around the house, but I lost out on all of the lots of rubber stamps I wanted.  Lesson learned.  Will do better next time.  I'll share our purchases tomorrow after I take pictures of them.  Way too sleeping tonight for that.

Here's our auction number.  You have to pay $10 to get a number and if you buy something they subtract it from the price.  If you don't buy something they give it back to you at the end of the night.  The only problem is, they take cash only for this and neither Stew or I had any.  They trusted us.  I'm sure that will change as they get to know us.

The doors of the auction house open at 4:30 and the auction starts at 6.  This gives you time to look at the items you really want to purchase.  Another thing I learned.  The auction goes really fast - so make sure you know what you want to bid on.  There were a lot of people there and each one of them seemed to have their niche of things they were looking for - one guy bid on all of the furniture, the lady sitting in front of us bid on all of the jewelry and there was a lady behind us who looked for all vintage things because her daughter is a photographer and she uses them for her sets for her photos.

Following the auction and a rather precarious trip in the car (we bought a lot of glass and not knowing anything at all about this, no boxes or bubble wrap or anything, so I had to carry it) - we headed to Red Robin to eat.  Stew got cluck and fries or whatever that's called.  I really wanted a burger.  I forgot to tell them to only put certain things on it so while it was good, it wasn't great.  Bummer there.

This was on the bottom (obviously) of the advertisement they had on the table.

Over dinner Stew and I talked a lot of sports and about how we thought we did at the auction.  They have arcade games on the way out of the restaurant and I wanted to play Ms. Pac Man - or what I thought was Ms. Pac Man - turns out, it was something called Ladybug.  You could walk through the swinging walls and trap the things that were coming after you and things.  It was weird.

Stew played the ghetto version of Break out.  We both got high scores - we won't mention that it was because they reset the machines each time.

Another precarious drive home with all the glass, unloading of the car, took care of Stew's hands and it was off to bed for us.  So sleepy.

Tomorrow I'm heading to Bethesda to watch FGH participate in the pinewood derby.  Should be a blast.  Looking forward to it.