NAF sale

Okay, so we went to our first NAF sale yesterday. NAF covers the stuff on post that are paid for by entrance fees - bowling alley, guest logging, library, golf courses - rather than the stuff that Congress pays for. Occasionally NAF will sell off furniture and equipment as they remodel. The ad in the paper said it started at 8:00. We got there probably about 10 after 8. ALL SOLD!!! Tons of armoires, end tables, tvs, headboards, desks and dressers. 90% of which was all sold in under 10 minutes. I had to ask one of the employees how that was possible, cuz I was thinking that the staff had gone through the night before and marked everything they wanted for themselves. She said that buyers were lined up well before 8. Apparently either the employees give you slips of paper when you come in, or you come to the sale with your own 'sold to john doe' and a roll of tape. Once you get in, you dash to what you want, slap your sold sticker on it with tape, then go to the cash register to pay for it. Cherrywood armoires were going for $35!!! We could have used a couple of those for pantry use. She assured me that they're having another sale in another month or so. I guess next time we'll send Eric (the morning person) bright and early.

So after that, we dragged Nathan to a couple of yard sales. Neither he nor I were all that into it. The yard sale gene apparently passed me by. Luckily the OU game was an early one, so we had a good excuse to go home. Eric wouldn't have minded standing in the drizzling rain looking for a $100 radio marked down to $10, but OU football trumps a yard sale crawl.

I did manage to go through all our boxes of books. I think I can finally make myself get rid of the Time Life Books Atlas of the World from 1980. I probably don't need to keep the Who's Who's of High School seniors tome that I've been lugging around for 20 years. Bookshelves. I really need bookshelves.

I did get all the pictures unwrapped. I need an interior decorator to give me 2 hours of his/her time. I can't seem to bite the bullet and hang things on the wall. I just need to have someone else tell me what things to hang and where. I have 2 cousins with design degrees. One of them should be able to come out here and help me out, right? I need someone to 'freestyle' my stuff.

Nathan is insisting that he won't dress up for Halloween or go trick or treating. And he's been this way for a couple of weeks. So we haven't gotten a costume. If the kid decides on Friday that he wants one, I'm gonna make him wear the winnie the pooh costume that my mother sewed decades ago.

Eric says he's going to walk to work tomorrow. As the crow flies, that would be 2 miles, about what he did at Sill. But straight line goes through a densely wooded area. Probably not how he wants to go for the first time when he's trying to get to work on time. So the safe way on the sidewalk is closer to 3 miles. Problem with that is that it goes past the water treatment plant. Pee-yoo! Stinky!

He's got his work cut out for him. For the past 4 years he's been with a band that's had continuity and a fairly regular job parameters. Here, on the other hand, lots of turn over and VERY young soldiers. I think after all his years in admin, that he will have a good impact on the band and will be a good mentor to the younger bandsmen. He was working with a soldier on Friday about jazz improv. You'll have to ask him what happened.

Not every post I make it going to have a black and white photo on it, but I'm enjoying this at the moment. Today would have been my grandparents 73rd wedding anniversary. I always liked thinking about how being in the military brings people from different ways of life together. My grandfather, an Indian kid born in land-locked Indian Territory, joins the navy and is stationed in Connecticut, where he meets my grandmother, the daughter of Polish immigrants. He brings her back to Oklahoma. Now, what kind of culture shock is that? If he hadn't joined the military, they probably would have married somebody from their own neighborhoods, and life would have been a lot different.