Saturday we had two guest stars: Karl (who almost doesn’t count at this point) and my little sister Lily who was visiting from Berkeley. There didn’t seem to be anything starting at 8:00, so we met up at 8:30 and headed out. The first few sales we hit were pretty unremarkable, except that we could not seem to get off the same sale route as this woman who we’ve seen around before. Every sale we hit, she was there. I feel like I need to also add that she was wearing an amazing amount of blush. Anyway, other than that the only notable incident was one of the sellers saying sincerely as we left, “Thank you for shopping at my home.”

We hit one sale that seemed to have a lot of stuff. I was amused by some of the stuff, like a t-shirt that said “I have a black belt in keeping it real,” but didn’t find anything I actually wanted to own. Karl bought some CDs and as we drove away, he told us the seller was a well-known local radio DJ (who none of the rest of us had recognized). No big deal, except the guy was selling promo CDs — technically a big no-no! We were all pretty surprised by that.

Nearby was a sale that wasn’t supposed to start until 10. They didn’t quite have all their stuff out yet, but were pretty much open for business.

I had been fascinated by the ad for this sale, which read in part: “We are young, cool and hip and are selling all of our young, cool, hip material possessions. We are gypsies and pirates, pin-up girls and fairies. All of our clothes suggest as much. You will want them when you see them.”

There were no pin-up girls or pirates in sight, but the guy could maybe pass for gypsy-ish. And as for fairies?

She was cool about letting us take a picture of her wings (which she had made — pretty sure they weren’t being sold). I attempted to get my sister to buy a t-shirt with a big pot leaf on it and said in Spanish, “Don’t drink and drive, smoke and fly!” but she somehow managed to resist.

After a few more boring sales we made our usual coffee and pastry stop. Across the street from the cafe was this sign.

Meghan and Karl went in and reported back that no cool stuff was actually encountered.

It was shortly after this that we headed to an estate sale. Its ad had seemed heavy on the tools and “guy stuff,” which isn’t usually our thing, but we thought we’d check it out. Now, many of the streets in our neighborhood are really only wide enough for one car. Most people manage to figure out what to do if there are two cars driving at once: one of them moves over and lets the other one pass. Well, we turned down the street and there was a guy just sitting in the middle of the street. We pulled over so he could drive past us, but he just sat there. Meghan was waving at him to move forward, yelling “Come ON!!!” even though there’s no way he could have heard. We couldn’t tell what his problem was. Eventually he just pulled his car over and parked it near where he had been idling. She was ready to kill. And after all that, there was a line to get in the sale.

There was a yard sale across the street so we checked that out for a minute. This was about the best thing there.

We headed back up the street to our car, and who starts coming along in his car? The bad driving guy! Meghan did something I am still laughing about: she walked into the street and strolled ahead of the guy, just taking her time. I joined her once I realized what was going on. The guy yelled something about how we should use the sidewalk and we both screamed “LEARN TO DRIVE!!!” I’m not sure he even knew why we were messing with him, but we felt slightly vindicated.

Time to move to a different neighborhood. At one sale, we found a bunch of still sealed wedding music CDs — like for DJs to have sappy songs at the ready. They had titles based on what the songs were recommended for: Bride and Groom’s First Dance, Father and Bride, and so on. I looked at the Mother and Groom one and was shocked to find Guns ‘N Roses’ “Sweet Child O’ Mine.” This seemed truly demented. We all tried to envision what a groom dancing with his mom to that song would look like. I would be so happy if I saw that at a wedding.

Next we hit a sale where a huge inflatable snowman was flopping around in the yard.

The sellers seemed pretty friendly, and they had some, um … interesting items.

I bet someone snagged that, but I’m guessing these videotapes were still there at the end of the day.

I found a packet of really cheesy religious stickers and joked to my sister that I should buy them and stick them on Karl. “You should!” she said. They were a quarter, so I figured it was worth it just for the laugh. I managed to stick a “Hooked on Jesus!” sticker on Karl’s arm without him noticing, but I was cracking up so bad I almost couldn’t stand it. I probably didn’t make it two minutes before I had to point it out to him. Meghan gave me a hard time about how I should have just waited it out. In theory I agreed, but I just couldn’t do it.

Next we went to a sale being held at a vintage costume store. They had racks of clothes spread out in the yard.

There was some great stuff there! But sadly, almost all of it had major condition issues. I guess that’s why they were parting with some of these items.

There were also some boxes of miscellaneous fun crapola.

Meghan picked up a cool vintage planter, some lucite pumps, and a couple of trashed dresses that were cheap and possibly salvageable.

I had noticed that the horrible deck sale (home of the bucket of undergarments) from a couple weeks back was happening again and made sure not to put that one on our list. Unfortunately though I didn’t recognize another repeat address and we ended up back at the freak sale from a few weeks before that — the place we encountered the boxes of porn mags and the woman with the lotion smeared on her face and shirt pulled up over her hair. She looked downright normal this time, but the sale was just as bad. Scads of horrible CDs, and some things we remembered seeing before, like this freaky-eyed doll.

And they still had plenty of questionable magazines.

Much as I would have loved to read “Unbelievable Tattoos — On A Woman” we left without buying anything.

It was getting to be time to call it a day so we headed back towards home, but hit a few more sales on the way. At one of them we encountered one of the oddest items I’ve seen at a sale … at least in recent memory.

Don’t strain your eyes trying to read that — here’s a close-up.

Shockingly, someone was choosing to part with this item. They were also parting with this bacon container, which cracked me up — especially the label claiming it “prevents food interaction.” Because I’m always concerned about what my groceries might be getting up to in the fridge when I’m not looking.

We thought this was a sale, then realized it was just a pile of free stuff. Although I suspect these people are soon going to have to face the fact that there’s a trip to the dump in their future.

The last sale we went to was a big one. As I was looking around, Meghan came up and said, “There’s a sign over behind that tree that is really, seriously messed up.” I figured I’d check it out when I was done browsing around. I took my time, and eventually sauntered over to where she had pointed … only to find possibly the greatest sign we have ever seen at a sale.

This made me laugh so hard that I was literally crying and couldn’t talk for a minute or so. I have no idea how that sign ended up saying “Yard Sard,” but I am sure glad it did.

All in all, it was a downright hilarious day. Lily picked up a few items; Meghan and Karl did most of the trunk filling. I hardly bought anything all day, but I laughed more than I had in a long time!