I've Been Busy!!

While having all different kinds of weather the past few weeks, I realized it was not the weather that made me lethargic, unmotivated and have mind that scans non stop for answers or ideas. I found out through self realization, meaning me, no counselor involved ... that I was bored ... and had been for a long time.

After I misdiagnosed what I was feeling last summer I started paying more attention to facts and my gut feeling rather than "it's part of getting older" or "you're getting old Steve". I realized I had been bored for quite awhile. 

I've enjoyed every day of retirement, yet I used to be a workaholic. I didn't take vacations, worked weekends and longer than an eight hour day. It was part of my DNA because I had been that way my whole work life. Looking back it began as early as 15 years old, when I had a law cutting business in town. I didn't just cut grass, their yard had to look perfect before I knocked on their front door to be paid.

Not to change the subject but I thought you might want to see what "highway robbery" is in the restaurant business. It was so bad I decided NOT TO black out their name Kate's Cafe. I don't get to the UPS store much but I did last week for a reason I will discuss up ahead. As I was walking to my FJ I see a cafe on the corner of this small strip mall. I was starving and thought to myself "there is no way they can *&&&^% an order of biscuits and gravy ... or can they?

I had bad vibes as soon as I walked in but I was starving. Already near noon and I was living on coffee. So I was led to my booth and the menu laid in front of me was Breakfast side up. Instantly my mind is saying they must be only serving breakfast ... that was perfect because that is what I wanted.You can eat breakfast anytime.

To make a long story short ---- see that $22.87 ... that included

• A cold more than lukewarm warm small of coffee ... check out their price for that!!!
• Three sausage links that were not even warm
• Three over easy eggs that were not only on the cool side but had not been cooked on the inside.
• I almost forgot .. I ordered the "full size" of biscuits and gravy. Where I live that usually means two huge biscuits and enough sausage gravy running over the top of them and your plate ... but not at Kate's.
• Two of the smallest biscuits I had seen in my 73 years of life.
• Gravy that didn't even cover the biscuits let alone your plate

For once I kept my mouth shut. Ate all of it, drank the small cup of coffee, paid my bill with a tip and left.

Last week when the rains finally stopped Watson and Ava found some new excitement. I didn't hear "it" until I had my windows open working at my new surprise keeping busy.

Now as you can see from photos on the blog I guess you could say I live in a "rural area". Yet only 4 miles to the SE is a downtown to a small city with a few very tall buildings and 120,000 people. Most of the time though, I feel I am living in the country in back and a nice quiet neighborhood on the front.

So what was the new excitement for Ava and Watson ... enough to make them go crazy at first but a few days later decided that noise was just normal?

The last few weeks before we moved from Sierra Vista we had 20 some head of cattle behind the house that we would hear occasionally ... but now ????

A rooster!!!

He is just not visiting either. It's my understanding the owner up the street with a backyard that faces mine, wants to raise or actually plans to raise  ... CHICKENS!!! Based on what I have seen, not that I am snooping or have a drone over his house .. I don't see him building a secure chicken coupe, highly secure like I see on the tv show Homestead Rescue. Now THEY know how to build a chicken coupe ... not this guy.

So the sad part of the story is, he will TRY to raise chickens to only find out that he is providing a food source for the wandering coyotes and an occasional red fox I see.

Sidenote --- I see Blogger has loaded my photos in reverse order ... but they were all taken this afternoon as we enjoyed our 59° weather with hot sunshine.

When I noticed none of the dogs and hounds were outside with me as I sat in my chair facing directly into the sunshine, getting some good natural Vitamin D ... I turned to look behind me to see these two.

Marigolds were taken into the shed for the winter ... lets see if they grow back with some rain water, hose water and sunshine.

Walter waits for his turn to drink at the outdoor water bowl with fresh water.

That barn is jammed packed with stuff. I know because I could barely walk through it following my neighbor last year, looking for her new chainsaw she wanted to loan me. BTW that was BEFORE my new pacemaker. No more chainsaws now.

A sure sign of spring.

What has kept me busy?

I am going to get to that answer that you are curious about. 

As a test this year I wanted to see what the berm would do this spring. I didn't touch any tree, fallen or upright, stuff on the ground, bushes .... nothing. I let it lay where it laid ... makes a nice home for rabbits.

You can see the berm is starting to grow new growth.

I wanted to capture Ava's eyes with my camera ... I think I did.

So here is what has and is keeping me so busy. I love doing this kind of stuff. I call it stuff because to me it is not work. For a couple of years I was doing this full time. It was my only source of income because 20 years ago I didn't get social security and I didn't want to tap into my retirement. So this was it.

I actually got the urge last summer to look around on the website and even sent messages back and forth with a full time seller who lives near me in Illinois and is also an Indiana Hoosiers fan. He had been selling on this platform since 1999. For various reasons I quit in 2010 and deleted my account with over 15,000 feedbacks and a Power Seller rating. He was still selling though, in large numbers. 

eBay ....

I had not been there in a while except to buy three different car parts the past five years. I checked on things I use to sell, look at the sellers feedback and see how many they were getting in a month. There are more sales numbers than feedback numbers so it's a good gage.

This time I had "a helper" ... ChatGPT.

"Does this (specific name of item) sell well on eBay ... after 11 days of listing things I want to sell, I would say ChatGPT is very very accurate. Yes, March 2nd I started taking photos and making listings to sell of things I wanted to get rid of in my house. I don't like having garage sales because I don't like strangers wandering around my garage and driveway looking at stuff then asking if they can buy something cheaper than the price on the tag. Basically it is more of a property thing, than a sales thing.

At first it took a few days to get back in the swing of things. Plus eBay had changed some things for sellers and for the better. Things are a lot easier now and for some reason compared to when I quit ... once my items were indexed by the eBay servers, customers were finding them.

Just like I did in 2005, I have started with selling things in my house that I no longer want. From extra Apple charging cables to books to League Certified jerseys of NBA, MLB and NFL to bicycle assessors, tools or jerseys. Just to name a few.

It's a lot of work to put a listing together if you want it to look professional and not just thrown together. I guess they are like those lawns I was mowing growing up back in 1965. 

After a week I had a routine and a process down and things were running  smoothly. Time to work, time for dog walks in warmer non-rainy days, a little time to eat, watch a movie and get some sleep. 

It also keeps me from living on social media, although that time has decreased on its own since college football is over. 

I've learned a lot this week and found out the eBay algorithms like 5-10 new listings per day instead of a big dump of 20-25 of them. I was trying to get to 100 items as soon as possible. Most listings have 4-5 edited photos, creating details, features and a description then coming up with a price.

You can check anything you have by typing that in the search block on eBay then scroll down while looking on the left side for that small box to check next to "sold" ... you will find out if your items will sell and what it actually sold for.

Sales have been more than expected. My damaged Canon G9X that I dropped on the concrete carport years ago, still worked .. sold for $370 Thursday night after a 7 day auction. Although I was told on the forums most all listings now are Buy it Now ... but I have sold 3 of the 4 auctions I did have. 

My system is down pat now ... When I took a break to run to the post off to ship a couple of items I had scheduled listings out to this coming Tuesday. I will add on to that daily in advance until I am up to a 1000 items. 

I cannot change my ID until April 1st, eBay says not before then.

I do have special pricing from what you see listed for blog readers, friends and neighbors. Let me know if you see anything of interest.

Floyd's Deal Depot

Hounds and dogs are sleeping, I am going back to having fun ... all is good in "the tropics" of Southern Indiana.