Brockville Bound

Instead of sleeping in on Saturday morning, I hit the ground running. Awake at 7:30, I called up the crew and we got ready to hit up the Lansdowne Park garage sale!

After some logistics to work through, we ended up over at Rob and Janice’s place to pile into their van to head out to the garage sale. After a pickup of Vero and Carrie, as well as stop-offs at Tim Horton’s and McDonald’s, we finally ended up at the garage sale around 10AM which was about an hour later than expected. Trish had already been there scoping out the goods and found an ancient book which dealt with how to have fun times at parties. It looked quite interesting.

My main goal of the day was to scope out vinyl records. Literally five minutes into the sale, I noticed a guy paying for an LP. I veered into this booth and saw a box of vinyl records on the floor. The woman said she would make me a deal if I bought the entire box. I had literally just stumbled upon it and noticed an Alice Cooper and Chicago record amongst 30+ records and a slew of singles. I asked her how much and she started counting all the records in there. She said $18, I said $15 and I became an owner of 30+ records for $15. I hadn’t even properly looked at them until the following day. I got doubles of an Alice Cooper album, Chicago, The Guess Who, a Transformers record (what the heck?), ABBA, Bee Gees, Best of Cat Stevens, Best of Simon and Garfunkel and a whole bunch of others I can’t remember right now. I must admit I feel that I scored big with the deal.

With my box of vinyl in hand after five minutes into the sale, I walked up to another booth which was solely selling vinyl records and found Mike and Vero there. Mike had already found a bunch that he was going to buy at a buck a piece. I was in vinyl heaven. I put my box down and Frank The Record Man (the gentleman who owned the booth) asked if he could take a look through it. Not a problem! In the end, he actually pulled out a single by a band called Eric’s Trip and asked if I could make a deal and I really was in a rush so I said if I had time I would come back later. Being the avid collector I was tipped off that this may be some rare vinyl item and I should do some research on the Internet before selling it off. I didn’t bother buying any vinyl from this gentleman as I figured I should look at the entire garage sale before settling on some other items. I had already spent $20 (I found some CDs at another booth when I came in – Best of Elton John, Forrest Gump soundtrack and a Verve Pipe album) and there was plenty of territory to cover. Rob had already bought a toy chest for $10 and everyone was in good shopping spirits considering we had literally been in the place for ten minutes and it was paying off in spades.

I rounded the corner into another section and saw Mike who has a comic book subscription business that I subscribe to. I chatted with him for awhile and found out that to rent a booth for the weekend it costs $100 and he didn’t even know if he would make that back but was hopeful. He was there with a few comic books to sell as well as trying to get a few more subscribers to his subscription service. I had met Mike last year at a comic convention at Lansdowne Park and decided to sign up then. I figured I still had a lot of ground to cover so I said goodbye and headed on out. At this point I had lost track of everyone but found Carrie looking at a Hanson CD (which happened to reappear at every other booth in the place…clearly people can’t get rid of this album!) and then I stumbled upon the mother lode of booths. Here was a guy which a bunch of comic books for sale.

I noticed that he was selling them at a buck a piece and thought it wouldn’t hurt to peruse his wares. It paid off in spades, diamonds, clubs and the whole kit and caboodle! I found a bunch of Vertigo and Wildstorm comics in mint condition. I ended up picking up most of the Wildcats V3.0 series that I was missing from years ago. I was quite excited as I made my way through the boxes on the table as he had some fairly new stuff selling at a $1 a piece. I chatted with him for awhile and it turns out that he simply buys them and then buys the trade paperback and when he gets to have too many, he just sells them off. He also is a writer in here in Ottawa and spends most of his time either reading/reviewing books or writing. He also passed me a flyer for an upcoming book sale he has that he said was quite popular in the city and usually has a lineup of people in the morning.

I kept looking through the boxes as they weren’t in any particular order and I didn’t want to pass up anything good. I was definitely spending a lot of time there and people kept showing up and showing off the goods…Carrie found a Twister board game for a buck, Vero found a bunch of buttons that she’ll create something with, Rob found a bun warmer (!!!)…I must have been at this booth for a good hour. I would have to say the greatest find of the day was when I stumbled upon the box with pretty well the entire Fables series in it. I couldn’t believe it. It took me awhile to fish out all the issues I needed but it paid off well. I walked out of there with pretty well the entire series. I believe I may be missing about 14 issues now. I was very happy with my purchases at the garage sale. I didn’t even get to see the rest of the garage sale…I probably covered 1/4 of the area but I didn’t care. Everyone was ready to hit the road and I had spent enough money as it was.

We loaded up the van with all our purchases and hit the road to Bayshore to pick up Duncan and then we headed to Brockville for Joe and Danielle’s housewarming party. It was a beautiful hot day, the tunes were going strong (except for Carrie’s craptacular purchase of an old C+C Music Factory album) and we made it to Brockville in decent time. Sure, we were later arriving than we said but the garage sale was better than we had expected it to be.

We dropped into Wal-Mart to scope out potential house warming gifts and found a great bench for their backyard. Little assembly required…that’s always the key to a good gift! We then arrived at their house around 2PM while passing by some…interesting women sunbathing out in their front lawn. Someone thought one of them was pregnant while Rob thought they had just drank a few too many beer along their lifeline.

There were already a group of people at Joe’s pad and we a van load of friends arriving from Ottawa, the party went into high gear. They brought out some excellent grub and we had a few beer and enjoyed the sun. Duncan and I assembled the bench and tried it out and it didn’t fall apart. Clearly we did something right!

The afternoon waned away and it was so beautiful out that we had a hard time leaving. But alas, the time came that we needed to head back into town to see Vero’s final showing of Lavaléeville. I managed to snag an amazing bowl of chili before we left. I would have to say that Joe makes the best chili around. It has just the right amount of spice in it.

Thanks to Joe and Danielle for putting on a most amazing housewarming party. I’m sure they both had a great time as another batch of people showed up as soon as we were leaving. I’m hoping the party went to the wee hours of the night!

On our way back, a few of us played a hand of euchre in the van and hilarity ensued for the majority of the trip. However, we hit a snag when the van was having engine problems and it looked like it wasn’t shifting into a higher gear. Uh oh. I managed to get a hold of Trish to let her know that she should pick up her own tickets for the play (as we were originally going to pick them all up first and distribute them). We did manage to make it to the play in time but with only a few minutes to spare. I’m not sure what is wrong with the van and it didn’t fix itself after sitting in the parking lot for a few hours.

There were thirteen of us there to see the play and we all managed to find seats relatively close to one another. Phil had showed up with his father who was from Kapuskasing so we chatted a bit about that. I was right next to exit stage left but it was fine as it’s such a small production that they actually have the seats up on the stage so we were very close.

I was really worried about Vero and how she would do because she had fallen ill a few days before and she actually lost her voice Saturday morning! I felt awful about it and I didn’t really have any words of comfort to offer in this particular case. I can only imagine how one must feel when they lose their voice and they are in a play.

In the end, it turned out alright. When she spoke normally to us, it was a whisper, but when she was on stage, she managed to transcend the barrier and we could all hear her fine. She needed some backup help on the singing parts but so be it.

It was a great ending to three weeks of the play being in production. They play has been getting rave reviews and there are rumours that La Nouvelle Scene was thinking of having them come back sometime. I guess that is considered ‘a big deal’ when a theatre house wants the play to expand.

Considering the play was in French, I didn’t know if some guests would enjoy it but they said that even if they couldn’t understand it, the characters were very animated and it didn’t make for a boring play to watch (even though they couldn’t understand a word). This reminds me of any foreign language music. “I can’t understand a word, but it sure rocks!”

We congratulated Vero after the play, headed back home and grabbed the car to come back into town to go to the after-party. Mike, Duncan and I hit up the after-party which was a good time. They had a campfire in the backyard which was a welcome addition and the rest of the night widdled away until Vero, Vero and I headed home around 4AM.

Clearly, our Saturday was packed with activities to do but it was definitely worth it. On Sunday I awoke and puttered around a bit at Vero’s and when I went home I started washing the walls in part of the spring cleanup activity which will probably take me the next month to accomplish with another final exam coming up as well as a few other trips planned in the month of May. Question for all those who have spring cleaned in the past: I was trying to get out some scuff marks on the wall. The water and vinegar didn’t really work out. Mike then went to the store and they said Mr. Clean should be able to help and not take the paint off the wall. It didn’t really work out. Is my final resort to paint over the affected sections? If I paint over the section, will the newly painted area dry well and blend or will it look like a patch of new paint? Mike and I really don’t know so we’re hoping that it will simply blend in as long as we lightly roll it in and not lather a big glob over the scuff mark with a paint brush. Any advice at all would help!