Not that I was expecting much else. Blade was the first movie I bought on DVD and I’ve enjoyed all of the silly trilogy. There was a quote about the first movie from, I think, Michael Dorff and it was, “Sometimes people want to watch a movie where someone kicks a lot of ass.” Or something like that. The comments I heard about Jessica Biel were correct and she is hot, hot, hot in the movie. And all she does is look tough and kill vampires. Having Parker Posey as the main evil vampire doesn’t hurt, either.

So today was “Opening Day” for the boaters in Oregon. I’m not sure what that means except I was in a boat parade. (It helps to know people who own expensive yachts.)

The weather turned out to be rather pleasant today but even now everything seems to be rocking gently back and forth in front of my eyes.

OK, so I sold my old Organic Chemistry text from MIT. It’s a SIX POUND BOOK. How did I first find this out? By checking Amazon.com.

If you sell a book through Amazon, you set the price and they give you some compensation for shipping. Somehow they can’t figure out that THEY ALREADY KNOW HOW MUCH THE BOOK WEIGHS. So they only give you postage for a 2 pound book. And no money for the padded envelope they expect you to use. If you order something from Amazon yourself, you get charged shipping and handling. Why don’t they give it to you, as an affiliate bookseller? Is it because AMAZON IS EVIL?

Anyway, I didn’t realize that I’d get screwed on shipping. I put the book up for $1.95, to get rid of it. $1.95-Amazon’s cut ($1.28) + Amazon’s allowed shipping ($2.26) – real shipping ($3.52) is a loss of $0.59. It’s worth it to get rid of that huge honking waste of bookshelf space, but IT COULD HAVE GONE IN THE BONFIRE. I guess that’s the price I pay for “recycling” the book.

I broke the new wall plate so I need to make yet another trip to the hardware store.

Oh, my friend Sun asked why I was being so prudish. I can’t believe you’re the same guy who used to go around telling people to ask him if he had four Erlenmayer(sp) flasks in his pocket, or if he was just happy to see them. I suppose I was just trying to be funny. By the way Sun, it’s Erlenmeyer.

OK, had another book go. I figure if I get $20 for a book that was going to be in a bonfire anyway, that’s good. I spend about $5 on shipping and packaging, and I gain another few inches on my bookshelf. I should probably buy more bookshelves but. eh.

So while I was geekily buying another padded envelope to ship out my book, I saw a guy copying a ham radio manual. I chatted with him for a while about the radio. Sort of reminds me of what my co-worker said to me the other day, “How old are you? You live at home with your parents, you’re the treasurer of the ham radio club. Do you ever get <non-naughty word with naughty implications>?

So I returned the stuff I didn’t use to fix the toilet, and I spent a bunch more on an exhaust fan timer for the bathroom and a shower squeegee. Then some flourescent bulbs burnt out and the knob on the medicine cabinet fell off. So tomorrow is another trip to the hardware store. Yeesh, I feel like George Bailey with his broken down house from It’s a Wonderful Life.

Something isn’t quite right, and it may be time to replace the Gateway. Who knows?

In other news, there really isn’t all that much other news. One of my books has escaped the book burning by being sold on Amazon. The rest are still headed that way. Felt weak at the gym, but that may be because lunch was 2 hot dogs for $2.

My father is still under the weather and still has the stomach ‘flu. At least he’s getting out of bed.

To sell a used book on Amazon, you need to undercut other sellers. So, basically, you can make $0.50 on the textbook that you paid $100 for. But Amazon calculates shipping and handling costs beforehand, and that means they barely give you enough for Media Mail rate postage. You still have to find a proper envelope/bag to ship the book in. I want the books that I list as “Nearly New” to arrive looking “Nearly New.” So I have to subtract $1.50 for a padded envelope from the amount I make. So, listing books for less than $1.50 means I lose money. Then, you can’t get Media Mail postage from the automated machines, so you have to go stand in line during normal business hours. And Amazon doesn’t really know what books weigh: the book I just sold was a pound heavier than they said.

OK, so I think this book burning idea is getting better and better.

Going to the gym isn’t making me ready for hoeing (garden hoeing, get your mind out of the gutter) because what I suspect are my gluteal muscles are rather sore. But that was from yesterday’s adventures. Today’s excitement involved plumbing.

Greg’s brother-in-law Earl is a plumber (Aapple plumbing) and I knew I should have called him instead of fixing the toilet, but my dad’s kind of confused and if the toilet near his bed was missing, I don’t know what would happen. What started this was fixing the sink upstairs. Like all our Moen sinks, the cartridge inside needs to be replaced every few years. As long as I was fixing that, I thought I should fix the toilet as well. Replace the valves, I thought. Well, rocking of the toilet was starting to bother me as well, so looked into that. I ended up dismantling the toilet and finding a lot of rust underneath. I think the subfloor needs to be replaced, but that’ll have to be another day.

Of course I found all this out at 5:45PM on a Sunday afternoon. I rushed to the hardware store and bought a bunch of parts, figuring that I could return the parts that I didn’t need, but this was the only chance I’d have to buy parts until the next day. Turns out all I needed were some washers, some nuts, and a new wax seal. And a couple of hours, maybe three. I even had to hacksaw off the old corroded handle.

WHAT EXCITEMENT! (I could tell you about mowing the lawn yesterday, too.)