Today was the Willow Bunch Community Garage Sale. I don’t know if it’s the population dwindling or if it was the weather, but not very many people participated. As I drove through town looking for balloons and signs around 9:30, I thought my outing would be a bust. Ha!

I drove past the first home that had stuff for sale because it seemed too small to be worth my time. Silly Rae! I went back, thankfully, and found something I have been looking for for ages:

It’s a small good quality dry erase monthly calendar. I’ve been using a dry erase board for years to track my transcription load, but there was only room to write out a week at a time. You might be surprised that I don’t use an app for that, but I haven’t found a calendar or task app that can let me manage my queue in an effective manner. I can just glance at the board, with each of my clients being colour-coded, and easily move things around. This will get a lot of use!

I also found these:

They are real leather and are brand new. I will be really happy next time I head to Mexico to have so many good pairs of sandals at the ready!

Then, I went to the library as they were advertising books and magazines for very little. With my line of work, I’m often too brain dead to read anything substantial in the evening, but magazine articles are just the right length. Well, the library took advantage of me:

The sign said to fill a bag for 25 cents so I was trying to not be greedy and just grabbed a few of whatever titles that interested me, like Our Canada, Canadian Living, and Canadian Geographic. One of the library ladies said, “Oh, someone wants magazines! Yay! What are you interested in?” I told her and she put all the rest of the aforementioned magazines in my bag, a couple of National Geographics, and a bunch of Tastes of Home (good recipes). She would have kept going with more, but that was enough! I paid 50 cents for this whole stack. I can’t wait for the next nice afternoon that I can knock off around 4:00 and go sit in my swing with some of these and my last cold beer!

Next stop was the thrift store. I got a nice tee-shirt and a not-so-nice (pilly and a bit worn) maxi skirt that will be great for just wearing around the house when I’ve got projects on the go and don’t want to have to worry about stains. I also found:

These are heavy duty appliance casters (wheels) that should work well for my plan to build a rolling platform for my table saw.

And then, for nostalgia’s sake, I picked this up:

These are the exact kinds of locks we used when I was in high school. Twenty years later, I still remembered how to spin it. The combination is on the back so, yes, I was able to test it. And, yes, I need to memorise said combination and remove the sticker! 🙂

Next stop was a house advertising a bunch of tools. I showed up late and all the good stuff had been picked through, but I got an Allen key set, a mallet, and two tape measures. The guy had so many tape measures he said he’d just give me the second one, so I grabbed it! Now, I can keep one in each out building and one in the RV!

It was still a bit too early for lunch at this point (BBQ at the seniors’ centre), so I decided to mosey on over to the Willow Bunch Museum to see the new Métis room (I have an invitation to attend the official opening on June 21st). I caught up with Nichole at the front desk and then she said to pick out anything I wanted in the gift shop, like a jacket, as a thank you for all the translation I do for them! I was shocked! I tried on a few different ones and this was a winner:

The shimmery olive colour doesn’t translate well to the screen, but it’s really luxe and will go with everything. The inside is fleece and the outside is apparently water repellent (according to the tag), although I’m not holding my breath about that.

Can you imagine how much use I’m going to get out of it?! It’s going to be a great hiking jacket. It’s going to Bulgaria with me if I end up deciding to stay up in the mountains.

It does break one of my rules not to wear things with logos and place names:

But I can live with it. 😉 I’m still reeling from shock at what a nice gift this is!

I then did a blip through the museum, making a note of some of the signs that I need to translate. The new Métis room is really impressive and I’ll make a point to go with my camera next time so I can do a blog write-up.

My next to last stop was the seniors’ centre for the BBB. $5 gave you a choice of a hamburger with a really skinny patty or two hot dogs, plus either water, pop, coffee, or ice cream. I went for two hot dogs with water since I was really hungry and I knew the burger would not be enough. My neighbour Caroline, two of her houseguests, and another neighbour were there, so I joined them. They’d gone for the hamburgers and ice cream. Thankfully, there was only vanilla or strawberry, so I wasn’t tempted. Plus, it was damp and cold, not ice cream weather at all! My hot dogs were good (Mexico spoiled me in that regard!), with the bun being cold but the dogs themselves perfectly BBQed (I expressly asked for the ones that were set aside for being a little too charred). We were all happy with our lunch and happy to support the seniors’ centre.

Finally, we all went to the food store to pick up a few sundries. I just wanted Chinese-style soy sauce for a pork roast marinade and it was on mega sale, yay! I also got a tub of my favourite plain Greek yoghurt for half off, woohoo!

Not counting the food store stop, my budget today was $20, $15 for shopping and $5 for lunch. I came in $2 under budget. 😀

The drive home sucked, though. It was pouring rain and the gravel road was very muddy and slick. I was slipping and sliding all over the place, even at a crawl, and really glad to get home!