Bouncing Hedgehog

Archive for the ‘My Day’ Category

Like many people back in December we got hit by a snowstorm which (at least in Clendenin, West Virginia) practically sent us back to the stone age. Just before midnight on Friday December 18 the cable went out. No biggie – the TV schedule sucked anyway. Within the hour the power and the phone followed suit. And that’s where the real fun began.

Fortunately for us we have a log fire and a reasonable supply of logs which meant that we weren’t totally without heat. It wasn’t great – we could get the den up to about 62F – but it was certainly better than the rest of the house which very quickly dropped to 40F. We always have food and water on hand for emergencies and thanks to a camping gas stove we could at least cook after a fashion.

We also have a small radio (also for emergencies) and so we tuned in to try and find out what was happening. There’s half a dozen local stations so we didn’t think that would be too hard. Boy, were we ever wrong. What we needed to know were details of the power outages (and what steps were being taken to repair the downed lines) and whether our area had even been reported as out and of course what Verizon were up to as regards downed phone lines. With the phone out we couldn’t report the power out. Cellphone coverage where we live (a whole 25 miles from the state capital) is non-existent. Read the rest of this entry »

Those of you that know me well know that I love auctions. And I have certainly had some good deals and yesterday was no exception. Being English and living in the US I can’t begin to even get across to my American friends just how much I miss the quality of British TV (one of the main reasons I joined Netflix who have a really good selection) and consequently I am always on the lookout for British TV dvds.

The complete set of Inspector Morse mysteries was up for grabs at my local auctioneers (www.mountaineerauctions.com) yesterday. Now this is a 35 disc boxed set issued in the US by PBS. It wasn’t individually listed on their web site so I hadn’t done any research beforehand but I reasoned a set with that many discs had to be at least $150 and so I was prepared to bid accordingly.

To cut a long story short I got the set (in perfect condition by the way) for a paltry $45! I took a quick look online today and it goes for $430.

60 hours of quality viewing and I don’t have to put up with a gung-ho swat team. Marvellous!

Last weekend I went to an estate auction. Nothing really unusual there for me as I go to around ten a year at a local very well run auction house here in West Virginia (Mountaineer Auctions at Clendenin for anyone who is interested). What was unusual was that this was an auction at the estate itself. The first I had been to of this type. They were selling the house as well that day so it obviously made sense. Especially as the contents of the estate were not huge and probably not worth carting off to the auction rooms themselves.

The auctions I had previously attended at the auction house were usually quite big affairs. Probably an average of four to five hundred people attending. This was on a much smaller scale. I’d say there were no more than sixty people there at most. The items up for auction were pretty much what you’d expect with most estates. With one exception. Read the rest of this entry »