Who needs an alarm clock when I have a cat?

Who indeed? This morning, my faithful furry friend, keenly aware that I had overslept, lept on the bed and pushed his furry face into mine, waking me from a sound, yet ill-timed sleepover and keeping me from being both late for work and well rested. Thanks buddy. Sadly, that was the most exciting thing that has happened to me over the past few days.

The Ebola business continues to hum along. So much so that I think I need a little break. I've never been to Staples so much in my life. Mostly, the Paypal thing works fairly well, although the associated fees are a bitch. Ebola takes their cut, then hits you on the back end with what they call an "added value fee" or something. Then, Paypal takes a cut for allowing buyers to send me "money" via the air. I try not to pay too much attention to all the fees, since mostly, I'm ahead on the deal because I'm ridding myself of mostly useless clutter and redistributing it to other parts of the world, including Australia, Canada and Croatia.

I've learned a few things about packing material and postage rates - including the fact that Canada has some strange requirement that my full name appear on the return address. Weirdos.

I have one particular buyer, who appears interested in some of my old baseball cards, who claims to be having "Paypal difficulties" and instead, insists on sending me cash through the mail. Today, I received nine dollars and twenty-five cents in an envelope. Thanks for lunch.

So far, I've been able to keep track of everything, but I'm starting to regret not buying one of those little postage meters. Fortunately, there's a Regional Distribution Center about 5 miles from home that's open until 7pm, and also has one of those neat machines that allow people to weigh and print out their postage and drop it in a box at all hours of the day or night. A 24/7 post office. The only difficulty comes in getting out of the place, since it's located in an odd confluence of state highways that jams up on Friday afternoon. I'm tempted to make a weekend run on the bicycle, but I'm having trouble figuring out a route that will neither get me killed by oncoming vehicles and avoid those same highways. Maybe I'll just keep using my car.

If I told you how much money I've made selling my nearly useless junk you probably wouldn't believe me, so I won't tell you. Plus, I don't want to have to do a lot of complicated mathematics for the Internal Revenue Service, so we're going to say it's been a break-even deal. Yeah, that's it.

Usually, when I have a few dollars saved something expensive breaks or requires maintenance. So far, so good, but the inevitable process of friction, combined with gravity and the deterioration of age will eventually catch up with just about everything. Mostly though, the big ticket items around the house are fairly new. This summer's air conditioning malfunction was the last one, and I'm still paying for it. Next, I suppose will be brakes for the car, but I suppose I have to be able to stop, so I'll wind up having to do that, too.

Added to my usual question of "can I blog about it" is the other new question, "Can I sell it?" Mostly, the answer is "Yes", since so many things around here are either sitting in a box, on a shelf or in my downstairs storage area far from my view. There's just so much clutter, which is where I came in.

When I stop blogging, you'll know I've finally sold the computer. I look at that a lot.