Four on the floor

10/14/09 Three ant farms, given away on Craigslist; Kenner Star Wars Movie Viewer, sold on ebay for $1.04; Star Wars Power Droid action figure, sold on ebay for $0.99; Folding keyboard for Pocket PC, sold on ebay for $6.05

What a busy downsizing day. I mailed off three ebay items (only two of which were Star Wars related; I'm diversifying) and gave away three ant farms. Yes, ant farms.

Here's a rundown:

The ant farms used to be in my kindergarten classroom in Harlem. Pretty cool, actually, but not the sort of thing you would usually bother to load up and move 350 miles. I did, and they have remained, neatly packed and labeled, in a box ever since. The guy who took them thought his six-year-old son would enjoy watching the industriousness of the ants, and I whole-heartedly concur.

The Movie Viewer is really pretty cool. You hold it up to your eye, turn a crank, and see clips from the original Star Wars. Although it dates from 1977, it was not something I was given as a child. (This fact stunned my Dad, who commented that there couldn't possibly have been anything Star Wars-related that I didn't have as a child.) This viewer, I'm pretty sure, was give to me by my friend and fellow Teach For America co-worker, Greg Castano. I assumed it was his as a kid, but he somehow parted with it while he was still in his twenties. I needed to wait until my thirties before I could bear the thought of losing it.

The folding keyboard is very cool. My first foray into the world of hand-held computing was a black and white Compaq iPAQ, and the folding full-size keyboard basically turned it into the world's smallest, most portable laptop computer. It's the one thing the iPhone is missing. Are you listening, Steve Jobs?

Most interestingly, the whole world had the chance to bid on the Power Droid, and it sold to someone a few towns over, in Harrison, Maine. I probably should have saved the postage and hand-delivered it.

Whew, a busy day, indeed. Took me nearly twenty minutes to package up all the ebay items at the Norway Post Office, where I'm becoming a regular.

It seems like I should take the day off tomorrow after downsizing four different things today.

But I won't.