The Great eBay Fire Sale, Part II (I'll drink to that!)

6/11/10 Antique microscope, sold on eBay for $12.80; daggers (yeah, knives) sold on eBay for $28.00; Two liters of home-brew beer, consumed (mostly)

Thanks to my Grandmother, I netted over forty bucks on eBay today, as I sold two things that were gifts from her.

One was an interesting old microscope that, despite its coolness, I had to finally admit I had no need for. The other was a set of two intricately crafted daggers/knives/shivs that she brought back from an around-the-world cruise in the early 1980s.

I can sense your horror, Dear Readers. Yes, my downsizing continues to lead me to cast aside gifts from my closest relatives.

That's the kind of behavior that would make some people fear for their lives.

Indeed, I did take my life into my hands by cracking open a bottle of homemade beer to celebrate Game 4 of the NBA Finals last night. Fear not. While it turned out to taste better than expected, I did not, for safety sake, down the whole bottle in one evening. (Had the Celtics played poorly, it might have been another matter...)

It's worth noting that this particular beer has been the focal point of much downsizing debate between my sister-in-law and me for months. I made the beer last fall; the second time I've attempted to brew my own. Just like my previous attempt way back when I lived in New York, this batch would not exactly be a contender in the World Beer Awards.

Amanda has been vocal in her opinion that dumping the beer down the drain was a necessary and urgent downsize.

She was not the one, however, who bought all the ingredients, diligently followed the directions, and kept her bathroom heated to a precise temperature for a week just to pull of this operation. That murky looking liquid took a whole lot of energy to make.

Especially after I carted the bottle from our house to the rental apartment, there was no way I was going to just dump it.

I was going to enjoy this beer whether I liked it or not.

Luckily, as it turned out, it wasn't half bad. Perhaps aging for six months in our fridge helped, but it actually had a decent flavor. And the Celtics had a dramatic win over the Lakers to tie the series at 2-2, which surely lent the beer a greater hoppiness.

When I arrived home today, after my penultimate day of work for the Oxford Hills Public Schools, I kicked back with another glass of it as I relaxed on the patio overlooking Sebago Lake. I needed it after desperately scrambling to get the eBay items packed up and to the post office before it closed tonight. One joy of a small town is that the postal clerk let me mail my packages even though it was technically after hours.

I did have to dump the final few ounces of brewski since the bottom of the bottle was rather cloudy with sediment, but that's a technicality. I drank it, and it was good. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Finishing school, making money, and drinking beer.

Not a bad way to begin the weekend.