Running on empty

2/7/10 Running shoes, trashed

How NOT to run a road race:

1) Do virtually no running for about a year.

2) Do little to no other fitness activity for the same year.

3) Carbo-load. For a month. On casseroles made by your mother and sister.

4) Have a baby.

5) Get no more than four consecutive hours of sleep for three straight weeks.

6) Choose a 10-mile race, on Super Bowl Sunday, in twenty-degree weather.

7) Run your worst-time ever (1:27:07); finish with bloody foot.

8) Use it as an excuse to throw away your oldest running shoes.

9) Consider it a success.

Geaux Saints!

2/6/10 Three copies of Sports Illustrated, mailed to Tom Brady, Tedy Bruschi, and Randy Moss for (hopefully!) autographs

On the eve of the Super Bowl, I decided to do a football-themed downsize by mailing off three issues of Sports Illustrated that boast cover photos of great Patriots. The Pats may have had a disappointing exit from the playoffs this year, but they still get the nod from this fan.

As pigskin season ends, I'm hoping that the Messrs. Brady, Bruschi, and Moss are a bit more responsive than their counterparts in baseball, Pedro Martinez, Josh Becket, Dice-K, and Jonathan Papelbon, none of whom have returned the magazines I mailed to them for autographs. Still haven't decided if I feel slighted.

What I DON'T feel slighted about is this year's Super Bowl match-up, the Colts vs. the Saints. As any good Patriot fan would, I'll be rooting against the Colts on principle alone, but I'm also very happy to jump on the NOLA bandwagon with the rest of the country and root for the city that truly deserves something great to happen.

Geaux Saints!

Editor's Note, 3/11/10: 1) The Saints DID win, proving that once in a while the good guys do prevail. Payton Manning's performance in the game also solidified Tom Brady's status as far-and-away the best quarterback of the last decade. (Big smile.) Speaking of Brady, that magazine with his picture on the cover came back today. Click here to find out if he signed it.

That sinking feeling

2/5/10 Bunch of stuff under sink, trashed, recycled, or consumed

Is there a plumber in the house?

Not here, but I'm doing the best I can. The past week has included some furnace and water issues, which have now led to dishwasher problems. Ugh.

Never one to hire someone to do a job right when I can take five times longer doing it poorly myself, I'm attempting to correct all issues. Wish me luck.

All do-it-yourself projects, however, are also an opportunity for downsizing. This one led me beneath the kitchen sink, where few people dare to venture. An hour later and I had downsized a dozen of the items under there, cutting the clutter nearly in half.

Hey, I may not fix the dishwasher, but that sink area is lookin' good.

PEZ, part two

2/4/10 Nine Star Wars PEZ dispensers, sold on eBay for $2.35

Those of you, Dear Readers, who were paying close attention to the title of this earlier post have been expecting more PEZ. There's always more PEZ.

However, rather than wax poetic on the myriad joys of bad candy that comes in freaky plastic heads, I will simply take this opportunity to again point out Problem Number One with eBay.

Shipping costs.

Earlier this week I sold seven brand new PEZ dispensers (still in their original packaging!) for $0.99. Then, I sold nine used PEZ dispensers for $2.35. Granted, nine is more than seven, but shouldn't the fact that the first set was unopened have made them more valuable?

Well, in fact it did.

The new PEZ went for a total of $9.08, while the used PEZ sold for a total of $5.45. But, the new stuff cost so much to mail that I basically gave it away for free. Who got all the money? The United States Postal Service. (I like to pretend that at least I'm helping with the whole federal budget deficit thing.)

The higher shipping costs for the still-in-packaging items ate up 90% of my profits. Argh!

Wanna make some money?

I'm going to propose a deal right now, Dear Readers, with whichever one of you can figure out how to eliminate my eBay shipping costs. I will SPLIT 50/50 every cent I make on eBay from tomorrow until the end of the Downsize Challenge, with the first person who figures out how to get stuff to people without it costing me anything.

Been waiting for your ship to come in? It's tied to the dock, Dear Readers. You ready to take the helm?

Put on your entrepreneurial hats. We've got a problem that needs solving and money that needs making. The suggestion box is open.

In memory of Maggie

2/3/10 Two claim checks, recycled

Joanna's mother passed away eight years ago today, on February 3, 2002.

It is one of the great fortunes of my life that I was able to get to know her before her battle with cancer ended. Although Joanna and I weren't yet married, I like to think she knew we were headed down that road.

Joanna likes to say that people live on through the good works they do and the people they influence.

Well, Maggie gave us Joanna and her sister Amanda and, by extension, little Chase. That's about as big an impact that anyone can have on my life, so I'd say Maggie is still with us, in a very big way.

We also know that people live on through the possessions they leave behind. Our house has many special reminders of Maggie, from furniture and crystal to paintings and movies. (She had impeccable taste in films. Rest assured, our VHS copies of Breakfast at Tiffany's, Psycho, and Giant will NOT be getting downsized.)

A few years ago, we also discovered two claim tickets among her belongings. One was for Marco Jewelers and the other for Mr. C's Fix-Up Shop, two Stamford, CT, establishments where Joanna says Maggie was loved as a customer.

I had this romantic notion that we might be able to call up with the claim check number and discover that some other physical reminder of Maggie had been sitting in the back room of a shop for the last eight years. A necklace she took in for cleaning or a lamp that needed to be re-wired.

I worked up the courage to call both businesses this week, and although the proprietors where tremendously understanding and helpful, there were no secret items to be discovered. Most likely, Maggie picked up whatever she had dropped off long ago, and just never threw out the claim check. These claim checks weren't tickets to long-lost items, they were just little slips of papers that had once passed through Maggie's hands.

I was momentarily disappointed, since I thought it would be pretty special to uncover another connection to Maggie, like a message sent to us years after her passing.

And then I realized that she's already given us all we could ask for: Joanna, Amanda, and Chase. What stronger message could the world receive than the gifts these three bring to us daily?

Thank you, Maggie, for living on so beautifully.

The strange price of FREE

2/2/10 Food steamer & foreign voltage converters, given away on craigslist

Here's the biggest lesson I've learned about craigslist.com:

If you offer something for FREE, people will want it.

It doesn't matter what it is, if it's free, they'll be knocking down your door. Offer the same thing for $1 and the sound of silence will deafen you, but throw it up for free, and the clamor will shatter the windows.

The appeal of "free" is really a fascinating phenomenon (and one that Chris Anderson explores quite well in his aptly-titled book, Free. Go here if you want to download the audio book for -- you guessed it -- FREE!).

Here's an example of the power of free:

A few months ago, I put our virtually brand new food steamer on craigslist for $5. A paltry price, considering that the exact same product is selling on Amazon.com at this very moment for $34.99. After a few weeks, I hadn't had a single inquiry.

Guess nobody on craigslist could use a steamer, right? WRONG! There's just nobody on craigslist who wants to PAY (even a token amount) for a steamer.

I put it up on the site again last night, this time offering it for free. Brace yourself. Within eighteen hours I had over twenty different people falling over themselves to get it.

And here's a tidbit that makes it even more interesting: I put up a separate post offering some random voltage converters that you can use to plug items into foreign electrical sockets. A completely random and unrelated item, no?

And yet, I had no fewer than four people who decided they desperately needed BOTH of these items, ASAP.

One more twist: One of the first people to reply and the guy I gave them to (hey, if I can give them both away in one shot, I'm going to make that deal) turned out to be someone that I already downsized to. It was Richard, a guy who also took two random things off my hands back in November. It think I need to start direct-marketing to the guy. Rather than posting on craigslist, I'm just going to email my offers right to him.

Of course, if Richard doesn't want what I'm trying to get rid of, I know there are plenty of others who do. As long as I offer it for free.

PEZ, part one

2/1/10 Seven unopened Star Wars PEZ dispensers, sold on eBay for 99 cents

The downside of having a random interest, such as Star Wars, is that whenever somebody wants to get you a gift, they default to gifts connected to that interest.

So, just because I love Star Wars, people suddenly think that I have an interest in anything and everything Star Wars related. Like PEZ dispensers.

Which, frankly, I don't.

Don't get me wrong, I actually thought it was pretty cool when I was given the first few, but then they started to build up. I didn't really have a way to display them (and I certainly knew enough not to suggest to Joanna that we should display them) and eventually I found myself in possession of several boxes of Star Wars PEZ, some still in their original packaging, since I'm not much of a fan of the candy, either.

I actually sold a shoebox full of them at a yard sale before the Downsize Challenge began, but I came across another box of them in the basement a few weeks ago. Half of those were unopened, so I put those seven together as a package deal, figuring the original packaging would fetch a high price.

Not exactly.

Regardless, they are headed to California, hopefully to someone who either has a cool way to display them or, at the very least, is into five-year-old candy.