Some people can't seem to stay out of trouble. I can't seem to stay out of business....

I hadn’t been selling anything on eBay since last year. It was too difficult to find the time to list and then pack everything to send it. I was exhausted.

But once The Winkle* got turned on, I couldn’t seem to turn it off. Every time I’d go to the Goodwill to look for a sweater or work shirts for The Hub I’d see something I knew I could turn around and sell, with just a little bit of work, for three or four times the price. I stopped going to the auction, of course. No reason to. But sometime’s I’d see stuff that people were throwing out that I could have turned around. And The Exchange**! It was almost heartbreaking what I had to leave there for someone else, simply because - well, what was I going to do with it? That was the whole reason why I was at The Exchange in the first place, because I was getting rid of junk that was taking up too much space in my own house.

So, today, I was off of work because of a doctors appointment. It’s never a good thing for me to have a day off from work. Grinding as it may be to read through 108 pages of all the gory details of somebody’s appendectomy, at least it keeps me from Getting Ideas. Well, that’s not true. It keeps me from ACTING on my ideas, because, lets face it after a 9 hour day and a 2 hour commute it’s too late to get into a project, most of the time.

“Let’s stop by the Antique Mall” I said to The Hub who had worked most of the morning in the shop downstairs but somehow managed to hurt his right arm, and so was driving me to the craft store in the snow.

“Okay, great! I love the Antique Mall, but why do you want to go there?”

“I just want to find out how much they charge to rent space. I’m just going to check it out” I said.

By the time he got back from the booth with all the military paraphernalia I was waving contract at him happily. “You want to see where my space is going to be?”

God Bless The Hub. He looked remarkably unsurprised - which I could tell was a little disappointing to the sales clerks hanging around up front. “OK” and, bewildered, he followed me back through the maze of little aisles to the future home of Dizzy Lynn’s Frilly and Funque Junque. 9x12, wider than it is deep, and in a location which is, I think, just as good as any.

Don’t worry. Well, don’t worry too much. It’s only a month to month lease, so there’s a limit to the amount of trouble I can get into here. One of the reasons I chose this place to rent space is that I’d met the man who owns it before, at a yard sale. He’s reasonable, and the terms of the agreement were very fair. He even gave me advice about the types of licenses I’ll need: a county vendor’s license and, of course, a Maryland Sales and Use Tax number. The Sales and Use Tax number is pretty straightforward, but the County makes you run all over town collecting signatures.

“Is this what you would call a snap decision?” The Hub asked, neutrally, in the jeep on the way home.

“Nah. I’ve been planning this for about five months.”

“Ah. This is one of those plans you have in your head that you never tell anybody about and then you go and do something and everybody is like ‘What the hell are you doing?’ Right?”

“Um. Yeah, that’s pretty much it.”

“All righty then.” So you see, after 10 years of marriage it is possible for someone to get sort of used to me.

Anyway, it’s not a real complicated business model. Getting started will be the hardest part. ( for example, I have to develop an inventory in less than 30 days….but I STILL have so much stuff around here I don’t think it’s going to be that much of a problem.) It’s just capitalism 101, buy low, sell high. It can’t be any riskier than the stock market, and look how many people who don’t know what they’re doing are making money at that.

Anybody got anything they’d like to sell?

* The gut feeling that something that looks for all the world like a useless piece of junk is really something that someone else would gladly pay a lot of money for. The Jerry Garcia Chia Head, for instance.

** The Swap Shop at the local dump. All items must be in usable condition….and you’d be amazed at the condition in which some people in the County use things.