Assorted sundries

And a mouse's behind.

Yes, I took a photo of a mouse's butt yesterday. I tried to go around to the other side to take a picture of its face as well, but by that time it was too nervous and left the bird feeder before I could focus.

And why was there a mouse in the bird feeder?

For the bird seed, of course. I would have thought that part was obvious.

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I was in the local liquidation place with my father yesterday, and ended up with about $35 worth of the usual junk. Usual for me would be things like shampoo, body wash, shelf-stable food (I'm a little leery of anything that doesn't have a date on it, to be honest) and at least one item of pointless kitchenware that only got picked up because it was incredibly cheap. In this case, it was a pizza cutter.

Everyone needs a new pizza cutter now and then.

My father is the king of discount shopping, as I think I've told you before. Any excuse is a good one to check out the bargains. All it took this time was a quick mention that I hadn't been down to the place for a while, and off we went.

I'm generally pretty good about just picking up the things I need when I go to a place like that (I absolutely did need that pizza cutter. And shut up, world). I'm not terribly apologetic about doing the liquidation thing either. For a large part of the year I make little enough money that any bit of saving can be important.

Besides, going to the liquidator can be incredibly entertaining.

I'm reasonably good at picking up just what I need, yes, but I get a real charge out of watching what the other shoppers are carrying around the store.

People will buy the weirdest things if there's a discount involved.

I don't have any interesting examples from yesterday, unfortunately, since everyone was acting almost painfully normal. I have in the past, however, seen women walking around with shopping baskets absolutely full to the top with cheap nail polish (first: who uses that much nail polish? Second: are you honestly going to walk around town in that delightful shade of Floozy Hooker 193?) or expired chocolate bars.

Women, yes. The men more often go for the paint and the cheap tools. Sorry for the stereotyping there, but I can only report what I actually see.

Discount stores make perfect places for instant psychology experiments, as far as I can see, and it's probably a good thing that I've never worked at one. You just know I'd be the one risking my job by purposely mispricing the most useless items in the store. You know: put the price up as high as you can to see if the snob factor kicks in (if it's that expensive in a place like this it must REALLY be worth something), lower the price to pennies to see how many unneeded somethings the average shopper can be tempted into... that kind of thing.

I could have way too much fun.

For a couple of days.






After that I imagine I'd be looking for other work.

It's still very tempting, though. Especially when I have the Spring From Hell to look forward to at my actual job.

Ah, but we'll leave that whinging for another time. Happy Easter to those of you of the Christian persuasion; happy long weekend to the rest of you. I'm outta here.