I see...A Women's Expo!

Trying to act as a supportive husband, I was one of only a few men at the Women's Lifestyle Expo at the Salem Civic Center last weekend. The boon was that some of the talbes set up featuring everything from vitamin juice to support bras had fun-size candy bars or - at the least - mints and pens.

Sure, there wasn't much there that was supposed to appeal to me, and - sure enough - nothing did. Luckily, we got in free thanks to some compt tickets from my mother, who was working one of the booths.

All were overshadowed, however, by the psychic offering free "private" readings, though there were a solid twenty people hovering about her divination podium. The line for her readings was at least 50 people long, and while I don't know how long Madam Whatshername was devoting to each person, waiting in that line must have been a 90-minute commitment if it was a second.
I'm not sure how the center measures success: whether it's based on how well the vendors do, too.

But if based on attendance alone, they must have been happy with the expo, because it was rather full. Filled enough to make anything worth looking at require queuing and waiting your turn (save for the aforementioned psychic, whose service has a worth measured in relative naivete).

It was actually done up rather well - hardly comparable to when there's a gun show or the horse show, but feeling rather appropriate for the occasion. I just hope that amid all the tea leaf reading, attendants made time to check out some of the health booths, which seemed fairly in earnest if a little trendy.

All in all, if the same event took place for men, I'd very likely pay the $5 entry fee. Though I'd certainly expect the fun-size candy bars as compensation just in case.

Banning books? We're still doing that?

While I normally stay away from politics, I'm still a little disappointed at all of the drama over The Perks of Being a Wallflower being pulled from school shelves in the Valley.

The most recent story (Thurs) involved a local teacher who stopped teaching Hawthorne for fear of backlash. Umm...yeah.

I didn't dig school until college. I was the student teachers claimed: "is an A student" who "just doesn't apply himself." In reality, I was the student who would have rather read something like Wallflower rather than The Canterbury Tales. Don't get me wrong, Chaucer is amazing...for an adult. For youth, he's about as engaging as a church sermon.

The books I did read in youth were ones I'd smuggled from my parents' books: King, Sheldon, and other masters of pulp fiction. Inappropriate? Maybe. But it was the allure of reading something I shouldn't have been that made me devour such books with haste. It could just as easily have been Chuck Palahniuk, Irvine Welsh, or William Burroughs.

At least The Roanoke Times acknowledged that banning books ALWAYS has the opposite effect: kids and adults alike clamor for and seek out the banned books to see what the excitement is about. In that way, maybe banning is key to getting youth fired up about books.

Just so the local library still carries them, that is.

Yard Sale Saturday: Beautiful Day

It was a perfect day for yard sales, and - as of this writing - still is, though we have returned home with the car full and the need for a weekend nap imminent.

The weather was beautiful and there were myriad yard salers out there availing themselves of it. We struck up a number of conversations while perusing people's wares, and also came across some...interesting finds worth mentioning.

1. Ten pounds of copper tubing priced at $25. The value of the metal as scrap: $24. I'm not mathematician, but I'm thinking lowering the price a few bucks would save this seller a trip to the recycle plant.

2. Crummy X-Box 360 games for $3. Man that's cheap for X-Box games...but the games are lame. I was thinking gifts, pleading ignorance as to the low quality of the gameplay, but opted to pass.

3. Huge box of VHS tapes selling for $1 each right next to the neighbor's even larger box of tapes selling three for $1. Hmmmm....decisions, decisions. I'm gonna have to go with option b on this one.

4. Tons of bake sales. Nothing like having fresh baked goods at yard sales. They're cheap, delicious, and provide ample fuel to keep pushing for "just a couple more" sales. Keep 'em comin'.

All in all, a fun day yard sale-ing out there. Plenty to choose from as the last of the "spring cleaning" sellers realized they have to strike while the iron is still hot. We may only have another month before it's time for jackets, and that always means fewer yard salers out there.

It won't stop us, but hey, I have to have something to write about...