People fall into shark tank. This was a special tour for DONORS. Talk about being asked to give an arm and a leg!

I looked at the Bee ad and called to make a slight correction: it's "HAM radio" not "hand radio."

Back in Davis, we were setting up for tomorrow's sale. We'll go early and, with any luck, we'll have a fairly simple job to set up. We'll move the furniture out of the garage onto the driveway (unless, of course, the furniture guy finally turns up) and the bikes and the exercise machine out in front, and I'll drape a trash blanket over the wall in front and put the clothes out onto it. There's a case on which I want to put the special stuff I want to keep an eye on, like the silver. I want to drag out the under-desk mats, too, and move the futon from the back room, and then I think it's mostly in order.

We put boxes and bags into the closets and Rich made signs that said nothing in the closets was for sale. I grouped like-priced things together. There are signs on the wall describing prices and others saying to look at the whole house.

In one back room, there's a box of posters, at 10 cents each. (Some are a lot nicer, like a Chagall one, but I'm not proud.) The Ansel Adams is marked at $2, and there are some framed things at $5 each. The empty frames are $1. The rest of the room is antique computer stuff. (We're talking Vic-20, TRS-80, C-64, Atari, and Osbourne, as well as the two that were actually in use, both 386s. My friend gave his family and friends some great machines, but had POSmachines himself.) There are a lot of laserdisks, too.

In his bedroom there's his waterbed ($10) and a table with $5 and $4 Petsters. I put down a couple more trash blankets, put nice blankets on one and miscellaneous linen (5 cents a piece) on the other. I know that's a low low price. If you want something at this sale, you'd best hope I priced it. Rich is after the money, I am wanting to get rid of things. The last wall of this room has stationery stuff, file folders, paper, binders, all dirt cheap.

The computer room still has some furniture, and some plastic cases for things. In the kitchen, I covered the counters with 10 cent items. The stainless is 5 cents apiece. The radio which we've been using as we sell is $1 and the microwave $10. There are vases and nifty ornaments for $1 and $2, and two popcorn poppers and a juicer and two Farberware grills and a blender. I wouldn't mind throwing out the popcorn poppers, but the other appliances are neat. There are Hallowe'en decorations. There are toys. Star Trek models are $2 apiece. I spread another blanket for the quarter items. There are packs of Christmas cards, soaps, games, more toys. Then there are boxes of, well, STUFF. Then there are four turntables, three VCRs, two televisions, an old projector, radio stuff, a heavy reel-to-reel tape recorder. Off in the garage Rich has packed like things into sandwich bags. There is a LOT of stuff. I still think this house is a tesseract, bigger on the inside than the outside, because don't forget all the times we went to the dump, all the papers we went through, the books that went to the kid or to the bookstore.

I don't know why I'm nervous. We'll be wearing change aprons, so we're less likely to get ripped off, and I think it should go well. Still, I'm really antsy about this.

I was pretty well tuckered out but I drove off to take Casey to the last library party. Unfortunately, it turned out that the child had been sent home early, and (grumble) they hadn't bothered to call me. So I turned around and collapsed when I got home.

The feds seem to think it's their job to mandate what kind of television manufacturers can make. Twenty years behind the curve, as usual, and not giving the free market any credit. They dunno there's a war on, it seems.

They'll search bags at the State Fair, but I think my nail clippers will be OK.

ObGoe: Bill Quick has been "coincidently" ripped off. GoE was all upset that SLIDERS was a ripoff of DOORWAYS. Then there's the whole ER vs. Chicago Hope thing. For these guys, copyright seems to mean that the customer can't copy off the TV, and nothing to do with stealing ideas.