Not that kind - flea markets! A group of us went to Mary's Swap Meet way early this morning. If you don't get there before 7:00 am, you won't have time to see everything before they start packing up to leave at 10:00 am.
We were on the hunt for art supplies - broken wind-up clocks and watches, vacuum tubes, gears, gizmos, and assorted antlers and bones. Itzl has a way of finding exactly the antlers and bones I need for assorted art projects, plus, he charms the people into lowering their prices.
Most people, anyway.
There was this one guy who was adamantly angry with everyone and charging incredibly high prices, which only seemed to make him angrier. I suppose he was expecting to make a killing at a flea market...selling scrap leather and rusty bolts. And he refused to bargain or negotiate or anything. Nor was he selling anything.
We didn't buy anything from him either, just moved on to the next table of stuff.
Bev scored 20 watches, a small bag of beads, and some odds and ends of jewelry she could use in her sculptures.
Annette scored beads - she does some amazing beadwork. It's finely detailed, and many of her peices feel like heavy silkin your hand, as soft and flowing as water.
I got a pair of horse scapulae, some vacuum tubes, some glass test tubes (now they've gone to plastic stuff, the glass ones are expensive and harder to find).
Itzl made friends with a Yorkie, 3 goats, and a pile of baby bunnies. He also helped unearth half the vacuum tubes, the bones, and some of the watches. He alerted on 4 cell phones and the back up beeps of a huge pick up truck that almost ran us down.
By alerting, he saved the well being of 3 people, but he's not a hero. Not at all. Just doing his job, and could he have a drink of water, please?
That's my dog.
Then we went to What-a-Burger for lunch, stopping at Bev's to retrieve her husband and feed him, too. Itzl alerted on the noon sirens in the car, impressing folks mightiliy because they always seem impressed when he does his job.
Since it's Saturday, and it was the noon siren, he expected lunch soon after alerting, so it was a good thing we were just a block away from What-a-Burger. He got his usual: a junior burger plain and dry, hold the bun.
Then we had a brief meeting on Octopodi-Con, the steampunk convention I will be co-chairing in 2012. We discussed timelines, financing, decided an LLC was the best way to go, and discussed which banks might offer us the better deal. We also discussed hotel choices. Convention hotels are - small - here. We need about 25,000 to 40,000 square feet of program space, and room blocks of about 100 - 150 (making for nearly 600 room nights combined). Average convention and meeting space in most hotels here is about 5,000 square feet.
Itzl had nothing to do during this conversation, so he just chilled out as we gabbed on about convention business.
Then we went garden shopping. Sadly, my car is too small for the honeycrisp apple tree I very much want to buy and plant, so I passed up the tree for more lavender plants.
And now we're home, where I'm punking up bubble guns for steampunk games.