Most grammar-challenged neighborhood ever...

Apparently, this weekend is "yard/garage sale" weekend within a two- to three-block radius of my house. I walked to Walgreens this afternoon and also drove out to Jewel-Osco and to my brother's b-day dinner, and saw quite a few signs for them, all over the place.

Anyway, several caught my eye for their terrible spelling and bad grammar. Two, in particular:
1. "HUMUGUS YARD SALE" -- This one was taped to the bus stop near Austin and Addison.
2. "YAR SALE" -- What's funny about this is, obviously someone got tired of writing these signs, because they were EVERYWHERE, and they were spelled correctly on all the other ones I saw.

Suffice to say, I did not buy anything. Though I did walk past a few front-yard sales and saw nothing but the expected crap, so I didn't even stop.

Anyway, carry on!

OK, OK, so I'm obsessed with bobbleheads, so sue me.

I just went to Brookfield to pick up five White Sox World Series bobbleheads (of the set of 11, I now have six). I'm most excited because the one I really, really wanted (of Aaron Rowand) is No. 1 of 2005 made (Forever Collectibles, the maker, numbers them). That's cool...really cool, to me anyway.

I also bought a Birmingham Barons Jack McDowell SGA (stadium giveaway) bobblehead that is just so awesome. But, see, I'm not collecting these in order to make money or sell or trade them or anything like that. Yeah, I'm excited about the Rowand bobble being No. 1, but not because that might fetch more money on the market, but just because it makes it a little more special to me. I go after bobbleheads of players I like or think are cool or whatever I feel like at the time. I have a Barry Zito Giants bobblehead that was given away when me and Gina went to AT&T Park last year on vacation. Zito sucks now, and I'm not a big Zito fan. But it is a cool bobblehead doll and a good "souvenir" of our trip. Why did I buy Josh Beckett's Marlins bobblehead? I don't know...probably again, because it looked cool and I don't dislike the Marlins...never did dislike them. So I bought it. You'd be amazed at how cheap you can get some of these bobbleheads for on eBay. Shipping, sometimes, is all you have to pay.

And then you get the breaks where you can pick up all five bobbleheads nearby and save a good amount of money on shipping...and that's cool!

So yeah, am I a dork? Sure, but we're all dorks in some way. So what do YOU collect, or what have you begun collecting in recent years? I want to know. Who knows, maybe I have something I can trade you (for some bobblehead dolls you don't want!). ;)

In a sense, it's a good thing I didn't install the fence this weekend. There's just too much pre-planning, using common sense and doing it right, that needs to be done first. With the yard having flooded because of the lack of drainage access to the alley, I'm now contemplating buying a truckload of dirt and backfilling the entire alley half of the yard, and hiring someone to come out and redo all of the sidewalks and patio areas back there so that the yard runs level to the alley.

I also have to get gutters up on the garage, period, with a downspout or two out in the alley, to shoot the water out there...and hopefully, gravity will carry it down to the street, because the slope of the alley, even, is NOT very good. So really, I'll be redirecting my water into everyone else's yards. But better than my yard, I guess. I'm a great neighbor, ain't it? :)

Whether I raise the yard or not, I'm going to have to find a way to raise the fence above the "waterline" or it's not going to last at all. It's gonna rot from the bottom up, anytime it rains and has to sit in a large puddle of water in the back. So, I'm probably looking at buying even more concrete and some cylindrical forms to raise the fence up to "level" with the alley. Don't ask me how I'm going to block off the area under the fence. I haven't gotten that far. But for now, this is what's going through my brain. We'll see how much that changes between now and when the work actually gets done.