I sure hope that they give me something back, even if it's just the gas money I used to go pick up the shelves, lol.
I also really scored... I was looking at purchasing more lye in the near future (within the next 6 months, maybe sooner). I have about 10lbs left from about 32lbs that I've purchased in the past two years. Well, I got an email from my supplier giving me 50% off, so, what would a normal person do? They'd buy 16lbs or so (which is how much I've been buying at a time), but I'm NOT normal. I purchased 64lbs of lye. And, get this, buying two orders of 32lbs, instead of one order of 64lbs saved me about $18 too! This is even cheaper than purchasing in 50lb BAGS, and it comes in the little 2lb containers that I adore so much for ease of use and safety (child proof, just in case the boys get into my soaping area). I'm so excited. When I saw the email, I figured they'd be offering up the small amounts for 50% off, because then it'd still be somewhat expensive, but nope, I could order a larger amount and REALLY save a lot of money. I saved $80!!! And lye doesn't expire either, so I'll be all set on lye for a very good long time. No more worrying about how much lye I have left before I have to fork out a bunch of money for it, lol.
ETA: I'll have enough lye now to make over 3,000 bars of soap.
Another ETA: I just got my first bid on one of the books! Still have 6 days and 15 hours left to the auctions, so hopefully they go quickly. Relisting isn't a big deal with their free listings each month, but I'd still like to get them sold and get them out of my house. I feel kind of weird having twelve animal rights books in my house, while my 3 and 4 year old children beg me to watch youtube videos of butchering chickens and milking cows...
At auction, I bought 10 dozen eggs for $8.50. Thirty went into the fridge, with the rest going to the incubator. I figure the eggs in the fridge should last us through for a little while... The other eggs are set to hatch in about two weeks, so I'll be hitting auction then, and then hopefully only go after hatches from this point, so I can be selling and stalking the eggs at the same time. That'll help cut my gas costs down, plus keep eggs on track with hatching (unless of course, I get more duck eggs that I don't intend to keep). I just need to figure out how to not overwhelm the hatcher with hatching eggs. If I see a decent incubator at auction, I might bid to use it as a hatcher.
Right now? Nope. I have pekin duck eggs in the incubator that I plan to keep, plus silkie/showgirls that I've traded for (should be shipped soon) and button quail eggs coming. All these excess eggs are just for "fun" to bring back a little bit of money at auction and locally.
Nah, I'm just crazy. I bought an incubator earlier this year, because it was a really good price for a good incubator. So... I bought it figuring that in a year or two, I can use it. Then I kinda moved and now I can hatch eggs. I hit the auction to put a few eggs in and to make sure I could still do it, and ended up with 6doz eggs (that made it to the incubator, the rest went to the fridge because they looked tastey). I do plan to keep pekin ducks, silkie chickens and button quail. The rest that hatches out of the incubator will have a chance to be sold locally, then taken to the auction. I can make a little bit of money off of them that way (calculating gas costs in there as well) and can hopefully pay for some feed and possibly supplies (been keepin an eye out at the auction for decent stuff at a decent price as well). I have to have the incubator running, so might as well fill it up to get some money back. Plus, I'm slightly addicted to hatching eggs.
I finally moved the little microwave up to my soaping room, and bought a darned shelving unit so that I could just get some of my stuff organized. I started a small batch of twenty lotion bars, and was microwaving the stuff, only to smell something funky. I opened it up quick and couldn't find anything wrong, until I tried to put the glass plate back in (stupid thing is very cheap and doesn't stay in place) and found my damned thinger in there... One of those memory card things that you put in a USB port (can't think of what it's called). Well, everything on it was lost and it is now junk. I'm really, really not happy with the boys for that one. :/ I paid $2 for it at school, but obviously cannot replace it from the school for obvious reasons, and one at the store is about $10-$20.
I'm also slowly losing my motivation with the garden at my brother's plot. There's nothing but a half tilled up spot there... He's not making any moves to help me finish it at all. I will either have to just grow what I can around the house, or try my luck at running the tiller and trying to find fertilizer by myself. :/
The incubator is being a pain as well... I can not get my eggs into it! I can never seem to catch it when everything is level so that I can get a tray out and stuff eggs in it. I have timed it and checked on it half a million times, and it is never in the right spot. :/
I FINALLY caught that darned incubator in the right spot! I decided to pull the other eggs out to check on them at the same time. I ended up pulling out 19 eggs. :/ Most were the eggs in the back, which were from a certain batch of eggs. I'm also wondering what the hey the little eggs are... They almost look like pheasant eggs, but I have no idea. Only five or six of those are left. I removed one duck egg, the one that I knew was clear the first time I candled (but yanno, you always hope you're wrong). But, still, for $6, I still have 53 eggs in there, with little embryos squishing around in there. Can't wait to see what all hatches!
Looks like two of the books will sell. One at $0.99 and the other one has a bid and two watchers, so hopefully (for my sake) those two have a small bidding war over the book.
I have button quail eggs on the way here, plus 64lbs of lye on the way as well, since my supplier was having a 50% off sale. The best I've seen from them was a 15% off in the past three years, so I jumped on this offer with a big order. The first of the eggs will have their final candle session on Thursday and will be placed into the hatcher. I can't remember if EE are 21 days or 18, since the eggs are fairly small, I'm going to put them in with the mystery bantam eggs. An extra few days of no turning shouldn't hurt them, I hope. Better than hatching in the turner and getting squished.
We hit my old fishing spot yesterday, and with a new bait type and a new setup, I was catching larger fish in this area than ever before. Unfortunately, most were 0.25-0.5" short of the min size for keeping. I did get one that was above the limit, so I strung him up. It was the only one we brought home, and it was hardly worth the effort, but I did learn something from this fish anyways. Since I've never really fileted out a fish before, I didn't really know what I was doing. I just knew that people paid money for scaling knives and crap, so I scaled this thing out, gutted it, etc. I've since learned that I can very simply just slice the filets off and skin it, and to hell with gutting or scaling. It'll save time on the fish and time from picking scales out of my hair. It didn't produce much meat, but I knew it wouldn't. It was a sorry looking fish... Despite being long, that thing was like the tall, gangly redhead kid on the playground who's 6' tall while everyone else is 4', lol.
I also had my first run in with an ingrown EYELASH! My eyelid has been sore for a few days now, and I kept trying to mess with it to figure out what was wrong. Today I finally dug that sucker out. It's a little spooky to have a safety pin at your eye with little kids running in and out of the tiny bathroom! But, now it will finally get a chance to heal!
Another cool thing... I made my first tea with homegrown spearmint. I've made peppermint tea before when I was married, but never spearmint. That was pretty cool. It'll be nice when the peppermint gets repotted and I can make peppermint tea, but mostly for old time's sake. I'm a spearmint girl through and through, lol.