eBay Live....kind of

First: (somewhat) late bday, Kish!!!! I'm sorry I didn't say it sooner; I've been doing conferences the last 2 days. Hell, hardly anyone has heard from me. Welcome to my year. =-)

So if you've ever bid on eBay, you know that often, people will "babysit" their bids as the auction minutes count down, constantly refreshing their page to make sure they're still the high bidder, because other people will often swoop in at the last minute and place a higher bid--sometimes only pennies higher. Well, I got to experience that in person today.

We had Fall Festival at our school today. It was actually not too bad. I ended up running the cake walk for a big part of the night. (Insert Jen/food joke here.) However, a cool feature addition from last year was these gift baskets that were put up for silent auction. Each classroom compiled a basket with various themes (Parents' Night Out, Pamper Yourself, Art Supplies, Movie Night, Christmas Joy, etc) made up primarily of donated items to be auctioned off, the proceeds of which would go to our school.

Well, I saw one basket being put together in the breakroom last week that I immediately wanted--a candle basket. (Hell yeah!) So when I saw tonight that the starting price was only $35 and there was only one bid on it so far, I got really excited. (It wasn't a "blind" auction--the bids were right there in plain view, and if you wanted to bid, you just wrote your name and your new, higher bid on the next line.) However, I am also an eBay veteran, and I knew better than to bid at 6:30 when bidding didn't close till 9.

So I left, did my cake walk magic, and then moseyed (mosied?) back in around 8:45. To my surprise (and thrill), there was still just the one $35 bid. Sweet! So I entered my bid of $36. (Yes, I could have done $35.01 or something, but no one was being that cheap.) I then proceeded to stay there for the next 15 minutes, watching suspiciously if anyone so much as slowed down near "my" basket. My plan, of course, was to make sure no one else bid on the candle basket--and if they did, I'd wait till, oh, 8:59 to outbid THEM. (It was so bad that Mike tried to drag me out to Chilli's and I told him I'd meet them there--at 9:20 or so. "Yeah, me too," another teacher called from across the cafeteria. "But I can't leave yet. Only 7 more minutes!")

However, I noticed that there was ANOTHER basket that was pretty cool--a bath one, with bubble baths and lotions and things. It only had one bid, too, for $40. (I know that might sound like a lot but not if you saw how big it was and how much stuff was in it. Both these baskets were SUCH a steal.) So I wrote down a bid for that one, too.

Well, wouldn't ya know, I won them both. I'd feel bad about dropping the money but hey, it's a bday present to myself with some of my bday money from my parents. Plus, it's practically for charity. And for just over $70, I got a SHIT TON of stuff.

Here's the candle basket. I'm not sure that this pic does it justice, but suffice it to say that you're seeing just ONE side of the basket and it's jam packed all the way down.



And the bath one--OH. MY. GOD. I just opened it up and it's even better than I thought. It's mostly Bath and Body Works stuff!!!!! (And you all KNOW how I am.) To put it in perspective: here's what I actually paid for



And here's what I GOT

(it's sideways but I'm too lazy to fix it. Turn your head...or turn your monitor) ;)

PS--what you all are looking at there on the lower right is an adorable froggy towel, otherwise known as Blake's Christmas Present) =-)