The reason we had a garage sale over Labor Day weekend rather than just donating things to the local thrift stores was because we had some larger items: a cooktop range, a double oven and a fold-out couch. Although we ended up making $90 at the sale (not too shabby, considering the lack of effort I put into advertising it), those items remained. I left them outside with signs announcing FREE, and by the next day, the cooktop had apparently found itself a new home.

After a week, I checked with a couple of the local thrift stores, and they didn't want the sofa or the double oven (the sofa was pretty scratched up by cats, and since the oven is a built-in that requires special hookups, the odds of someone having something worse than our hideous ochre remnant of the 70s was pretty slim.) I kept meaning to put an ad in the paper but didn't get around to it until a couple of weeks ago. Two days before the ad came out in the local paper, it rained. Fortunately, we live in an arid climate, so I was hopeful that maybe it would dry out enough to be usable. I was honest with the four or five people who called, telling them the sofa had been rained on. They each said they were still interested in checking it out, but no one took it.

Yesterday, the Pennysaver ad came out.

This morning, I awoke to find the sofa -- and my car, and the yard, and just about everything else in sight -- buried under roughly two feet of snow.

I think I'll consider the couch to have been a sacrifice to the Precipatory Powers That Be for the greater good of our drought-stricken valley.

I wonder what else we can leave outside to encourage more snow....