A Physicist Having A Yard Sale?

You'd think that we physicists are immune to having a yard sale. That's the look that I got over the weekend when some people found out that I was a physicist.

Over this past weekend, I decided that I've had enough crap.... er ... stuff in the house that needs to go. So I decided to do a garage/yard sale, since that was the weekend that my city designated as our zipcode-wide garage sale days. I set up stuff very early on Friday, and it went through till mid afternoon yesterday.

So it is your typical yard sale in many ways - old stuff, used stuff, but also a few new stuff that never been opened. But I guess what made it rather unusual are all the science/math books that I had for sale. Some people who walked by the stacks of books did a double take when they see books on math, physics, spectroscopy, etc. A person even picked up the infamous Abromowitz and Stegun's "Handbook of Mathematical Functions", looked at me, and said "Really?!"

And I replied "Really!".

A few people inquired what I do for a living, and of course, many of them have never met a physicist (at least, not that they know of). A person even asked if I work at CERN! :)

Anyway, the 3-day yard sale weekend was tiring, but it was a lot of fun. Made more than $300 selling stuff that I no longer want. Whatever's left will be donated.

And no, the Abromowitz/Stegun book didn't get sold, as with the rest of the math/science books, even though I was selling them for 50 cents a piece! If you are in the Chicago area, look out for those on sale at your nearest charity resell stores in the near future!

Zz.