Seeing as how I'm moving to Fort Wayne, IN for the third time in 18 months, I've gotten used to packing my shit up and leaving town. It's been a harrowing experience, to say the least, ruining some friendships and straining others, making it harder to become close friends with people when you know you have to move away in 4 months. At any rate, I'm already getting off track here in my blog... the real reason why I mention the moving situation is that it gets rather tiresome and expensive to move all of your earthly belongings (and for a 22-year-old, I do have quite a lot).

THAT SAID, I've decided to make this last stint in FW like a long weekend... packing only what will fit in my car and not a mattress set more. That's right: I'm abandoning my bed at leaving in here in East Lansing for the sub-leaser to use. (Con waterproof mattress pad, thankyouverymuch. I don't want a SINGLE piece of DNA on my bed when I get back.)

That decision out of the way, I set out on a mission: inflatable bed! Did you know they make state-of-the-art inflatable beds? Like with MRP's of $250? I did not know these things. And now I do. So after a little poking around on the ole www, I hit up e-bay. I found many of said mattresses, all from warehouses or the likes. Bids were around the 30s-40s with S&H of (deep breath) $25. Compared to the hassle of moving a bed to another state, this was okay, I decided. I put in a bid on a blow-up bed at $40. Current price was $21 with 4 hours left, so I figured $40 was a safe bet.

I return to my computer a while later, and see the red X of death, the "you've been outbid!" sign and realize I lost the auction. "That's cool," I say, and bet on another mattress. This time I up it to $45 and try and check back every hour or so to check up on it. Suffice it to say, but NYPD Blue re-runs were on (the ones with Zack Morris... duh!) and I missed the end of my auction. Some bitch called "cbtnuggets" upped my bid at the last second and stole my inflatable air mattress! Cuz why would you choose your Ebay name to have the word NUGGET in it anyway!

Pissed, I went on a bidding fury. I found every similar product and placed high bids on each and every one of them. A minute later, I starting sweating with Ebay bidding anxiety. What had I gotten myself into? It was like an addiction. A "step AWAY from the ebay" moment, if you will. Luckily, I was outbid on every single one of them within 2 hours. After checking my "My Ebay" and seeing all of them listed in the "Items you have not won" category, I chose one fateful air mattress and said "You are MIIIIIIINE." And thus started my all-out bidding W.A.R.

There were only a handful of minutes left, twenty or so. I upped the ante. She upped it right back, within seconds. (She, not the automatic bidder built into ebay...) We went back and forth over the next twenty minutes... for a few minutes I would see the hopeful green check mark, proclaiming me the highest bidder. A couple of minutes later, refresh after refresh, I would see the ugly red X.

We were down to a mere sixty seconds... she upped it A WHOLE FIVE DOLLARS. I wasn't going to take no for an answer, so I counted down and had my Maximum-of-all-Maximum bets ready to submit, and then BAM! I submitted it with 5 seconds to go. Yeah, I'm a m-f'ing badass, I know. Victorious. All of that for an $85 INFLATABLE AIR MATTRESS. Oh boy, I think I need to find myself a hobby.