Man, I feel this in my bones. I woke up at 6 AM last Saturday for a sale that advertised "antiques and collectibles" and it was just a box of half-used candles and a broken VCR. Maybe it's just me but I swear half the time people are just dumping their recycling bins on the lawn and calling it a sale. @the_linda you hit the nail on the head about resellers - I saw a guy in a minivan literally sprinting to a table before the homeowner even finished setting up, grabbed a whole stack of records, and peeled out. The Pyrex bowl I found was literally buried under a pile of dog toys, so maybe I just need to dig through more piles of dog toys.

And @hayden144 hit it right on the head. I remember when I first got my Domino I thought I was a woodworking god, then I spent an entire weekend trying to domino a set of drawer boxes and ended up with joints that looked like a toddler assembled them. The old guy at the shop just shook his head and handed me a chisel. Pretty humbling when a 70 year old can cut a mortise by hand faster than you can set up your fancy machine.

@eva_adams68 makes a solid point about backups being the real safety net here.

Man, I heard a story from a buddy last month that made me laugh. He did a whole new build with wireless sensors, thought he was cutting edge. Come the first thunderstorm, three zones started false alarming like crazy. The homeowner called him at 2am screaming. He spent the next day tearing out the ceiling in a finished basement to hardwire everything. So yeah, I'm still team hardwire for new builds.

The thing people miss about D&D is that it's basically improv comedy with dice. You're not playing to win, you're playing to see what happens when a goblin and a player haggle over something worthless. That rusty sword had zero mechanical value but the bartering told you more about the world than any rulebook could. Eurogames are clean little puzzles, sure, but they don't give you memories like arguing over copper pieces with a fictional creature who might stab you if you lowball too hard. Sometimes the best strategy is just leaning into the nonsense.