Out and about

Generally speaking, I don't know if I can say that January was busier for me than normal, but I do know that I seemed to have found myself being out and about a little more than usual. And as is often the case, at least when I don't need to be anywhere by a specific time, I tend to try and stop in at places that I hope will be fun in between all of the not so fun places. 

There are only so many places for me to go locally, with most of them being of the variety that don't warrant frequent trips to. That being said, I did bring home a few things throughout the month, and as is my want, will now be subjecting those unfortunate enough to have clicked on this post, with most of those purchases.

I don't know how it is elsewhere, but finding records at thrift stores, records featuring artists that people actually want to listen to, has gotten rather difficult in recent years. Because, in case you haven't heard, there's a lot of money to be made in vinyl these days, especially amongst those #FlipLife dipshits.

Given how the employees of thrift stores, and their volunteers, get first crack at everything that comes in, I suspect that a lot of records aren't even making it past the back rooms anymore. The ones that do, are the ones that nobody on eBay would buy, you know like the old Christmas albums performed by the Nobody's Ever Heard of Sisters. You can't even give those away. 

Even though I know that it's usually pointless, I do still thumb through every stack I come across, no matter how meager that stack may be. I found two whole stacks worth of mostly unwanted records at the Threads of Hope early last month. Those stacks did yield two finds for me, though there is a big BUT attached to that statement, which I'll come back to in a moment. First, the Four Tops! One of my personal favorites. I do have all of these tracks on other formats, but for a quarter, I couldn't leave them there.

I don't imagine that there are a lot of folks out there still clamoring for The Righteous Brothers, but there loss is my gain. I mentioned that there was a "but" attached to these, this being that both records have certainly seen better days, and the quality of their play is very questionable. If they had been any more than 25¢ apiece, I wouldn't have even bothered, but for that price I don't mind taking a chance. Both will need an extensive cleaning, which will be delayed until the weather warms up a little more, so that I can go out to porch to do it... and not freeze my tuchus off!

Oh, and the back of the Righteous Brothers yielded a fun little tidbit written in pencil...

I've cropped out the name and street address, but as you can see, this was a well traveled record. Google tells me that it didn't come from quite as far as I did to get here, but it, and it's original owner, did make quite the trek at some point in the past.

Cassettes are becoming a thing of the past at thrift stores, too. Though in there case, it's more because people just don't care about them anymore and/or don't have any to donate anymore. Somebody must've died, or was put in a home, because there was a whole Rubbermaid tote full of cassettes on this particular day. At only ten cents apiece, it's a real shame that there wasn't more for me. And yeah, I know, you, yes you, you probably hate the Wham! And to that I say, good for you! Good. For. You.

This thrift store doesn't usually have a lot of the four primary things that I go into thrift stores for; videos, books, records, and cassettes. What it does tend to have a lot of though, is puzzles. They normally have a fairly decent amount of board games too, but with no one to play with, I don't spend a lot of time looking through those. Puzzles on the other hand, are something that you don't need anyone else around to do, hence my spending a little more time to look through. This MF'er may not look like much, but is currently proving to be one of the more difficult puzzles I've done in a while. It's the middle section on both sides that's causing the problem. There are so many subtle color changes! [Update: The puzzle has been finished as of this post going live.]

Technically, I did buy this book from The Book Cellar before going across the street and getting all that crap up above, but who's gonna a click on post showing a Three Investigators book in the thumbnail? I mean, besides me 😉. I never see books from this series in the wild, so if I was only destined to find one book that day, this was a good one for me to find.

I stopped into the nearest Dollar Tree three times during January, which is two times more than I normally during any given month. It just doesn't get enough new stuff to make me want to go in there any more frequently. If this was one of those magical DT's that you read about online, the ones get large DVD and Blu-Ray shipments every week, I'd be in there every week, but before this last month, I'd only seen a couple of DVD's there twice in the almost seven years that I've been here. Now, just in the last month, they've had two different shipments of DVD's. One week I went there, and there was maybe a dozen different flicks. Nothing for me, but still fun to look through. Then the next week, there was like 50 different pictures to choose from. It was crazy! I wouldn't be surprised at all if these were just the leavings from other stores, I mean they're are not gonna send top shelf stuff all the way out here, but if everyone else's leavings are gonna include Chuck Bronson and Teri Garr (prrrrrr), then I say, bring on the leavings!

Good or bad, new MOTU stuff is everywhere these days. Most of it isn't for me, but I did have to have this little baby Skeletor. [Note: The puzzle's edge was left in the shot for scale.]

The Serenity Thrift store is right next door to the Dollar Tree, and even though I normally only go in there once every couple of months, I was in there three times during January too. Three trips yielded one binder. I don't know anything about car racing, and aside from knowing that it was a thing, don't know anything about MAXX Race Cards, but I do know a thing or two about good binders; and this is a good binder. I can't remember the last time I paid as much as $1.99 for a binder, but this one was worth it.

This probably wasn't one of my more exciting "other stuff" posts, but it gave me a break from card posts, so it's served it's purpose. Now that the palate has been cleansed, I can bang out a few more card posts before I need another break. 

B is for books (and other things)

Continuing with my "flurry" of activity from a couple of weeks ago, today's post sees me going to one of the only events that I've come to look forward to on yearly basis, that being the Uplands Village community book sale.

I've written about this sale in years past, but since I don't think that anyone actually ever goes back and reads old posts from new links, I won't bother adding them. But the skinny, for those that are interested, is that the sale is held by the folks in the Uplands Village retirement community, which is located in the small (less than 600 people) town of Pleasant Hill, about ten miles up the road from me.

Uplands Village is kind of an exclusive little community, not in a gated sort of way, but it's been set up to where they don't have to worry about any undesirables moving in, and by that I mean, troublemakers, or people with troublemaking relatives that might think that they can just show up live out of their RV in someone's driveway. Because of these regulations (as well as some of the other amenities), this is a pretty desirable place to live, attracting residents from all over the world. Speaking from a personal standpoint, I really like the people that live there, most of them are highly educated, and most were successful in whatever line of work they were in, which makes for very interesting people to talk to.

The people in Uplands Village hold a couple of different sales each year, raising funds for the assisted living center that takes care of some of their needier residents, as well as things like their aquatic center. The book sale is the main event for me though. In the four years that I've been here now, I've gone to three of the book sales -- I missed last year's because I forgot about it!!!! Don't ask me how, I had been looking forward to it, and then the day of I just blanked it out, although I did technically remember it later in the morning, about two hours after it had started, but I knew that anything that I would be interested in, would've been gone by then, so I didn't even bother trying to go.

I was not going to forget about it this year though, especially since it was only a couple of days after my trip to McKay's and Red Rhino (already covered on the blog). I was so raring to go that I ended up getting there about forty minutes early, just in case the doors opened early, they didn't, but that's okay, I was there, and that's all that mattered. I was also #2 in line, so that was kind of exciting (it really wasn't, but I figured it was still worth mentioning).

Even though there's literally thousands of books at these sales, my primary interest is in the small amount of non-book items that they usually have (don't worry though, there are books in this post), DVD's, CD's, videos, records, etc. -- so once the doors finally opened, I made a beeline to where all of these things are set-up, which is just inside the entrance and to the right.

I thought initially that guy that was first in line would be heading that way too (he's a flipper), but he didn't, so I got the first crack. I could tell right away that there wasn't as much of the non-book stuff as there has been in previous years, a couple of things however did jump right out at me almost immediately, including the above Columbo movie collection. I never watched this show when I was younger, but with all of the never ending crap that keeps being produced these days, I'm finding myself becoming even more nostalgic than I already have been for shows and movies from the 70's-90's. I've had some pretty good luck with new-to-me shows as of late, Columbo now being one of them, I kind of wish that it hadn't taken me so long to give it a try.

The other two DVD's that stood out were these Carol Burnette Lost Episodes, which I believe came from a box set. It would've been nice to have been able to get the entire set, but these were better than nothing. I paid $6 total for the three DVD's, which isn't too shabby considering that between the three there's something like twenty hours worth of entertainment.

To my immediate left was a table of stuff, now that a few weeks have passed, I've already forgotten most of what was on said table -- save for the box of records (vinyl), that I do remember! In previous years, records were $0.25 each, this year though, they were 5/$0.25, I never finished my degree in mathology, but I believe that that comes out to roughly a nickel apiece :)

The pickings were slim this year, maybe 25-35 records in the box, but I can't not look! I ended up finding two of interest, even though it wasn't five, I still paid a quarter for them -- I'm not about to start nickel and diming these folks, that'd probably be a good a way to incur some bad juju, and I got enough of that already.

It might seem a little odd for someone like myself, who is perpetually single, to buy such an album? But what can I say, deep down, way deep down, I am a hopeless romantic! As for the record, not bad, much better than I thought it would be.

You can go ahead and keep those pithy comments to yourself :)

After the box o' records, it was finally time to hit the books (so to speak):

I have wanted to read this book since it came out, but have never come across a cheap copy, sometimes waiting pays off though, as I will be able to finally read it, and the ability to do so only set me back fifty cents.

This is probably a good time to mention that paperbacks were $0.50, and hardbacks were $1. Plus they always have a wall of specialty books which vary in price.

In years past, both the crafts, and hobbies, sections have yielded some very interesting books at this sale -- this year was no different, well, at least for one book. There wasn't as much stuff in these two sections this year, but this Block Printing with Linoleum sure stood out. I wasn't familiar with the technique (called linocut), but after reading about it, I plan to give it a go at some point in the not too distant future.

Michael Crichton's work has always been hit-or-miss with me, that being said, I am looking forward to reading this one, if only because it had apparently flown under my radar.

He doesn't seem to have a lot, but I really like James Rollins' standalone books (Ice Hunt is one of my favorite post-2000 books), the series' not so much. This is another one that I've been waiting to find a cheap copy of.

I went through a biography phase back in my late teens/early 20's, which saw me reading pretty much any biography that I could get my grubby little hands on, however, I've probably only read less than ten in the fifteen years since that phase passed.

I can't for the life of me remember the title anymore, but there's an out of print biography on Robert Ripley that at one time was my most desired item. I don't know if anything has changed, but it used to be terribly difficult to find, but after many years of searching, I finally found one, paid around $15 for it -- I lost pretty much all interest in biographies before I was even halfway through that book. I had admired his work through most of my childhood, so imagine my dismay when I found out what an a**hole he was, and at times, an absolute terror to everyone around him. After that book I decided that I really didn't want to know too much about those in the limelight anymore.

Despite all of that, there was no way that I could pass up this George Raft biography, I didn't even know such a book existed! There's no synopsis on the back (hence the no picture), but if you know who he was you'll probably think that this looks like it's going to be good -- and if you don't who he was (an actor, among other things), you're not going to care, so I don't know how important the synopsis actually is.

With that big yellow sticker on the front there's no need to guess where this book was originally sold, Dollar General, here they're like Starbucks back home, there's one on practically every corner.

My last book purchase was a big one, literally, it's huge! No synopsis again, but for lovers of history, this looks like a good one. Lots of old photos, posters, and other assorted memorabilia. Plenty of text too, it appears to be a lot wordier than most pictorials.

I am so glad that I didn't forget about the sale again this year, I had a lot of fun looking through everything, got some neat things, and was able to talk to some really interesting people -- and best of all, I only spent $10. Since I'm on a fairly tight budget these days, it's really nice to be able to go somewhere like this, and be able to get a bunch of cool stuff for not a whole lot of money.


Thanks for taking a moment to look at my page.

Tales from the Thrift Store vol.3

In last week's Bookstore Bonanza post, I mentioned hitting up two thrift stores that day as well, and since I didn't buy enough to warrant two posts, I figured I might as well combine the purchases from both stores into today's post.

First up is the A Time 4 Paws thrift store, who's sales benefit a non profit no-kill animal shelter of the same name. This was the only second time that I've been to this store, mostly because it's not in a direction I usually go, but considering what the money goes towards, I really should try to get there more often.

Other than what is stated in English, I know absolutely nothing about this album, but for $1.50 it was certainly worth taking a chance on. It will probably still be another month or so before I have the turntable unpacked, so for the moment this will just be added to my ever growing pile of vinyl that needs to be listened to.

Considering that I've never been in a Starbucks before, I seem to have a lot of their compilations, especially of the Rhino variety. I have like half these tracks on other CD's, but getting the other half for only $2 was a pretty solid deal.

I always enjoy finding videos of movies that aren't on DVD (at least not in this country). Never seen it, but it sounds good.

A still sealed copy of Point Blank on DVD for $2? Consider me officially all over it!

Next up, I hit the Threads of Hope thrift store, which is located right across from the bookstore. Even those particular store doesn't usually have anything for me, I still try to pop in there real quick after trips to the bookstore.

This movie came out in 2000, and somehow I'm just now hearing about it! I honestly don't even know how that's possible, as at that time, I would've still been haunting local video stores on a fairly regular basis and I most certainly should have seen it amongst the new releases.

Justice League in a clamshell? Yes, Please!

Scooby-Doo meets Batman in a somewhat squished clamshell? Sounds good to me!

Between the trip to the bookstore, and the two thrift stores, it's was definitely one of my better outing's in quite a while. I was able to replenish my always dwindling VHS "to watch" pile, and I was able to get two blog posts out of it, which is a win-win in my book.


Thanks for taking a moment to look at my page.