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.