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. 

A good problem to have

I have read quite a few books this year. I read quite a few last year too. Not as many as this year though. Knowing that I would at least be keeping up with last years pace, I had planned on keeping track of how many books I read this year, and then doing some sort of year-end recap post. I was also going to make a list of what I had read and possibly make a worst to best list. 

Unfortunately, I've found out that I'm not very good at keeping track of those kinds of statistics, so there won't be any such post (this is where the sad faced emoji goes). I do know that I read five books in each month of January, February, and March. I also know that I read ten books during two different summer months. That's 35 right there, but after that I don't know. Based on how many other things that I didn't do this year, i.e. blog very often, sort cards, watch too many movies, reorganize my neglected stamp collection, etc.; I'll go ahead and assume that I did at least five books a month during the rest of the time that I wasn't keeping track as well.

As of this writing, Dec.7th, I've only just finished my first book of the month, so it looks like December might end up being a down month. Trading cards are most likely going to be responsible for this, as I've already spent six hours over the last seven days putting cards in binders. I have done almost no sorting this year, and because of that have stacks and stacks of cards piled around, some more precariously than others. It's been kind of therapeutic to do this again, but I'm doing it at night, which is when I read, and I'm already missing that time spent reading. I fear that not all of my stacks are going to get finished.

Reading is a good way to spend ones time, but unless you live close to a library, having enough reading material can sometimes be a problem. I was really having trouble doing so earlier this year, often times only having 2-3 books to choose from at any one given time. Thankfully though, I'm closing out the year strong with book purchases galore. I've been doing good on my own, but also got a recent assist from my mom as well.

There was a big semi-local book sale a few weeks back, one that I was going to attend. There was some stuff that needed to be done on that particular morning, which was gonna keep me from getting there when it opened, thus potentially missing out on some of the better items. And this is where mom comes in! She was there when it opened, and over the course of the next hour or two, sent a bunch of pictures via text asking if I was interested in various things, some of which I was...

I had this book many years ago. Ironically it was donated to a book sale. What comes around, goes around?

Anybody know the answer to this books title without looking it up?

There were about half a dozen different Cardinals books at this sale, but this was the only that I asked my mom to grab.

I have the "Boys of Summer", but have never read any of Roger Kahn's other works, so this'll probably be a good gauge as to whether or not I do ever want to try any more.

Old library book...

You don't need a synopsis to figure out what this one's all about.

Another old library book...

... albeit a much more interesting one!

This book covers every major leagues roster up until 1973. I haven't encountered a book like this before, and while it would've been much more impressive in the pre-internet age, I'm sure that I'll still be able to find some things of note. Might even be able to get a blog post out of it? Does anyone ever read non-fiction books out of order? I do all the time, and will be doing so again with this one when I jump ahead a hundred pages to start with the Federal League stats.

Sample page.

In addition to all of the books, there was also a lot of other forms of media represented at this sale, so I got pictures of those sections sent to me as well.

I started off the post with some stats, sort of, and while I don't have any numbers to back it up, I'm pretty sure I bought the least amount of videos and DVD's this year, than any other year in my adult life. My interest in such things hasn't diminished, it just seems like they're not as prevalent as they used to be anymore, especially videos. The Book Cellar stopped taking videos this year, and one of the local thrift stores stopped as well. I've heard people in other areas reporting the same thing, so I know it's not just a here thing. I will be an unhappy camper when the time comes where I can no longer find used videos to peruse.

I think I may have seen this episode when it originally aired, but won't know for sure until I watch it. This is a 3-tape set by the way, not something that you encounter very often.

I don't care about newer Titanic books or television specials, but won't turn down an older 90's piece.

It's funny how many things around here you can find with old McKay's stickers on them. They haven't sold videos for awhile, so I always leave those stickers on. The ones on books go though.

I haven't seen this since it's original airing. I remember not being crazy about it at the time, but 20+ years may have changed my opinion. Like I mentioned earlier, I haven't been watching as much stuff as I usually do, so even the things I'm looking forward to, usually end up taking me a couple of months to get to.

A 90's cable favorite.

I used to always find copies of this at the Value Village in Vancouver, WA, but had seen it enough times that I didn't buy any of those copies at the time. Fast forward a decade (maybe a little more), and I haven't watched again in all of that time, and am now taking a chance on a very beat up copy. 

Given how many items my mom found, and how late in the day it was getting, I didn't end up going to the sale myself. I saw what was available from a few other sections, which didn't contain anything else for me, and really, all I missed out on was possibly wandering through the history section (too many books to send detailed photos of), and I'm okay with that. There's no shortage of history books at just about any place that sells books. I will be going next year though.

I'm not lucky enough to live near one of those Dollar Tree's that has all of the great movies and television show seasons on DVD and Blu-Ray, but up until the corona got going, the nearest store did get some decent books on a fairly regular basis. It's been pretty spotty for the last two years though, and not just on books, the store itself seems to be struggling to get much of anything, well, anything but junk food. With junk food not being my thing, I haven't had much occasion to go as of late, and as such, have only been going in there about every 3-6 months. It had been on the upper end of that estimate before I got the urge to go last week. There were still a lot of empty shelves in there, but to my surprise to book section looked pretty well stocked, and wouldn't you know it, I found a book!

And here's what I just finished reading, my one book for December so far. I didn't realize that it wasn't written by a Brit, and starts off in Britain, so with me not being an anglophile it took a little effort to get into it. Ultimately I'm glad that I stuck with it though, it wasn't perfect, but was definitely worth a buck.

Seeing as how I was right there, I couldn't not go into the Serenity Thrift that's right next door... 

Hey, another book! At over 850 pages, this is one chunky MF'er. I'm really looking forward to this one, but probably won't start to tackle until January.

I was also in Crossville last week too, and even though I was just there 2 or 3 weeks ago, I made quick stop at the Book Cellar to see if anything new had come in. Turns out that quite a bit of new stuff had been brought in during those couple weeks.

I know from past posts that there aren't a lot of X-Files fans coming around here, so I didn't bother with of the backs. This was an exciting haul for me though, especially since I've never even seen two of these on the secondary market before.

I've been on a big film novelization kick in recent months. 70's and 80's examples are of particular interest to me. I haven't seen Cocoon for a couple of decades, so I doubt I'll even notice any of the differences that usually find in novelizations with this one.

I always seem to be ending my physical media posts with Scholastic book. You might be complaining about that, but I'm certainly not.

I may have started last year low on books to choose from, but have closed it out with a glutton of purchases to restock my options during the first few months of the coming new year. And I'm still gonna try to hit McKay's one more this later this month too. Don't worry though, this'll be the last post of it's kind for the year, I promise!