Thrifting My Life Away

Happy Thursday!

The big news this week was that my car was broken into. Luckily, though, he musta been really stupid, 'cause he didn't succeed in taking anything. Tried to get my CD player. Y'know, the kind that you can pop in and off? He'd unscrewed the ashtray and had pried off the side of the paneling around the CD player. And you know the glove compartment, with the little catch to open it? The corner's all pulled out, like he tried to open it without even trying the catch first. Really, not a smart guy. Also lucky all I had in my car was like a thingamabobber that was in there when I got it, and like four burned cds, with titles ranging from "Rowdy Japanese Music" to "V. 2." He didn't seem to think those were worth anything, 'cause they were just sitting there on the passenger's seat. That was the night my cousins (and their pack of kids) were over, so also lucky the guy was scared away before he could do anymore stupid damage. What a silly muffin he was.

I s'pose the other big news was that my cousins and their kids visited. That like, never happens, 'cause usually they're in Africa. But they managed to give us a stop-by while on this continent, and that was real nice.

Oh, the thrifting. Thrifting without NEEDING to find the exact right bit of something for this or the other costume is pretty great. Right now, I'm thrifting for ties, records, tapes, a tape player, and any other old, useless bit of technology. Examples:

On ..Monday? Yes. On Monday I walked with my Sis to the Salvation Army (We live soooo close to it!!) and I bought a brand-new-looking tie, a Disneyland soundtrack record, and a Borodin record for a buck apiece.

Wednesday, I pulled my fam into the Goodwill next to my dad's work. Got a snazzy silver-with-red/blue-accents tie, also brand-new-looking, $1.49 (Goodwill's sorta the rich-person's thrift shop). Added to my growing record collection 2 Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass, a Tony Bennet, and a Great Music By Russian Composers. Oh yeah. And I got a tape, The Story of Star Wars, narrated by somebody and featuring the movie cast. All of these musical treasures were 49 cents apiece, I might add.

Also later that Weds, me and the gang hit up the regular downtown shops, and I bought a Monty Python tape for 97 cents.

I'm buying tapes, hoping to come across another treasure as the one I once found, a radio adaptation of The Maltese Falcon complete with Humphrey Bogart himself. Also because I'm rapidly turning into a compulsive lover of obsolete technology, as proclaimed by that Kodak camera that uses film I've never heard of, and the 80s-looking phone where the buttons are arranged in a circle where the circle of a old-tyme-dial phone would be. So now I'm looking for a tape player with attached speakers, because I seem to have single-handedly broken all the tape players in the house, and I don't want to have to listen to all my tapes on the old skool walkman that I have to keep stealing a battery out of my cdplayer so that it'll play.

Hooray, tapes!

And, at least, we have a working record player, in case you were wondering.

And, at least, I have to wear ties every day to work, in case you were wondering.

May your financial ventures be as thrifty as mine~

-Stepherly