after writing most of that last entry, i spent a couple of hours saturday going through some of the containers of junk tamara abandoned when she left behind her failures and moved on to her new hope. at some point, i’ll have a container of stuff to ship off to her parents. the rest of it i’ll give to sue so she can offer it to tamara and then give it to the salvation army or sell it or whatever. i’ve also thrown away a fair bit of stuff, and put junk in the recycling bin. in addition, i’ll have a little collection of stuff myself when i’m done, which will be ceremonially burned.
just to follow up on the replacement speaker, my dad got it a few days ago and hooked it up and everything worked. so he should now hopefully be able to listen to his music in stereo through some decent speakers.
i’ve been buying stuff on ebay lately. mostly trying to back fill some holes in my gaiman/mckean and mike allred collections. there have been a number of years where things were coming out that i wasn’t buying anything (or even aware of what was coming out). i’ve recently gotten these in the mail:
- modern masters #16: mike allred – eric nolen-weathington (twomorrows)
- the vault of michael allred (vols 1-4) – allred (aaa pop)
- it girl mini-bust (#29 of 500) – allred/bowen (bowen designs)
the retail price on the modern masters is $15. i was kind of surprised when i got it — it’s printed on fairly low-quality paper with a pretty thin weight glossy cover. i haven’t read through much of it yet, so i can’t comment on the quality of the content.
i was surprised to see the cost on the the vault… issues was $7 a pop. but the entire thing is printed on high quality glossy paper. plus i’m sure a fair bit of time must have gone into collecting, organizing, and making notes on all the stuff. i read the first two so far, and it’s kind of an overload of info — it gets somewhat tedious, but with some great things here and there. i’m not sure i care as much about picking up the special limited edition (500 prints) version any more. that atomics super deluxe special edition (also 500) though — i’m still wanting one of those.
i picked up the bowen bust on a lark. it was on ebay and no one bid on it until a couple of hours before the auction ended. jack and sue called me about meeting them and scott and kendra (who were in town to visit for a day or two) for supper, so i put in a bid and left. my bid only had to go about $2 over the initial bid to be highest, but when i got back home i saw no one else bid so i’d won it. i couldn’t find online how much it originally sold for, but i was guessing $35. i paid $48 including shipping and everything.
i’ve got a few other things i’ve won, but i’ll wait until after they arrive to comment on them. i also picked up some cds recently through amazon, which should be arriving over the next week or so. i’ll go ahead and say at least most of the stuff from amazon is by the knife. my poking around online for this led me to info about fever ray, the new project by half of the knife. the self-titled cd is already for sale in electronic form, but i still prefer physical media. i found a creepy video and a nice “if i had a heart” remix (by familjen) via the fever ray website.
friday night was the geek gathering. no one i know got towed, which is nice. i got to see and talk to natalie a bit — it’d been a while. i also talked with jamie, who was there with her son. as well as loopylow, lambowolf, barrett, jay, and others.
yesterday i got up and decided i’d drive down to clear lake and stop by the credit union, then go to village pizza and seafood for lunch. it was about 12:15pm when i decided, and the credit union closes at 1pm, but i figured i’d have enough time. until traffic on i45 come to a stop a mile or two before beltway 8. i eventually took an exit and went over to highway 3. which was completely backed up as well. i looked at my watch and it was 1:06pm, so i gave up and turned around. a mile or so inside 610, i45 north came to a stop. i eventually exited on telephone and took a bunch of side streets to near downtown, then hopped back onto 288/59 — which immediately was stop and go. jeebus, what the heck was up with the traffic? i wasted a total of almost 2 hours for nothing. the only saving grace was that it was on my motorcycle. i think the only good part of the day was eating supper at tacos-a-go-go. (although the bjork parody on snl news was pretty hilarious.)
an update on my motorcycle front fender: you know, i think about it every time i have to drive through a wet area on the street and my front tire spews it up into my chest and face. i called the guy a few weeks ago and talked to him a bit. he gave me his email address so i emailed him the info about the replacement part. after a week or two of not hearing anything, i emailed him again and asked if he’d gotten it and what he wanted to do. i hadn’t heard anything as of today, so i called him this evening and he didn’t answer so i left a message. he texted me back soon after and asked if we could meet tomorrow so he could give me money. so hopefully that’ll work out tomorrow.
today i went by Texas art supply and bought some mat boards. i’ve got a few things i’ve got frames for, and i borrowed jack’s mat cutter a week or so ago. i needed to get some of the things printed because they’re a little bigger than a normal sheet of paper, but the copy/print place i went by was closed today. on my way back home i stopped by soundwaves and picked up a couple of cds:
- forever – freezepop (archenemy)
- the definitive collection – patsy cline (universal/mca nashville)
on friday after work i used a coupon at border’s to get something for about the same as the best price i could find online. it was a bit annoying though, because the price in the store was a little different than online. since i was already there, i went ahead and bought it. it cost me probably about $5. on top of that, the lady helping me didn’t go to take the box set to the counter (which they have always done), so i asked her if she needed to take it up for me. she asked if i was getting anything else and i said “no” so she told me to just walk down there. as i was walking to the stairs, i was intercepted by an older white female employee and she asked me if she could take it to the counter for me. she wasn’t mean about it, but it kind of put me off because i felt like i was being accused of being in the wrong even though i’d specifically asked the other lady if she needed to carry it down for me. anyway, here’s what i got:
- the tiffany transcriptions – bob wills and the Texas playboys (collectors’ choice)
it’s a 9 volume box set with an additional cd of mckinney sisters numbers, plus a booklet. the 9 volumes were originally released on rhino as individual cds, but they’ve been out of print for awhile now. (i have volume 4, all songs about Texas, which my brother gave me at some point.) they’ve been remastered and collected into a single box for this release. do you have any idea how many hours…no, days…of bob wills music i have now? a lot.
I must thank you for turning me on to Gaiman all those years ago. After completing my Sandman collection, to include Death: the High cost of Living, more recently I read a few of his short stories and books, which are also quite good. Most of the military libraries have one or more of his works, with more available by library loan.