A Day Out and Mark Guitar Videos

What I'm Writing: I'm about to jump into the edit of In the Shadow of Olympus. I'm also brainstorming a short story and getting ready for a writing class to start tomorrow - YIKES!
What I'm Reading: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo - almost finished with it
What I'm Knitting: My funky geometric sweater - I didn't knit as much on it during the long weekend because I was getting toward the first decrease and wasn't sure how easy/hard I would find it to continue the pattern through decreases - but I finally took the leap last night only to find it was fairly easy.

Yesterday was a day off for Jon, Brian, and me. Mark went back to school yesterday after 11 days off (doesn't that figure? The rest of us have a day off and he's in school.).  The day before, we had decided to all go to the casino and then to an indoor flea market I like. Well, Brian stayed up too late, so he left us a note not to wake him (he knew we'd leave early), so Jon and I set out. We hit Rome and decided to go to the Walmart there because it's bigger than out local Walmart and I was trying to find hot salsa for Brian - the best we can get in our area is medium. I found it (Yay). We then decided we'd hit the Salvation Army thrift store before heading to the casino. I love thrift stores - I often sell the treasures I find  on ebay.

I bypassed the racks and racks of clothes and headed toward the back where they keep all non-clothing merchandise. Over the last few weeks, Jon and I have been looking into buying and elliptical - we both really need to get into shape - but we hadn't taken the plunge of spending close to $1000 (or more) on new exercise apparatus. Well, lo and behold, sitting at the Salvation Army was a Tony Little Gazelle - do you remember those from a few years back? They're something like an elliptical. This one was in great shape and the store was asking $15 for it. Jon and I looked it all over and decided we might as well buy it. If we like it, great, if we don't, we're not out much.

As we were looking at the Gazelle, I caught sight of two wooden CD racks. Mark's CD collection has outgrown the rack he has and I've been looking for something bigger. We bought both of those as well - I estimate they each hold about 250 CDs - so Mark isn't even close to filling one of them, but we'll have the second for back-up if we need it.

I also found a Joe Satriani cassette tape for Mark (he has the apparatus to play CDs, Cassettes, and LPs in his room - if he had an 8-track tape player, I think he'd be all set), a cute lamp, and two horse riding-toys for the granddaughter.

In the meantime, a man gave Jon a coupon that he wasn't going to be able to use ($7 off a $25 purchase). So we ended up with all that stuff for $38. Pretty cool.

We got it all home and cleaned it up. The Gazelle is already a family favorite and Mark has started filling one of the CD racks.

After all that shopping, we left the Salvation Army store and decided we really didn't want to go to the casino after all - and at that point, we really didn't have car space to go looking too heavily at the flea market. So instead, we drove to Utica to return a present and then toddled on home. It was actually lots of fun (isn't it always great to hang out with a loved one AND save money?? LOL).

So that was our day.

Speaking of buying used items, Jon bought an IPod from Brian's friend, Zach, the other day - he loves it. And Mark bought his cousin, Heather's, acoustic guitar she didn't play (which he also loves).

I filmed Mark playing three of his guitars last night (he has a fourth of his own, but also keeps an old guitar of Brian's and one of Jon's (a lefty that Mark restrung so he can play it right-handed), as well as his grandfather's old Bass in his room). Now, I don't want you to think we totally spoil the kid with all these guitars (though he is kinda spoiled). He's bought them all himself with the money he makes from working in the summer, except for the Randy Rhodes Jackson we bought him for Christmas.

The vids are on Youtube if you want to see how he's progressing -
This first one is with his new Acoustic guitar.
This one is with his Les Paul gold-top.
And this is the Randy Rhodes guitar.

The videos are a little dark.

Hope everyone has a wonderful New Year!