Excuse me?

I have a feeling that some people are trying to make me look bad. Well, as you all pretty much know, I have an explanation for everything (or can come up with an excuse that sounds legit though I have no idea what I am talking about).

Megan keeps talking about how well the kids can play her penny flute. And then I got jealous, so yes, I spent a good hour researching the interwebs to learn how to do it. Who knows? Maybe some day I can play it in church. I'm that good now.

Then a couple of weeks ago Megan was frustrated that I have a lot of stuff that takes up closet space, which is pretty limited in our house. Then the inevitable happened; I realized that the untouched boxes and boxes of Atari games and decomposing 8-tracks need to find a new home.

Well, depending on who you are and how you came to own nearly 150 Atari games, you can't just give those away. I mean, I spent hundreds of weekends in high school scouring all the DI's and occasional yard sales to gather as many Atari games as I could. I fought tooth and nail to buy at lower prices and I am pretty sure that during the economic slow down of 1998-99 my Atari/8-track funds single-handedly kept the struggling Centerville DI in business, which was then able to get a really nice face-lift a couple years later.

That being said, the only reason I was playing the Atari games was to make sure they work before I try to sell them. You have to understand, there is only so much I can write about dirt. I mean, we all know that it is usually black or some odd-shade of brown and it can smell bad or good and we shouldn't eat it. Can't I just make a thesis that says that? I guess not.

So I did a lot of research and am trying to sell some of the games. There's not much of an audience or market for selling 1980's video games, but who knows? The clothes seem to be coming back into style which is a good thing. Check this side story out: So I was at work when Megan called me to tell me I had to thin out my closet. I told a 35+ year-old co-worker about some of the fun junk I had and he told me that I just needed to get it out once a year so that Megan could see that I was still interested in it. He then commenced to tell me that he does that with his old high school clothes or his wife will throw them out. And sometimes he has to pull them out of the DI pile. Well, I will be the first witness to testify that she should get rid of those clothes in a more definite manner and that he wears them more like once a week than once a year. We had a fun time this winter placing bets on how outrageous his sweaters would be day to day.

Anyway. If anyone wants atari games, see some of what I have at KSL.com in the classifieds. Just search "atari". I think there's still some time to play some of the games too. Come on over, we'll have a blast!! Maybe we can get out the projector and play them on the big screen!!

Back to the Grind

I must apologize for the recent slump in posts. Here I was getting all excited to go through the list of topics and I got really busy working on my thesis, but the thesis was stressing me out so bad and since I don't smoke, I had to start a new hobby to calm my nerves. Well the new hobby became an obsession and then I missed my thesis deadline (again). Then I became more and more consumed by my new hobby, so entranced that this morning as I couldn't get out of bed after staying up way too late for no real reason I realized that I need to write on my blog. So here I am.

OK. the next topic of discussion was supposed to be my kids, but I love them so much and there's so much I want to say about them with so little time tonight, that I will have to save that for the weekend.

Then I was supposed to talk about Bajio, well I am still gathering info on that one. I went to Bajio today for Cinco de Maio, and it was OK, but wait till you hear all the dirt I will present when I am ready for that.

Next was the retaining wall. I started the wall this past Saturday and I like it a lot. I was too busy and dirty to take pictures, but I will get some up soon and with all the details and instructions on how I like to build a wall. I promised an old friend I would send him info on building a small wall, so I will have to get to this one soon.

What I will write about today is the seventh place topic (recent paypal purchases came in 7 out of 10) because it highlights my new obsessive compulsive hobby that you are all so interested in knowing. It is true, I have revived my old coin collection with vigor! It's pretty awesome. I am not a coin expert by any means, but in these tough economic times, I think a coin collection is a great way to have a hobby that makes you save money. On top of that, older coins are made of silver which is a precious metal that will forever retain value as a metal long after the US treasury collapses and all the paper bills disintegrate.

So, my most recent purchase:
two old coins from Brazil :(Click to enlarge)


I bought these with my allowance because I think they are pretty cool and I love the Brazilian national seal that is on the back of the 1901 coin (which might be silver). I have that same symbol on my wallet.

before that I bought this:

These are some expensive pennies but they are special because in 1943 all the copper was needed for the war effort and so the pennies had to be made of steel.

Prior to the penny purchase I thought I might invest in a little silver:

I may have paid a bit too much for this silver, but it sure is cool and old! We've been discussing a lot at work how much of a seller's market eBay is. You have to be careful to not become competitive and senseless when you buy stuff there.

I started the coin buying rampage with this little ditty:

I think it is for kids and it's old and kinda outdated, but had some cool stuff in it. Maggie likes playing with me and the money.

At the beginning of April we bought a new cell phone from a website in China called chinavasion.com . Interesting lot of products.

It took a few weeks but the phone came about a week and a half ago, and it's definitely no blackberry, but we like it. We decided to buy new phones instead of renewing the contract wherein we'd have to pay some for new phones and pay additional fees. Cell phones are ridiculous but we can't live without them. Bad news. This one's cool because you can put two sim cards in it such that me and megs can share the same phone or I can consolidated my personal and work phones.

A few weeks before the cell phone I bought a new video card for my computer so I could do the double monitor thing. It helped me be more efficient in working on my thesis. Obviously not efficient enough, but still is pretty sweet.

before that Megan bought some cupcake toppers off my account. They were cute. maybe her blog talks about them :)

This is probably getting kinda boring. Everything else this year came from buy.com. It included a wall charger and a car charger for my iPod touch, a portable speaker thing for Megan's iPod, and some A/B audio splitter things that I got ripped off on because shipping was supposed to be free but wasn't.

There you have it: a YTD review of paypal purchases.