Junkie Arms

I have to wear long sleeve shirts lately, because otherwise I look like a total junkie from all the needle sticks lately.

And then of course they turned yellow in both arms.

I think they're finally starting to fade.

I found some good shirts tonight (it's cheapie Thursday at my closest Thrift store).

I like some of the UrbanUp shirts. Even though they're made for a younger set, many of them fall in that vintage Van Heusen color range and style and some of them are quite sedately pretty. I found a nice one tonight.

I did buy some shirts that were surely pimpin it in the seventies. They are very Al Pacino in Dog Day Afternoon period. Okay, maybe Sal instead.

You buy ten items that are listed 3 bucks or under and you get all items for a dollar.

It's a good deal.

The best thing about all this money I spend in thrift store is it all goes to help those less fortunate. They really do shelter people locally.

At Salvation Army, the people working the cash register are often those who have been living in Salvation Army facilities. They get better and move on and then you don't see them any more, which makes me sad and happy. They're nice people.

The managers all know me, and we have running jokes. My favorite is at one of the Salvation Army stores. She recently had to drive half way across the country to a funeral and we ended up joking for about a half an hour about death. That was odd. But liberating.

Found Lee's team's Superbowl shirt (one he doesn't have) so that made him happy.

Found some for his kids too, brand new. Goth. Dark. For Chas. She loves the Tim Burton tees.

They get stuff stores donate too with the tags still on. I found her some nice ones in that section.

Found some cute stuffies: a Curious George, a cute hedgehog Boyd's Bears put out and a bunch of other oddities. A Caterpillar that reminds me of the hookah-smoking one in L.C.

Lately, I keep finding the Dr. Seuss ones Kohl's (Cares for Kids) put out. I now have a Sneetch and a Fox in Socks. They're good size too. All of Kohl's stuffies are fairly common; they must have made millions of their dinosaurs and all the rest. This is good because they raised money for children's charities with those. These items don't bring much on EBAY because the glut tends to drive prices down. But they make great gifts, and many of them are very cute, very well-designed.

Four teeny kids who were bilingual were playing, fighting, playing in the toy section and I enjoyed listening while I was looking at shirts, because I got to practice my Spanish. Of course, the most common Spanish word you will hear in any store is "Mira!" I heard it used in at least three different ways.

And then the one kid kept saying these horribly adult, hostile things to his (brother?) that clearly were recordings of what he had heard an older male adult say. It was like card shark lines and threats. It scared me to think whom he was hanging around at home.

I mean it's like hearing a six-year-old reeling off lines from Scarface.

I've found a couple more fine crystal pieces. A lovely set of fused criss-cross bud vases with glass stoppers. And something I call "bear claw" glassware (kitchenware). There are little vermillion bear paw prints inside the glass at the base of each vessel.

And a crystal candy dish in an abstract bird design that's fairly nice (but not my style to keep).

I realize how gay this inventory is.

My KNAPPA lamp arrived and Lee had it assembled before I got home.

Hard to believe it ships in such a small package, but that's the wonders of polypropylene and IKEA. They also have a corner on the Eleusinian mysteries of flatpacking.

It's very cool and makes a great relaxing mood light.

I found a Stimpy (!) at my other thrift store last week. Mint Condition! I remember having that back in the day (Nickelodeon issue: 1992).

This store close to my house is always so empty! Even tonight it was dead. Nobody seems to know it's there. True, it's sort of far out for the city and not really totally near any suburb but...

I only spent like five minutes with the books. I got there an hour before closing time. I knew if I started in there that was my entire time in the store.

I know where they tend to unload new arrivals and I'm pretty good with zeroing in on old spines very fast so I'm fairly sure I didn't miss anything stellar.

I found a Gorey paperback I don't have at my other thrift store last week but the dorks had tagged it on the front and I did a test tag removal and sure enough there went the cover no matter how delicate I was...it was just the type of paper.

They ruined it.

But it was a very uninspired cover (he admitted he did a lot of bad ones) and no art inside anyway.

And it was a bad French novel to boot.