duck-shaped pain

Remember, I haven't seen a lot of this stuff for almost a year (I left Oregon in September of last year). So, upon opening up the boxes and looking at some of it, all I could think was, I spent four days and how much money trying to fetch this? Seems like an awful amount of expenditure for a lot of thrift store books and clothes. Some of it I could have definitely lived without seeing again.

Then again, there were many happy reunions today, with things that I genuinely missed.

Some things I am happy to have around again:

• Records. Lots of them. The record I missed most, oddly enough (I say oddly because I also own it on CD, which I've had around, ready to listen to at any moment, for all of the last year) was Daydream Nation. I greatly enjoyed just taking it out of its sleeve. I was also happy to see I'm A Mormon, which is chock full of really interesting children's songs. So many other records - I'm sure I'll get around to talking about them all eventually.

• My assortment of 1950's lamps. I have many, all of which provoke utter admiration or fear in everyone who sees them. My two favorites are the two largest. They're essentially the same lamp, each in a different colors (the lamp on the left side of the cover of this book is exactly like one of them -- the other is the same, only purple and brown in color). I aquired these lamps at different times, one ten years after the other. The purple and brown one I got at the Goodwill here in town when I was a freshman in high school. I fell in love with it and spent a whole $15, my whole allowance, on it (an enormous amount of money to me at the time). The blue and white one my mom found at a yard sale a few years ago, in the same town. Other than the color scheme, they're identical.

• Second Carrot From the Right - a book (can't remember the author) I found at a thrift store about a year and a half ago. I got it because it had nutty illustrations, but it's a really good book overall. It's about a farmer's market in Los Angeles during the 1930s and 40s. Essentially, it's a collection of stories about all the vendors and their famous customers, and I was pretty dismayed to find that I didn't bring it with me when I moved.

• Red ladle. Love the red soup ladle.

• My high school/college yearbooks. I've been collecting old yearbooks for years -- they're a good source of interesting pictures and pretty entertaining to look at. I culled my collection down to just the best ones before I moved, and now they're all here: the University of Wyoming books where half the students are drinking beer in their photos, the Cherry Creek High School yb from the 70s which has the best 70s hair photos I've ever seen, the University of Oregon book where all the illustrations have weird, misshapen ducks in them, and numerous yearbooks from my hometown, which have people I actually know (or their ancestors and relatives) in them.

• The nodding ceramic armadillo statue I've had for 15 years. It has no real purpose: it just sits there and nods at you. It's actually only barely recognizeable as an armadillo these days, unfortunately.

• Ten years of Montgomery Wards catalogs, from 1946 through 1956. Things you would never buy, things you would never need, and a chance for me to see where my grandmother ordered all the fixtures for her gold and pink bathroom from.

• Every mix tape anyone has ever made me. It was good to see Patience Required [1] and Rockin'! and Full Beverage Procedure again. Hopefully, the smell of Oregon Basement will leave them soon. I'd be even happier if I could get the clothes I just brought back to not smell like that, too.[2]

I spent much of the trip driving: either around Oregon looking at stuff or taking my stuff back to Colorado, but I did manage to go shopping for a bit. I went to Powell's and bought books, and to Reading Frenzy and bought some zines and comics, but the thing that made me happiest was buying CDs.

I used to have a serious CD buying habit -- I'd usually buy, when I had money, about four or five a week (not a major habit, I admit, and not quite up to the standards of my friend J., who wrote here about his CDs a few days ago). That decreased after I moved to Portland, for a variety of reasons, and has gone down to almost nothing after I moved back here (nothing in town I want to buy), so when I have a chance to do so, I go for it.

I bought (keep in mind, I only had about 40 minutes to look around):

• Memories of Love - Future Bible Heroes (used)

• Bouquet - William Hooker, Christian Marclay, Lee Ranaldo

• Full on Night - Rachel's/Matmos (I don't really like Rachel's much, but they played this in the store, and it was pretty brilliant)

• Some other Matmos CD - I know it has a name, it's just not on the case anywhere

• ...And You Will Know Us By The Trail of Dead, self-titled

• Will You Find Me - Ida

[1] A tape my friend S. made for me of Pat Metheny's Zero Tolerance For Silence (which he bought because it had the Thurston-approved sticker on the front). He couldn't even bear to listen to it all the way through while he was taping it for me, so he interjected little bits of Russian folk music every fifteen minutes just to provide a much-needed break.