Annual Spring Hill Follies

Spent the day thrift store shopping in Spring Hill, as you have learned from past blog posts, Spring Hill is an area of Florida, full of retirees. Old people move there from up north, ditch their belongings or the die and their family ditches their belongings. One way or another, the thrift stores are full of belongings. And there is no competition for the good stuff, as everyone who shops at the area thrift shops, they shop for housecoats and muffin tins, not cool vintage shit.  
Spring Hill is about one hour away, however, we take the rural route and hit shops the whole way there, by the time we get to Spring Hill, my trunk is already full of found goodies.

I go with my 13 year old son, Evan. My 9 year old daughter, Avery, stays at home. She hates thrift store shopping (gasp!) But she does love the stuff I bring home for her. ( This time, I got her four DS games and 2 shirts)


My favorite place we hit last year (by "favorite" I mean the oddest place you can imagine, not really any place I purchase anything from) I was delighted when I discovered it was still there!

First of all, if they sold better shit, they'd be able to pay for their electric bill. Notice the towels hanging on the fence....See the following picture for an explanation:

Yes, that is a swimming pool, right outside the thrift shop.  It is an above ground pool that was dug into the ground to create a built-in underground pool effect. Clever.

And another lovely aspect is the party outside the thrift shop. Every time. Every day. 

I asked for a margarita, but they only had Pabst and Miller High Life.

Our last stop on the way home...it decided to rain, while we were in the store. In Florida, "rain" means "intense fucking downpour that floods the streets in 4 seconds"

As we rung up our goodies the cashier told us that the credit card machine was down, due to the storm. Cash only. In which I had none. Thankfully, Evan did. In the car. He had to run out in the car and grab his cash....came back soaked! Paid cash, and then the credit card machine worked for the next person! 

And now we had to take the crap we bought and go to the car. In the rain. Evan asked if we could borrow some large bags to sort of create a parka of some sort. GREAT IDEA, RIGHT?

Actually, very, very bad idea. Once we headed outside, the wind gusts fill our contraptions with air and then we puffed up and rain entered our  cut-out eye and breathing holes and we couldn't see or breath! We ended up being just as wet had we not had on our special protection gear.

I did get tons of goodies regardless, so all is good!

All items and many more can be found in either of my Etsy shops

Here:

RANDOM GOODS VINTAGE

Or here:

RANDOM GOODS BOOK ROOM

Also, don't forget to check out my clearance books section. Tons of books for $1.50!

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Check back in on Wednesday for my WTF Wednesday feature. Its going to be good!

Replay-Old School Arcade Games

Trying to do things with my kids. Its hard now that they are too old for all the little kiddo things usually offered.  Parks, cartoons movies, library reading...etc. And its hot as fuck here in Florida, so unless they are in the pool, forget about hanging around outside! both my kids, ages 9 and 13, love Museums and thrift shops...both of them are kinda old school. My 9 year old daughter, Avery, loves Joan Jett and Tracy Chapman, no new pop music...My 13 year old son, Evan, loves 80s and 90s alternative music, both kids love wearing clothes from thrift shops. 

Lucky us, I found out about this place about 30 minutes from our home called

REPLAY MUSEUM 

It's full of all the old school video games like Pac Man, Asteroids, Centipede, Qbert about 50 of them and about another 50 old original pinball machines. You pay $12 to get in and then you get to play all the games for free for the whole day! Meanwhile my kids came to learn that these old games are every bit as challenging as the new games. Maybe even harder in some cases....

First of all, my kids were pretty much the only kids there. It was full of old people (like me) trying to relive their childhood. 

The kids ran around trying to figure out what to play first...Avery set her eyes on this:

Qbert! I think she was drawn to the little cute bouncy guy with the swears...I immediately told her to stay away from Qbert, as it would ruin her day. Its very frustrating and it would just piss her off! Of course, she ignores me...cause that's what she usually does. Don't tell her what to do, she is going to do whatever she wants! So go ahead, Avery, don't say I didn't warn you....

Well, she proved me wrong, she stayed glued to this game for 2 hours and made the leader board every time! 

See the Burger Time game in the background.....

BurgerTime has a special place in my heart. It was actually my very first video game I ever played. Even before Pac Man....My dad's break room at work got one of these and my dad was explaining it to us and he would always be taking quarters to work...so one day, my mom drove us to my dads work to we could see what all the fuss was about. It was amazing and we stayed for hours, my brother and I, making burger patties and avoiding the enemy, a hot dog. To be able to play this again, and expose my kids to this, was so awesome!

Now MY game was always Centipede.

This is the game I spend all my money on as a kid and guess what? IT IS STILL EVERY BIT AS AWESOME AS I REMEMBERED IT! God, I love this game! If I could afford it, I would own this game and find somewhere in my house to put it and I would just play all day until my fingers decomposed.

Even though there are a lot of 2 player games, we tried to find a game that all three of us could play. And this was it:

Michael Jacksons Moonwalker. Here is how the game is played: We were all Michaels, just with different colored clothes. So we would all just moonwalk around and then shot mafia robots, and at anytime we felt the groove coming on, we would press the "Dance" button and everything we stop and a spotlight would come down on us and we would dance. It served no purpose. But for some reason we really enjoyed this game. Couldn't stop laughing at the ridiculousness.

Meanwhile Avery was being a game hog on Qbert, so every once in awhile I would have her step away to see if anyone else wanted to play, actually, no one ever did, I guess they knew how frustrating it was. I just felt it was good courtesy to give other people a chance. 

Not everyone felt that way....

From the time we arrived, until many hours later a 50-something lady hogged Pacman the whole time! And that is THE game! Pretty rude, I'd say...My son was getting really pissed off, needless to say, he eventually got right behind her, "go left now!" and "get the cherries!" and "run, run run, the ghosts are coming!" He started barking all sorts of orders two inches from her head....  until she got so pissed, she just got up (finally) and left the game. My son played it for 2 minutes and said "this sucks, too hard"......hahaha

I highly recommend this place, something new and different for the tech savvy video playing pokeman go catching glued to their phones generation, to see where it all started and how much fun they still are!

Here is the final run down of the favorite games:

Avery: Qbert was her favorite (of course)

Evan: BurgerTime was his favorite

Me: CENTIPEDE!

We also did play several pinball machines and those were also fun and addictive. But we gravitated more to the video games. 

If you ever go, or have already experienced this place, let me know what you think?

What was your favorite video game?

WTF WEDNESDAY

Summer time...kinda losing track of my days. I almost posted this yesterday....on a TUESDAY, can you believe the chaos that would have caused!? Whew, caught it in the nick of time!

Here you go:

Found this treasure in the "nun section". Yes, there is a "nun section" at one of the thrift stores I go to, seriously, I cant make this shit up.

At first glance, I just thought it was one creepy looking nun, handcrafted with "love"

Then upon closer inspection, I realized it was an old timey judge. Still handcrafted with "love". Apparently he looked nunny enough to hang out with the sisters. 

Look at that fine craftsmanship! 

As usual, I go home and regret not purchasing it. Not because I liked it, because I SO DID NOT like it, but because I like the weird shit. So, I go back the next day to buy it, (not sure why) I get there and it was already sold!!?! For real!

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until next time....