Tickety-Tock

Snap Shot

Those of you who watch my FB page know we’ve acquired several more mint-condition vintage cameras last weekend. They’re not the only ones we own. In fact, our collection had grown to the point we had to make a choice: keep the cameras or keep the carnival-glass collection. Both was no longer an option.

When it came down to, “Which would we pack up and haul across the country with us?” it was a no-brainer.

It’s no longer a rhetorical question, as I’ll explain shortly.

The carnival glass went up for sale Sunday. The cameras are now in our primitive walnut display cabinet. G took the picture with the doors open because yeah… dark against dark.

The blue carnival-glass pieces are for our younger daughter and aren’t part of the sales.

The wooden pieces at the bottom left are, from front to back: a vintage judge’s gavel; a handmade wooden mallet, made for G by one of his friends; and a vintage set of wooden acorn S&P shakers. In front of the blue carnival glass (bottom right) is a brass-trimmed, carved wooden fish box. The plan is to add vintage linens and/or scarves to line the shelves, which will help the dark collection stand out. We’ve seen scads of vintage doilies and dresser scarves over the years. If they hold true to pattern, though, now we’re actually looking for them, the sources will dry up for a while for a bit. Then we’ll buy some and all of a sudden they’ll be everywhere again.

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OOooOh, Domino

The other shoe has dropped.

My daughter’s ex-boyfriend texted her a few days ago to say he’s selling their house and she needs to get her stuff out once she gets back from the Midwest. To be fair, I knew when they bought that place, they’d bit off waaaaay more than they could chew. I can understand why his stress hit the breaking point. There’s more to it and in his shoes I probably would’ve done the same thing – decided to put the house up for sale, anyway. His declaration was a shock to exactly no one, and I’m glad he called it instead of becoming violent.

It does mean Laura and her son will be squeezing into this tiny box with us for a while. I tried to talk G into sacrificing the office so the kids can at least have beds, but he wouldn’t budge.

He has a point. I’m currently the only one working. If we mess with my workspace and I lose my job (assuming this @#%^ Internet doesn’t do it for me first), we’re all up a creek. I only work two days next week thanks to my minication, and the new Internet’s supposed to be installed the following Tuesday. Hopefully the crappy connection we have now will be enough to hold til then.

I’m relatively calm about the stuff with the kids, even happy. It’s the first domino to fall, and definitely not the last.

My job has been a godsend for the past several years. I’ve tied a whole lot of knots in this rope to hold on. It’s getting mighty frayed and I’ve got some gnarly rope burns to show for it, but I’m still here. Unfortunately, there have been signs of corporate disintegration over the past couple of months. G’s having palpatations just thinking about it, otherwise it wouldn’t faze me. We’ve always managed to stay just ahead of the curve when crazy hits, and I plan on sticking with the proven strategy. We’ve been talking about retirement for a while. Sooner or later we’ll hit the point it isn’t optional.

I’m eligible for full social security benefit in May 2024. If at all possible, though, I’d like to hold out for and move two years from this month. Housing prices here go up in October/November, while creeping down in our destination area. (The reverse is true in spring.) The weather is usually less tornado-y in autumn. I also promised G we won’t move in the heat again, which means late October or early November. My plan is to file for social security as soon as it’s practical for tax purposes, and use as much of it as I can to pay off credit cards and the car payment before I swear off working full time.

When we win the lottery, all bets and timelines are subject to being chucked through the closest window.

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Little House Porn on the Prairie

I haven’t posted house porn in a while, mostly because this summer raised the bar on brutal. True, I work slightly fewer hours now. Which means now I’m working parts of my old job and all the new one.

*Le sigh*

I never stopped looking for a house. I did, however, skip saving photos or anything time consuming until I got a bit of a breather; and I changed the search parameters, particularly in light of recent developments. Prices are up in the Midwest, like the rest of the world. They’ve just started the seasonal dip I mentioned earlier, presumably hitting the lowest prices in the dead of winter. And much as I’d like to tell myself we’ll move next week, anything soon enough to make an immediate offer is unlikely. I’ll be winning the lottery shortly, then I can start searching for mansions. In the meantime, I’m looking at smallish places. (Hint: even if/when we win big money, we’ll be looking for a modest home.)

I really like the simplicity of this house. Its simplicity follows inside, too. The gray-and-white exterior is my favorite color combo.

This lovely woodwork and flooring runs through the whole house other than the kitchen and bathroom. While I don’t show everything here, from what I can tell all three bedrooms and all the main living areas are on one floor, and not a ton of steps to get into the home.

Normally I’m not a fan of all-wood rooms, nor the overwhelming beigeplosion that permeates this home; but with three walls of windows and the board-and-batton detail on the walls, this room works for me. Not sure if it’s considered one of the home’s three bedrooms, a dining room, or a bonus room.

If we buy this house (hey, it could happen) I’d probably want to go with a soft gray-green on the walls. I think it would break up the woodtones without clashing

This kitchen says “flip”. It’s one of the better flips I’ve seen, one where they didn’t destroy the character of the house via update. The cabinets say early 2000s, but the medium wood tones and straight lines fit the rest of the home. I love the brick-red tile – presumably porcelain. (The same tile is also used in the bathroom.) This isn’t the whole kitchen – the fridge and more cabinetry are opposite this wall, and the laundry is also in the kitchen. Considering my mobility issues, I’m okay with washer’s & dryer’s location, though I’d probably do what we did at our current house and curtain off the niche where they live.

This cozy abode is up for $134,500, which isn’t half-bad for move-in ready. In the Phoenix metro it would easily top 300K. Depending on the part of town it could go north of 400K.

You can see all the details here, if curious.

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Junk Sale

Definitely a junk sale. We plan on being there when they open this weekend. This is our favorite kind of sale, where there’s so much stuff stacked up and collecting dust, the owner lost track of what he had, long ago.

The photo at left shows a mix of legitimately old and reproduction stuff in it. I see at least one old radio and one that’s maybe mid-century, and an obvious reproduction. There’s a battered book which might also be worth our trouble. The gramophones look to be a mixed bag, too.

The radios are okay, but we’re super picky when it comes to buying a vintage radio. If it doesn’t still work, it needs to be in near-pristine condition. And we honestly don’t have the space for any more radios, so more than likely we’ll skip these.

However…

G spotted some cameras. Looks like there are lots of cameras and photographic equipment.

The picture at right haas been blown up to 4x, so the resolution isn’t great. This looks like maybe three cameras. I saw cameras sticking out of boxes and cases elsewhere, too.

Unfortunately the resolution isn’t good enough to tell what they are or how complete they are. The lower one in this image, for example, looks like it could be missing a piece on the back. It’s hard to tell for sure.

G saw cameras.

I saw vintage microphones. Lots of them, some in styles I’d only seen in old photos.

That star/spring style one in the back, if original, may be from the 1930s. Not sure about the steel one bottom front, but it looks to be older, too. There’s also one half-hidden behind the turquoise (phone? Not sure the turquoise beastie is a microphone.)  There’s no way to tell from this photo how much of this stuff is replica and how much original. I can see some quarter-inch connectors coming from the jumble.

It’s been a lot of years since I was on the air, but I definitely don’t see these in use today by hobbyist audiophiles. What say you, Dangerspouse? Do the modern airwaves still voice through the old-school XLR plugs?

These photos are cropped and blown up from a wider shots — much wider, and a lot of them. This is the stash of a self-proclaimed hoarder, and they have a right to the title. From what I saw, it looks like a double garage with stuff thrown pell-mell at least waist-high.

Just our kind of sale, because you literally never know what you’ll find. We’ve bought some relatively valuable antiques that way, paying next to nothing for them.

Of course this person/family may decide their shit’s worth more than everybody else’s shit, combined. Could be – to somebody. But not to us, ’cause we’re cheap.

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This post ended up drastically longer than I planned. It’s what happens when I write in spits and spurts over days. One last thing – the photo at the top of the page was dinner. Leftover chicken and veggies, heavy on veggies (which is my preference) warmed in the air fryer. It doesn’t have any fancy presentation and may not look appetizing — but man, was it yummy!