Head Tale

Five Best Garage Sale Finds For Our Seasonal Camp Site

I’m a garage sale addict at the best of times – who can resist finding something that someone else paid $20 or $100 for and being able to buy it for pennies on the dollar? Plus part of the addiction is how random it is – like the slot machine in a casino, you never know what you might find when you pull up at a house with some balloons on a tree out front!

This year was extra fun for hitting garage sales because we had a seasonal camp site that we needed a few things for and buying at garage sales freed up our money to be wasted on other things. 😉

Here are some of my best purchases…
1. DVD Movies (most for $1-$2) – I started hitting garage sales in early May and one of the main things on my list was to flesh out our DVD collection since we don’t own a lot of movies ourselves anymore but I knew it would be good to have a few movies in the camper for those rainy days or some kids’ movies if we had “Tailgate Theatre” using our rear garage’s TV capability (as we did a couple times this summer.)

2. Double Folding Chair ($25) – I actually found this item at a garage sale a few years ago and it was a good deal – sturdy, a woven basket underneath plus various pouches in the front made it more than the sum of a couple single $9.99 folding chair specials from Canadian Tire (which is what I usually use) I didn’t use it much when we first got it but once we got to our seasonal site, it was my favourite chair – at least until my parents gave us a gift of two anti-gravity chairs mid-way through the season!

3. Xmas Lights – I already had some extra outdoor Christmas lights that I was planning to take to decorate our site but at a random garage sale on the way out of town one day early in the season, I stumbled upon a person with a 5 gallon pail of a number of strings of Xmas lights for $5. How could anyone turn down a deal like that? I bought them, *most* of them even worked, and they became extra lights for our site on top of the ones I already had. Heck, the person even threw in the 5G pail and that’s going to cost you a few bucks for a new one normally too!

4. CD Player – even though our camper has a radio and outdoor speakers plus I can also stream most radio stations using my phone and a Bluetooth speaker (mainly 620 CKRM for Rider games), I still wanted a regular CD player that I could move around the site, carry to other places (eg. beach) as required and so on. I was on my way back from an ice run at a nearby convenience store when I saw the sign for a garage sale on the Pasqua First Nation. So with a bag of ice melting in my vehicle, I went to check it out and of course they had a CD player for a whopping $2. Sure, one of the buttons didn’t work and it was pretty grungy. But once I confirmed it could pick up 620, it was sold!

5. Blake Berglund CD – I’ve already mentioned that Blake Berglund’s “Coyote” album became my unofficial soundtrack of the summer, almost by accident after I randomly put that album first on a “Saskatchewan artists only” playlist I created. I kept listening to it from a streaming service but halfway through summer, we hit another garage sale in Fort Qu’Appelle and what was the only CD they had for sale? The Blake Berglund double-album featuring “Jasper” which is a live recording and “Coyote”!

I happened to get to introduce myself to Blake who was at the “Symphony Under the Sky” concert at the end of the summer and told him this story. He joked that he thinks Value Village is the main distributor of his album and I realised it’s probably not good form to tell an independent artist that you bought their album secondhand. Luckily, he has a new release that just came out on September 1 and I bought that the old-fashioned way – er, pre-ordering the digital download on iTunes – even though it’s also available for streaming as part of your $9.99/month fee. Finding this CD was a double bonus as it gave me something I could play on my new $2 CD player as well! 😉

¶ Posted 05 September 2017 § List § Saskatchewan § Travel ‡ Comments (2) ° Tagged: camping, economics

Music Monday – “All summer long we’ve both been free/Won’t be long til summer time is through/Summer time is through”

One of the most poignant episodes of The Simpsons is “Season of 4 ft 2” which tells the story of the Simpsons family taking a summer vacation to the lake.

Lisa, who’s usually an outcast nerd, ends up befriending a group of cool kids while Bart, who normally has a large circle of friends, is left on the outside.

Bart tries to ruin Lisa’s popularity by showing her new friends her yearbook which nobody in their school had signed at the end of the school year.

Lisa thinks her new friends have turned on her when she catches them vandalizing her parent’s car. But it turns out they’re decorating it as a farewell after a summer of fun.

The episode ends with a montage of shots from the Simpsons’ summer adventure set to the song, “All Summer Long” by the Beach Boys.

I’ve been thinking about that episode a lot lately because of how perfectly it captures the magic of a family having an amazing summer together (even if the kids occasionally get on each other’s nerves!) In fact, if I get around to making a montage of our summer photos, I suspect I’ll use this Beach Boys song as the background music!

Unfortunately, YouTube doesn’t have the actual Simpsons montage (stupid copyright) but I found this clip which has been modified to get around YouTube’s filters which at least will give an overview of the episode’s events if you haven’t seen it.

“All Summer Long” – Beach Boys

¶ Posted 04 September 2017 § Family § MemoryLane § MusicMonday § Pace § PopCulture § Sad § Sasha § Saskatchewan § Shea § Travel § Video ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged: camping, cute, holiday, music, saskatchewan, travel

Saturday Snap – Autumn Falls

Fun to play in but fallen leaves are also a sad reminder the summer’s coming to an end. 🙁

¶ Posted 02 September 2017 § MemoryLane § Photo § Sasha § Saskatchewan § SaturdaySnap § Travel ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged: camping, holiday, saskatchewan, travel

Friday Fun Link – People Share Their Favourite Work Email Snark Phrases

I admit to both sending and receiving many of these over the years. 🙂

¶ Posted 01 September 2017 § FridayFunLink § Humour § Jobs § Meme § MemoryLane § Work ‡ Comments (1) ° Tagged: language

Throwback Thursday – #tbt – FIMS MLIS Student Council (December 2006)

I find it pretty funny that, as someone who was frequently a motivationally-challenged student, I ended up being the Academic Rep on two different student councils – both during undergrad at Luther College in Regina and later while doing my MLIS at Western in London, Ontario.

But perhaps it’s similar to how I have often ended up serving as Secretary when I’m on a Board of Directors – maybe it’s just one of those roles you seem destined for (or perhaps just because no one else wants it?)

(I also think it’s funny that, while most of my colleagues chose to pick a fairly professional photo of themselves against a neutral background, I chose a photo of myself wearing someone else’s hat while on the patio at the Grad Club after a few pints. Yep, bring all your academic issues to me and I’ll solve ’em, alright!) 😉

¶ Posted 31 August 2017 § Humour § LibrarySchool § MemoryLane § Photo § ThrowbackThursday ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged: education, ontario

Books n’ Roses: Capsule Reviews of the Three GnR Autobiographies

One of the best and worst things about working in a public library is you’re always seeing books come across the desk that you’d like to read.

That happened last summer when a patron returned the three autobiographies that have been written by founding members of G n’ R (so far) – one by Slash, one by Duff and one by Steven Adler. I saw them all together and thought “that’s a great idea – reading all the books at once would give you three different perspectives on the same events. Plus you’d get the added bonus of all kinds of tales of sex, drugs and general debauchery since GnR was one of the most notorious bands of the 1980’s for that kind of stuff.”

I proceeded to read them all (Duff’s then Adler’s then Slash’s) and would rank them in the same order that the aggregated ratings of people voting on GoodReads have.

“It’s So Easy (And Other Lies)” by Duff McKagan (4.18 Stars)
The best book of the bunch, it’s telling that Duff is the only one to not use a ghost writer so his real voice comes through. Plus he’s probably seen the biggest change in his life – after bottoming out with addictions, he regained his physical (through mountain biking and martial arts) and mental (completing a college degree) health. For a guy who once drank his own vomit to get back the alcohol, he’s gone on to become a respectable, well-centered family man who takes his daughters to Taylor Swift concerts!

“Slash” by Slash and Anthony Bozza (3.96 Stars)
No doubt about it – Slash is an icon. He got an extended ovation when he was introduced in Regina and he’s the Keith Richards to Axl’s Mick Jagger. He possibly also has the most interesting story of the three – child of mixed-race parents, had potential as a competitive BMX racer growing up, actually very shy in real life apparently.

My Appetite for Destruction: Sex, Drugs and Guns & Roses” – Steven Adler and Lawrence Spagnola (3.55 Stars)
The joke about Adler is appropriate – how messed up to you have to be to get kicked out of Guns n’ Roses? But there you go – even as the band rakes it in with a worldwide reunion tour today, Adler is still on the outs with the band. Even in his own book, he comes across as a self-centered, oblivious asshole. Perhaps the only redeeming quality is that, as the worst of a bad bunch, Adler’s story is arguably the most debauched if that’s of interest to you. (But all three put up some strong competition on that front.)

Now if we could only get Axl to write his autobiography?

¶ Posted 30 August 2017 § MemoryLane § PopCulture ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged: book, education, music

Westeros’ New Power Couple?

¶ Posted 29 August 2017 § Humour § Internet § Library § PopCulture ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged: television

Music Monday – “Radicals and Racists/Don’t point your finger at me/I’m a small town white boy/Just tryin’ to make ends meet”

After the concert I saw last night, is there any doubt which band I’ll feature for Music Monday?

But which song?

There are lots to choose from – big hits, underrated gems, personal favourites – but given my interest in Freedom of Expression as well as the band’s reputation in general, how about possibly G n’ R’s most controversial song (and given that they covered a Charles Manson song, that’s saying something!)

On that note, I’ve got perhaps my longest-ever percolating blog post in draft form with a variety of my thoughts about language, censorship, political correctness, pop culture, politics, and how all these things intersect. But I don’t know if I’ll ever get around to posting it – I keep going back and re-writing and it seems like every day gives me something new to add to the list.

“One In A Million” – Guns n’ Roses

¶ Posted 28 August 2017 § Censorship § MemoryLane § MusicMonday § News § PopCulture ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged: freedomtoreadweek, language, music

My Son’s First Major Concert Is @gunsnroses #gnrregina #yqr #notinthislifetime #WishesItWasEminem

(I didn’t get a good picture of my son at the GnR concert tonight but here’s one of us camping which is fitting since that’s where this story begins…)

When Guns n’ Roses was announced for the first “big” concert at the new Mosaic Stadium, I wanted to go but decided not to buy tickets – both because I figured we’d probably be camping and also because the prices were pretty high.

We were indeed camping this weekend but, as we were lingering in our seasonal campsite as we often do until later on Sunday afternoons, I started to see Facebook posts from friends who were showing up at the concert – a cousin from Saskatoon, a high school friend who I used to listen to GnR with, a co-worker.

Then I saw someone post that Ticketmaster was reselling tickets for as low as $35.

It was around 6pm already. GnR were slated to take the stage at 7:30pm. Our camp site is 45 minutes from Regina but with the amount of road work east of Regina, that’s usually longer – maybe closer to an hour. That left half an hour to spare at the most.

“Uhm, honey, there’s something I need to tell you…”

Luckily, I have a very understanding, kind wife who (usually) overlooks my spontaneous nature.

One other wrinkle – my ten year old overheard me talking to his mom and decided he wanted to tag along too since he is really starting to get into music this summer but he hasn’t been to the new stadium or to a big concert.

I still feel guilty I didn’t take him to KISS for his first concert when they came through the city a couple years ago (how cool would that be for a first concert?) so I decided GnR would be a good substitute – even though his tastes don’t really lean to 80’s hair metal bands. But for $35 to see one of the greatest bands of all-time? Why not – even if he doesn’t appreciate them now, he’ll appreciate them someday – just like I appreciate the first big concert my parents took me to – uhm, Kenny Rogers, I think? 🙂

We were packed up and ready to go pretty much so we made it into the city in record time, Shea buying the tickets on the Ticketmaster app as I drove. We skipped unloading the van like we usually do after a weekend of camping (I promised my wife I’d do it after the concert) and my son and I quickly got cleaned up and changed clothes before heading to the Stadium.

Unlike, the good old days, Axl wasn’t three hours late taking the stage but unfortunately, he wasn’t even three minutes late. I heard “It’s So Easy” as we were walking up to the Stadium and it wasn’t even 7:30pm yet. We got through security and to our seats as they finished playing “Mr. Brownstone” (which is one of my all-time favourite GnR songs so I was disappointed to miss it. It’s also too bad we didn’t get to hear the roar as the band first took the stage.)

Once in our seats (which had said “obstructed” but other than some rigging in front of us, not too bad), I checked setlists.fm to see what GnR played a few nights ago in Winnipeg as I’d heard their setlist was varying very little from show to show. That’s how I knew we’d luckily only missed a couple songs.

After that, the entire concert was a trip down memory lane for me (along with the sad realization that I am now the target demographic for 80’s bands doing reunion tours. It reminded me of how we were in Kelowna a few years ago and booked a “Classic Rock” dinner boat cruise. I was expecting a cover band playing Beatles and Rolling Stones and stuff I think of as “Classic Rock”. Nope, the band played Poison and Bon Jovi and yes, GnR. Made me feel *really* old!)

Pace initially wanted to go but once there, I think he wasn’t too sure if he’d made the right decision. There’s a few reasons for this – I haven’t totally converted him to my type of music and his tastes lean more to modern hip hop, trendy YouTubers and novelty songs about fidget spinners. Plus the fact that he was there with his fat, 40-something dad (never cool at the best of times), especially if dad is singing along with all the songs and occasionally even standing up to dance! 😉

So I suspect that right now, his main memories of this concert aren’t going to be the music or the experience. Instead, it is probably going to be how loud it was, how I treated him to $8 nachos plus the amazing fireworks and confetti display at the end.

But my main memory will be getting to take my son to his first big concert at the end of the summer when he’s at an age where he’s really starting to get into music for himself. And someday I’m sure he’ll also realise just how cool it is to be able to say that his first big concert was seeing literally the biggest band in the world- both in the 1980’s and, at least in terms of concert grosses, again today.

But if not, I’ll keep my eyes peeled to see if Eminem is playing anywhere close…just in case! 😉