Hard to believe they had these in a size (women) 13! Still six sizes too small for Peggy Hill.
It has been a rather odd yet fun and eventful weekend in Austin for me. Glad I got it in now because next weekend comes the Fall invasion of Hipsters, Sheep and Californicators, aka the Austin City Limits Festival. Three days of people getting serious sunburns while consuming overpriced food, drinks, clipped thiry-minute sets and (this year) Bob Dylan flogging a dead horse. Thus, Zilker Park and everything in a 10-mile radius centered from there is best avoided.
As for me, I took Friday off for multiple reasons I don’t want to discuss and it’s a smart thing I did. The mechanized lock on the passenger’s side broke so I couldn’t get into my car by normal means. Normal means? Well, the same mechanism on the driver’s side died last year during a different string of annoying (and expensive) repairs but that was one part I decided to skip. Thus, I have been locking and unlocking my VW on the passenger’s side since October. With both locks shot to hell, I had no other choice but to climb in through the hatchback, very Homeresque. Oddly, the car’s alarm didn’t go off and I think it’s crippled. Now I have to stay in the habit of doing two things: leave one door unlocked to avoid another jungle gym entrance and don’t leave items in the car, unless I want them stolen.
The frustration of my gradually deteriorating 11-year-old car made me forget all the money I wanted to deposit into our vacation fund. (Again, my VW seems to “know” whenever I come into a financial windfall, my first profit sharing check from Apple was immediately consumed by an oxygen sensor.) I decided to just drive north to the outlet mall’s Converse store and see if there were any Chucks to cheer me up. I hadn’t been there since December, I figured the inventory was replenished in the $20/pair section. Imagine how stoked I was when I found the shoes in the picture. I had to replace the laces because they originally came with these lame, scarf-like things that I doubted could keep them on my feet. I bought another pair to add to my huge collection (28 active pairs if you must know) yet these aren’t as interesting. I wore these to work the following day with their new pink laces and the general consensus was, “those shoes are gay!” Feh, I think they’re awesome with the color, the silver stars and hopefully the sequins won’t come off easily.
Then today, my scrounging at Cheapo Discs was equally successful. I received a gift certificate for them on my birthday and I was in that neck of the woods today doing errands, seeing a movie. Originally, I wanted to see what Waterloo had other than the new VHS or Beta on sale yet the parking situation was kaput so I decided to see what I’d find used first. Good thing I did. I scored several titles in my little notepad I had been trying buy for a while (The Tender Box, Mandible and VHS or Beta), a hard to find Dan Castellaneta record and the best treasure of them all, a CD of First Under the Wire by LRB, their 1979 release which has been out of print for a decade. Snicker all you wish when it comes to Little River Band but either edition of this goes for at least $60 on auction sites.
Despite all my car woes, it was a great weekend of “treasure” hunting. I still need to take a couple friends music shopping to demonstrate to them how my collection/stream of Obscure Rock was built.