When Buying Something Cheap Leads to Buying Something More Expensive ...

... it's not always a bad thing.

Gainesville is renowned for its annual "Friends of the Library" sale. Lots and lots of books. Lots of other media, too. Tamara wanted to get there early this morning hoping to beat the crowds. No dice. I'd be surprised if there were fewer than a thousand people in the building by the time we got there. The "express lane" for 20 items or less snaked around the building and my guesstimate of wait time is 20 minutes or so.

I bought a couple of cheap paperback mysteries (I don't have the reading time I used to and like something I can get through in the rare "nothing to do" day, e.g. a power outage) ... and then went to look for Tamara in the CD section.

Which meant going through the record section.

Which meant I ended up spending $3: 25 cents on a 78 rpm of Louis Armstrong's "Blueberry Hill," 25 cents on a Joe Jackson 45 (mostly because I knew Tamara would dig the sleeve), and $2.50 on this:

Four LPs. The Weavers. Flatt and Scruggs. Odetta. Doc Watson. Joan Baez.

All of which I can easily find on YouTube, I'm sure.

But I've been thinking about buying a turntable for a couple of years now. Whenever I hear vinyl being played, it brings back a feeling from my youth that I miss.

My vinyl collection went missing in a divorce 25 years ago. About 400 records, mostly LPs but some select 45s. The original "film can" issue of Public Image Ltd's "Metal Box." A first pressing of the 13th Floor Elevators' "You're Gonna Miss Me." An early pressing of the Stones' "Paint It Black" in the original sleeve. The original "School's Out" by Alice Cooper (the sleeve opened like a school desk and the inner sleeve was a paper pair of panties). Lots of albums by bands no one seems to have heard of in years (for example, three of Divine Horsemen's four albums).

I love vinyl.

Now I have some.

Which means I'm buying a record player.

I've got a bid in at Purse (affiliate link!) to get a substantial discount on a $40 job that, as a bonus, will output the vinyl sound to MP3 on a flash drive. If someone doesn't bite in a timely manner I'll either pay full price (minus the default Purse discount of 5%) or start keeping an eye out at local garage sales.