Birthday 2019

I was going to post this yesterday, but was so tired after a day out that I decided to wait until now.

For those of you who stopped by yesterday, you saw I was celebrating another birthday. Well, this write up is to detail what I did that day.

It all started with a delicious breakfast at 29 Diner. This place is a staple of the Northern Virginia area, having been around since 1947. They serve traditional diner food, hot off a greasy grill with some of the best coffee around.

Even its design screams classic diner. It's small, has minimal seating, but a menu that offers just about everything.

The place even has its classic jukebox with hits from the fifties and sixties, all on rotating 45's. Just ten cents a song!

Ah, yes. The iconic padded bars stools. A staple of any real diner.

For breakfast, I went with the classic biscuits and gravy with two eggs over medium and a side of home fries. Of course, plenty of coffee followed.

Apparently my goal at 42 is to not make it to 43.

From there, it was a trek over to estarland to look at their complete NES games. They didn't have anything I wanted. This was okay, because from there we were off to Winchester to visit a new store, Back To The Media.

This place is tiny. Literally a hole in the wall kind of location.

I felt really bad for all of this great stuff in the window. You can see the cover of the Iron Man book, which has ultimately been ruined overtime from repeated direct exposure to the sunlight. What a waste of an otherwise perfectly good book.

This section is what I came to peruse. While I didn't find anything in particular that was on my want list, the price points were too good to pass up. I also didn't want to leave empty handed.

The store has quite a nice selection of vintage and current games, and from what I saw, all the price points were incredibly reasonable.

You apparently can't have any kind of collectible shop without dedicating some form of space to Funko Pops. Six years ago this would have gotten my attention. Now, it's just wasted real estate for other potential merchandise.

It was interesting to find a healthy selection of records here too. These weren't your typically fodder titles that you find at most places. In fact, most of them were still brand new / sealed. They had a really unique selection of vinyl game soundtracks which included the Contra and Resident Evil series.

There was also a display case where the register is that displayed what the store considered hot titles. I picked up two items from this case, but didn't take the photo until after they were removed.

At the end of it all, I walked away with six complete NES titles, all for around $125.00. No, these aren't the most popular of games, but still, they're iconic in their own way.

I picked up Super Glove Ball because of its direct tie in to the Power Glove. It's not a good game by any means, but it has that nostalgic memory with it that goes a long way.

Spy Vs. Spy was the most expensive game I grabbed, but it was by no means over priced at $30.00. I grabbed this one more so for the recent announcement of MAD Magazine ceasing publication. It just felt appropriate.

Anticipation was a game I had as a kid, or better stated, the family had. We enjoyed going head to head on this one for hours.

A classic arcade game, Operation Wolf was always a go to when visiting Aladdin's Castle in Bend, Oregon. No, the Nintendo port wasn't that good, and suffered all the more for only being compatible with a joystick. Still, it's iconic to me for all those arcade visits.

Robocop was yet another classic arcade game I loved, but didn't port over well to the NES. It was however very playable and a lot of fun to beat back in the day.

Last up is Rush'n Attack. This was never one of my favorites because it was always so hard. I don't think I ever made it past the first level. Still, it's a classic NES game and was worth the twenty dollars the shop wanted for it. This game easily sells for double that on ebay.

Comparing the prices of all of these on ebay, looks like I saved about twenty-five bucks buying from the shop vs. online. I definitely got a great deal.

From there, we returned home to take a little break. When I walked in, I was treated to a fantastic pile of gifts from my girlfriend.

She got me a few shirts, which weren't included among the wrapped items. While I'm not a fan of getting clothing as a gift, I have to admit, I really needed these.

The first box contained a complete Cheetara and Wilykit from the original LJN Thundercats line. This was one of the few figures from the line I had as a kid.

The paint on this one is awesome and it even comes with the original bo staff - a rare accessory to find these days.

The next gift I opened was a unique salt and pepper grinder combination. As someone who enjoys cooking, this will get a lot of use when it's filled up.

As I inspected it, I gave a chuckle and said, "It looks like the ooze canister from TMNT! Now I love it even more!"

My girlfriend decided to help me out and check off a few of the remaining Joe figures I was looking for. She grabbed me the 1989 Rock & Roll (V2).

After numerous attempts to attach the bullet belts, I gave up. These types of accessories simply don't work with adult hands. At least not mine.

Next up was Lightfoot. He's by no means a popular character from the vintage Joe line, but he's still pretty cool to me.

He's got a ton of detail and fun accessories to round him out perfectly.

As I opened him, my girlfriend said she realized she forgot to buy one more figure and promptly went on her IPAD and did so. It's obviously not here yet since this was just yesterday, but Captain Grid Iron is in route.

To help round out the Cats, I also received Tygra with his original whip. This figure originally came with the Wilykat counterpart in conjunction with the Wilykit which came with Cheetara. However, he was not included here. No big loss as Tygra is definitely far more desirable to me than Wilykat.

Last up was a brand new portable DVD player. I don't think I've ever said it before, but I actually sleep with headphones in, playing some form of cartoon on DVD. My current player has been on the fritz for quite some time and this upgrade will work perfectly to replace it.

As the evening rolled around, we had to leave for a restaurant where we had reservations to enjoy some Italian food. Unfortunately, this is where things started going South fast. I won't bother to mention the restaurant's name or go into much detail because I don't want it to be a reflection of how my overall day was. Suffice to say, problem after problem occurred and after reaching my breaking point I called the manager over and told him we were leaving and we weren't paying for the food because we didn't even eat it.

To close out the evening, we returned home and enjoyed a slice of tres leches cake from a local Latin bakery.

It was moist and delicious. I wish I would have gone with my gut instinct and made a cup of decaf to go with it. Oh well, that's what leftovers are for.

Overall, it was a fun and relaxing day, even with the hiccup at dinner. I enjoyed myself, enjoyed my time with my girl and got some very nice new toys and games to play with.

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