Birthdee MacDennis: The Birthday Of All Birthdays

 

Check it off. Another birthday has been ticked off the calendar.

The day was filled with multiple outings, all set into motion by my girl. She wanted to ensure that everything went off without a hitch, and that there was plenty to do.

Everything started off with breakfast at Yorkshire Restaurant.

Here, I filled myself silly with delicious sausage and cheese biscuits, and washed them down with coffee.

Check it out, it looks like a Snifit from Super Mario Bros. 2 is hiding in my mug!

From there, we were off to our first of multiple shopping experiences. First up, McKay's Used Books, Movies, Music, Etc.

Of course, the plan for me was to raid their various CD bins, while also poking around their cartoon DVD's and limited comic book selection.

I actually made good time pursuing the entire section of discs, wading through each within an hour.

I also glanced at the selection of figures and video games on my way to the DVD's, where I unfortunately didn't find any cartoons to add to my collection.

There were a fair amount of comic boxes to go through, which I passed on all of, instead, opting for the sporadically spaced around cases of comics.

I'll share what I picked up towards the bottom of this post.

From there, it was off to our next adventure, and a store I had never been to before.

Dragon Song Ltd., has apparently been in this same place for decades, and I had never heard of it.

Unlike the other music stores I am accustomed to, this place deals only in new / shrink wrapped items, and it doesn't matter how old it is. The guy even had brand new 8 tracks.

Admittedly, I was not a fan of his setup. While you could thumb through the records at will, the CD's and cassettes were behind closed glass. He expects customers to reach through the little circles, and go through them that way. It was inconvenient, and annoying. Lighting was poor too, which made it all the more difficult.

I left this place with nothing, and before I could worry about it, was off heading down the road to my next destination.

Eclectic Records is a new store that recently opened, and another I had never been to.

The place was small, but utilized what it had well. You could move around it, while still feeling like things were at your fingertips.

The CD selection was by no means large, but if I were a new CD collector, there were definitely some good albums to be had. As for me, I had most of them, and only left with a handful of things. Much like my trip to McKays, I'll share that towards the bottom of this post.

This Michael Jackson standee was awesome, and I asked the guy if it was decoration or for sale. He said he often thought about putting a price on it, but ultimately would rather keep it. I don't blame him.

We were going to go to a comic shop after this stop, but I decided to make a phone call, which turned out to be lucrative. If you read my post below about my August 15th trip to CD Cellar, you may have caught where I said things in my box didn't make it home with me. Either because someone took them from my box, or they got misplaced at the counter. I am happy to report it was the latter, and the guy had all of them still sitting there for me.

Rather than wait an hour for the comic shop to open, we made a "B" line for Vienna so that I could claim what was left behind.

Feeling a bit peckish, we made our way back to territories closer to home, and stopped at Saigon Outcast for some finger foods, and a drink.

A cool and refreshing raspberry hard cider fit the bill after a day out and about in the heat.

Some crispy calamari, spicy wings, and a unique potato...thing...filled us up.

After that, it was time to head home, and take a break from running around. It was here that my girl gave me some gifts.

After opening these, we spent some time together, and after working up an appetite again, grabbed dinner at Yen's Cafe.

One of our last outings for the day was to go to a bakery and get a cake, but after dinner I told my girl that I honestly couldn't, and didn't want to eat anything else today. As such, we decided that tomorrow was just as good a day to get a cake, if we really needed it at that point.

So that leaves us with just one thing left to do. Circle back to what I got.

McKays yielded a great amount of CD's, some from my want list, others cheap enough to justify.

I also found two issues of The Amazing Spider-Man on my want list. These issues weren't in the best of shape, but the prices were fair. I'd actually been looking into an issue eighty-one for a month or two, and never would have thought that one would be out in the wild.

As I mentioned above, as a new music buyer, the selection at Eclectic Records would have been lucrative. Because I've already got a massive collection, I only found two that I picked up.

I also picked up a vinyl album, purely for nostalgic reasons.

While I ended up getting this for the $7.99 sticker price, the shop owner actually almost crossed a bad line with me. When I brought it to the counter, he said that he didn't know if he could sell it because his partner wanted to try and get $700.00 for it based on it being in such great condition.

First off, the album is readily available on vinyl in pristine condition for eight to ten dollars on ebay. Asking $700 for it is laughable. Second, don't be that guy. That's not how you promote return customers, and word of mouth gets around.

My return trip to CD Cellar yielded the missing discs from my initial shopping spree.

 From my girl, I got some great gifts.

The Akira box is a set of hardback books that contain all thirty-six issues from the original series. In front of that is the two CD / DVD Prince and the Revolution Live set.

To the left of Prince are a set of salt and pepper shakers based on Red Rockets from Fallout. To the right is a somewhat gag / somewhat serious gift, a can opener. I constantly complain about the one we had, and I guess my girl wanted to rectify that.

Last up is volumes one and two of Woody Woodpecker and Friends on DVD.

And with that, the day closes, and man oh man, was it a good one!

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