Vintage Tech

 Had some luck at one of the local auctions this week.  For $15 (plus their 12% commission), I got a 1st-gen iPod Nano, 7th gen iPod Classic, and two Wyze security cameras (V1 and v2).  

 The iPod Nano charged up and worked fine at first, but then went dead and isn't charging at all anymore.  Darn it. 

 But the iPod 7th gen, a 120 GB model, seems to be doing fine and have decent battery life, in spite of the sticky grunge on the front.  

 Haven't done any reading on the Wyze cams yet, but maybe I can make a birdfeeder cam with one of them. 

 

March First Reads

 This month's choices: 

 

• The Price of Honey (psych thriller) bonus short read
• As Far As She Knew (domestic suspense)
• In the Great Quiet (historical fic)
• Yours Always (psych thriller)
• No Place to Be Single (book club fic - romance)
• What Happened Next (mystery)
• Maybe It's Fate (contemporary fic)
• The Last Labyrinth (fantasy) 
• Whispers of Ink and Starlight (book club fic - urban fantasy)

 I went with Last Labyrinth, although it may turn out to be romantasy based on the description.

Dishes

 For whatever reason - supposedly for the kid's "hope chest"  - I spent $5 on a box of dishes last week.  About 6 place settings, with extra plates.  It's a British pattern, and so pretty.  If the offspring doesn't want it, I'll use it myself. 

 

 It's a pattern called Hedgerow, made in England.  Blackberries and flowers. 

For the bargain price of $5, we got 12 large plates, 11 medium plates (salad plates?), 4 smaller plates, 12 saucers, 9 teacups, and 4 bowls.  

First Reads February 2026

 This month's offerings: 

1. Leave It Up To Love (women's fiction - short story)
2. I Came Back For You (psych thriller)
3. The Water Women (historical fiction)
4. First Witches Club (contemporary romance)
5. No One is Safe (serial killer)
6. So Very Lucky (book club fiction)
7. Otherworldly (sci fi advednture)
8. Two Bodies are Better than One (police procedural)
9. Kissing the Sky (historical fiction)
10. Sighn Unseen (fantasy) 

I'm going with Water Women, since I'm on a historical fiction kick. 

1.  

The auction winnings this week

 I may have gone a bit backwards in the decluttering journey.  Drove down to Holts Summit on Wednesday because I won some vintage puzzles in one online auction.  18 puzzles for $6.60, so I can't complain about the price, and they're all clean, stored inside instead of out in a barn somewhere. 

 

And today, I drove out to the other online auction, because I won six different lots of books.  Like, a couple hundred books, maybe.  Lots of Alan Dean Foster, M.C. Beaton, Dorothy Gilman, James Herriott, etc.  There are quite a few Murder She Wrote books for the kiddo, and Mary Stewart for me.  Including a vintage hardcover of The Little Princesses, written by the woman (nicknamed Crawfie) who was nanny to the future Queen Elizabeth II and Princess Margaret.  The plan is to spend part of tomorrow sorting out the books I want to keep (Foster, Gilman, Beaton, etc) and the ones I don't want to keep (Mary Higgins Clark, etc.)  Group two will be listed cheap on Marketplace, and if they don't move quickly, will get donated somewhere - Friends of the Library, Habitat for Humanity, or somewhere like that.  

 

 

The drawbacks of selling online

 Just a small rant.  Listed some Hallmark things on a Facebook buy/sell group.  Someone commented twice on one of them - the Mickey Mouse band - with exclamation marks.  So I reply, asking for a direct message and a zip code. 

 48 hours later.  Crickets. 

 Same thing happens frequently with things I post on the Freecycle/Buy Nothing groups here.   

Progress

 I made another $12 today - sold some Staffordshire saucers to someone who makes wreaths with them.  We bought them at an estate sale, but upgraded to some with an actual British scene on them (Lochs of Scotland) instead of the Colonial American scenes. 

 Of course, on the way to meet the buyer, I stopped at Goodwill.  Vintage puzzles were found, for a whopping $3.11 each.  Also a trifle dish, and the loudest Hawaiian shirt that I own (so far).

 

I've also started weeding out the Hallmark ornaments and listed about a dozen.  I also got the Mickey Mouse band and Angel Choir off the basement shelf, tested them all, and listed them on a Hallmark buy/sell group.  These were a thing Hallmark came up with.  Four or five "players" in a band, they link by radio or wi-fi somehow, and they sing songs.  Each player has two songs, and if you've got the whole group, you've got 8 or 10 songs total that they sing together on.  The stores would have a different one each week, feeding into the "gotta have them all" urge. Anyway.  I've got a nibble on the Mickey band, and I hope it's not a tire-kicker.  Mickey's gang and the angels were maybe displayed once; otherwise they've been in the basement for the last ten eyars.  I'm keeping both Peanuts sets, for now.  If I can get the house decluttered to a decent state, then we'll have room to get them out at the holidays and enjoy them.