It looks like you're stuck with me for a little longer

Thankfully it was an uneventful trip to the cardiologist yesterday. He found nothing to be concerned about and it looks like my heart will continue to beat for a bit longer.

It was a nice drive down to Knoxville, the sun was shining and the red buds were in full bloom, which is a change from what we usually have to drive through, sheets of rain and driving wind. Since my appointment was later in the afternoon I didn't have to sit in the waiting room and listen to the coven of receptionists who wear scrubs even though they are not nurses be rude to everyone, especially the older patients who are hard of hearing.

I got to see Dr. Hoadley finally about 40 minutes after they took me back and after a pair of nurses asked me all the usual questions and they gave me the usual EKG. My doctor and I had our usual conversation when he came in:

Doctor H: Hi. Are you smoking again?

Me: No. I haven't smoked a cigarette since the night of my heart attack.

Doctor H: Good. Now you need to lose some weight you fat bastard.

Me: Okay. (He starts to unbutton my shirt.) Umm, Doc, I usually make a guy buy me something to eat before I let him take off my clothes.

Doctor H: Haha, very funny. Are you sure you're not smoking?

Me: Of course I'm sure.

Doctor H: (As he uses his stethoscope on my bare chest.) Okay then. Oh yeah, this weight losing thing, get on it Mr. Fatty McButter Belly. And stay off those cigarettes.

Me: (As I button up my shirt.) Will do.

Doctor H: I'll see you in a year and make sure you pay us before you drop dead or something.

Fin.

Actually, I kid, my cardiologist is a nice guy. We get along well and I trust him with my life, after all he did save my life the first night I met him. And since I don't have to see him as much as I used to, I don't mind going to his office in Knoxville as much as I used to. Oh, I still despise the coven of receptionists who wear scrubs even though they aren't nurses but they're a small price to have to pay to see a top notch cardiology guy.

After I finished with my appointment Sparky and I went and had a super duper late lunch/early supper at one of our favorite restaurants in Knoxville, The Sunspot on the strip near the University of Tennessee. After not eating much all day long I was ready to chow down and I had a chicken breast sandwich that was almost as big as my head, some salty as hell fries, and several glasses of sweet tea. I'm not sure what Sparky ate because I was too busy strapping on my own feed bag.

After our meal we went to two of my favorite places in Knoxville, Disc Exchange and Book Eddy.

Disc Exchange sells new and used CD's, DVD's and other entertainment related shit and we picked up three used CD's while there. We got a Replacements CD, an EP on CD by Southern Culture on the Skids, and we scored a used She and Him CD. If you're not familiar with She and Him, they are a musical group that consists of the actress Zooey Deschanel and some guy who plays guitar. Her singing sounds like a cross between Julie London and Patsy Cline, with a dash of natural sweetness thrown in, it very lovely and highly addictive. I now see why Samurai Frog has been on their band wagon for so long now.

To say Book Eddy is a used book store is to say that a used Rolls Royce is just a used car. Book Eddy sells used books yes, but the used books it sells are a cut above, although there are great deals to be found when you go through their stacks. They are also respectful of books at Book Eddy, they don't stick sticky gooey price tags all over the front of their books, they write the price, in pencil, on the first page of the book as as not to devalue the book by defacing the cover. They also carry, in addition to thousands of cool old books, some vintage magazines, record albums, and shelf after shelf of pulp sci fi, mystery, and suspense paperbacks from the 1940's on up through the '70's. I could spend days in that place just looking at all the great pulp covers. I was lucky enough this trip to find some books in the bargain bin such as these two:

I found a few more and I paid a little over three bucks for all of them, woo hoo! Sparky bought some books as well so all in all it was a good excursion. We got new to us music and kick ass used books, could geeks like us ask for more? I don't think so.

It's a good thing I only have to see my cardiologist once a year now because if I went much more than that I'd end up spending far too much time and money in the Disc Exchange and Book Eddy.

I can't say she didn't try to warn me

I bought a slew of pulp paperbacks yesterday for a quarter apiece and among them was this nugget of 1970's cheesy goodness:
The little old lady at the counter began to ring me up and when she saw this book she kind of squealed. "Harold Robbins!" She said, "You know this book will be racy, right?"

I smiled and I told her, "Oh I'm sure it is. Robbins writes that kind of thing. But I'm not going to read it. I'm buying it for the cover. I'm going to scan it and put it online."

She seemed relieved. "Well, if you do decide to read it, just remember I told you it was going to be racy!"

She needn't have worried because after I scanned the cover, I shredded the pages of the book and I'm going to spread the shredded remains of it and some of the other books I bought yesterday over my garden plot. The thin layer of shredded paper will keep the weeds down and it will decompose into the soil when I turn it this fall. I'm sure Harold Robbins would be glad to know that this copy of his book was put to good use.

We got a new toy yesterday

We got this pasta maker for under $20 bucks at Ross. Boo ya bitches, fresh pasta for everybody!

You call it 'being cheap,' I call it 'being smart'

While out running errands Saturday morning I stopped in at a local thrift store where I buy vintage paperback books from time to time. I had just planned to run in and check through their latest stock very quickly and then go home so that Sparky and I could go back out and run the other errands we had planned for that day.

As I went in the store I saw they were having one of their periodic bag of books sales. The deal is you get all the books you can stuff into one of their bags for four bucks. So I grabbed one of them and I commenced checking through every bookcase and book rack they had. By the time I was done I had stuffed that bag with 43 paperbacks and 1 hardback book. That bag was bulging like Carla from Top Chef's eyes, like Rush Limbaugh's leiderhosen, like a baby's diaper after a long night. I noticed that the bag was starting to split in places so I ran with it to the counter and I paid my four dollars.

As soon as the gal gave me my change I said, "This bag is about to fall apart, can I have some other bags to put all these books in?" She said, "Sure." So I took four bags. As I started putting the books into the other bags I thought, "Holy hell, I just saved myself $12. I hope the check out gal doesn't notice the irony of me asking for more bags and demand more money." Luckily enough for me she didn't. Boo ya!

Pompadour alert!

I'd like to be able to say that this dude wasn't buying off brand intimate area personal lubricant, spices made in Bosnia, and Christmas CD's that featured the song stylings of people you never heard of, but I can't.

Teh cute

I was trolling the side streets of my fair city one Saturday afternoon not long ago and I happened upon a store that I had never been in before because it was always closed during the week. It had a sign outside it that screamed in big letters GARAGE SALE so I went inside.

I looked around at all the crap the store owner had in boxes that rested on a series of long tables. As I looked at some used books in a box the owner said, "I got a bunch of books in the back that are all two for a dollar." Well kids, that was music to my ears to hear that books could be had that cheaply so I walked to the back of the store.

On my way back there I saw two little kids, one about 4 and the other about 7, who were playing Tekken 3 on a video game system. The older one had some kind of severe disability because he was breathing with the assistance of some kind of oxygen delivery device. The oxygen was piped into a mask he wore over his little mouth and nose. It broke my heart to see him tethered to that machine but I knew without it he'd probably die. His little brother, I noticed, had enough energy for ten kids but he was holding back so that he could hang out with his big bro.

I stood and watched the kids interact as they played the video game.
The little kid, that's him in the orange shirt, just sat there with his eyes wide watching the game unfold all the while pressing all the buttons on the game controller indiscriminately. After one of the fighters in the game whipped the other one and the victorious fighter stood over his vanquished foe, the little kid would say in a triumphant voice, "Yay! I won!"

His brother, who I could tell actually knew what he was doing, would correct his little brother by saying, "No! I won." They went on like that for about 5 minutes and I just stood there watching them. It was possibly the cutest thing I have ever seen.

(I took Sparky by the store yesterday but the boys were not there. However the books still were and we bought a Gunter Grass novel, a copy of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, a copy of The Orchid Thief, and a few more books, all of them brand new. I'm guessing they were the remainders of remaindered books.)