Wednesday, August 16, 2006

The Pitfalls of Thriftiness

Somewhere between amused and disturbed...that's how I feel right now. It's been a long time since a substantial update. A lot has happened and changed, and yet the only reason I'm writing anything right now is due to a purchase I made today at a local thrift store. So how should I feel?

Thrift stores have long been a guilty pleasure of mine, one that has caused me to purposely avoid going to them. One man's junk is another man's treasure, so they say, and I've often found it to be true in my own life. But one day I looked around my house and realized that I was surrounded by, not "one man's treasure," but several people's junk that they'd dropped off over the years. And I'd been smart enough to fork out some money to buy what had already been discarded by someone else. This is the path that leads to life in a trailer.

So it was with some amount of intrepidation that I walked through the familiar doors, listened to the sound of chimes bouncing off the glass and took in the smell of mothballs and old ladies wafting through the air. Still, I surmised I was strong enough to hold out. That is, until I noticed a small box with a scene of a 1970s style family having fun together. It was Pit...the Parker Brothers frenzied trading game of cornering the market, of trading stocks and bonds back and forth on Wall Street like a daytrader and hours of endless fun yelling around a table with up to six other people ages 6 and up. Complete with all the cards, the instructions and the classic orange bell, it was a mere 75 cents, and I quickly came to the conclusion that I would have to end my thrift store holdout.

Practicality drove me into making the purchase, knowing that I would certainly play the game, but then I ran across a complete travel version of Outburst for ore dollar and another classic game for another dollar. Soon thereafter I found an authentic old army helmet, an intriguing painting, a flask, a Bryan College ashtray-like looking thing, a leopard-skin like lightswitch cover....but then I got a hold of myself, paid for the three games and left without further damage. So I think I'm more amused than disturbed. You might the opposite, I understand.

As for life, it's been something new every day and I'm loving it. I started student life meetings on August 1 and students (RAs, athletes, etc.) started rolling in around last Tuesday. We left for a three-day retreat on the mountain with the RAs on Friday, and since then preparation for Saturday's arrival of incoming students has taken up most of life. The retreat was a lot of fun, as always, but I was more than ready to sleep in my own bed again. Sleeping on a floor (because the bunks were way too short for me) after helping polish off 300 wings at BWW with 14 other guys doesn't make for the most ideal rest.

So tomorrow night I should sleep a lot better in my own bed after I partake in the ceremonial slaying of chicken legs, ripping meat from bone, with the guy RAs at BWW for a second time in less than a week.