Sometimes You Win, and Someties You Lose

While the title might imply a possible win the truth is I have been losing quite a bit lately. Even with this I am still holding that 2014 will be the year of the cat. Things haven't been all that bad really as I've added a few Trouts to the collection in packs. This would mean when it comes to buying packs of cards you could claim I've been winning. We'll go with that to keep this running along. The losing has been on my thrift store buying, which has been fairly terrible.

Saturday the daughter, and myself had a plan. A plan that bombed in the worst way possible. In Portland they had an event called Kidsfest. Needing some information that their website claimed would be available by the handfull. We headed north to attend, and see what we could come up. Reality is there was not one piece of information, and the whole event if you ask me was aimed at kids 6-8 years old. Nothing like the wide range they had advertised. Not having any of what we were looking for made this the biggest waste of time ever. Throw in eight dollars to park, and ten dollars for both our admissions. We were out almost twenty dollars, and the gas to drive up there. Half an hour into the event we were heading back south.

Wanting to salvage what we could of this day. Stops at three thrift stores, and a stop for the daughter at a Claire's was in the works. Entering the first stop we went in full of hope that maybe this would go better. This store is the one I only get to visit on trips to Portland which seem to be getting a little more frequent lately.
              Two items peaked my interest, but one due to the daughter's pressure stayed. I have been picking up the old glass canning jars, and currently have five in the collection. One is about 1/3 full of blue marbles, and slowly gaining more when I come across them. Usually found at the swap meet or antique shops at the coast. The second a much shorter jar has some old game dice I found at the antique show in October. Number three, we have been picking up either a small stick, sand, or a cool sea shell whenever we visit the coast. Sadly the other two sit empty. This is why the daughter has banished me from buying any more of these jars. Her rule is I must dream up something to start in the other two, and something to put in the new jar before buying it. Normally I'd just buy the jars as I am the parent, but unfortunately it makes sense so I've played along. Kind of a way of protecting me from myself just using her as my stopper. Without all this I'd probably have ten or so jars right now so it works.
    The second item was twelve cups all with the New York Mets all-star game logo, and artwork. While I know a couple Mets fans, and might have been able to send most to them. Then kept one or two for my personal collection. In the end I just didn't feel like buying them.

Our next two stops were Claire's followed by another thrift store. At Claire's the daughter did well by getting a new necklace. As for me it was another dry stop with nothing of note. Still not willing to accept defeat I made a side trip to Toys-R-Us. Before Christmas I was in, and bought a playmakers Mike Trout figure. Seeing that there was a bigger figure for Trout I had to see if I could find one for the collection. Living in Mariners territory Felix was the only choice for the larger figures. Don't know if that was by coincidence or not. What I do know is they still have the entire batch.

Finally the last stop ended with the same results as I'd had all day. In the end though it wasn't a terrible day as we had fun hanging together. So I guess it might have been a win after-all.