October-Eve!

So it's the night of September 30th, and you all know what that means:

Tomorrow is the first day of October! It tells us it's time to hang the Halloween stockings by the witch-burning pit with care... and it marks the beginning of the Goodwill Geek's Countdown to Halloween as well.

I am going to be trying (but will not 100% commit) to post something every single day next month leading up to Halloween. I'll not only be featuring items I've purchased at Goodwill, but items I already own, favorite movies, cartoons, books, treats, costume ideas, etc... I can't wait. I dread the amount of work it represents, but love-love-love the season I'm doing it for. Halloween is my #1 holiday folks. I love Christmas too, but it takes a close second. There's something I love about the dark, crisp feeling of Autumn, and the spirit it invokes.

So I'll be around... with plenty of Goodwill Goodies, among other things... so until then, Happy Goodwill Haunting!

UPDATE: The Halloween Stockings pictured above are not mine. I got the picture from the internet. So I've linked to the original site I found it. I've found some other examples of Halloween stockings and here are those, just because everyone seems so interested.. Click on them to follow the links:

Choose Your Own Adventure!

So... I'm going to feature another collection today. This time around, you may recognize a few recent entries into the blog. Here's a hint:

If you're interested in finding out what I'm featuring today, go to page 62 

(Hit the jump) 

If you're not interested, go to page 28 

(Hit the jump anyway. You know you want to)

Payday Friday (Redux)

Yeah... I guess a bunch of stuff is going to be Redux for a while. Here's a payday Friday from like... two Paydays ago. So... like a month? That doesn't seem... yeah I guess it does.

Well, "There's Always Books" is something I should probably just have stitched on a pillow, so it should come as no surprise that I'm starting off with them. 

More Details After the Jump!

E.T.'s Secrets, Laid Bare For All To See!

So just a quick update tonight, and a shout-out to "Anonymous..." who helped me out with a mystery (That I admittedly haven't investigated since...) from the very first entry of this blog:

Hole-Ee Shee-Ett

The origins of these E.T. mini-figures:

This anonymous hero sent me a comment on that post and pointed me in the direction of TRUTH!!!

Learn more after the jump!

The Great Pumpkin is Coming! Get in on the Action!

Calling all Geeks, Goodwill or otherwise!

Great Pumpkin Cthulu by M.S. Corley 

So AEIOU and Sometimes Why is hosting a Great Pumpkin gift exchange! If you love Halloween, and you love surprises... and you love... all the excited little Geeks on the internets... join in!

Hit the jump for the details pasted over from Dex's site:

Leggo My LEGO

So today I want to focus on just one great find I made a week or two back (time has begun bleeding together during the move, so I'm not 100% on when I picked this up honestly, I just know it was recent). I was skimming the game board section in the toy department when I noticed a LEGO logo beaming at me from the end of one of the boxes. I pounced like a grizzled highwayman on a pampered and plump prince dripping with jewels and riding alone down a dark wooded path. 

Meaning: I picked it up and looked at it and discovered it was: 

The LEGOLAND Castle System #6071: Forestmen's Crossing, from 1990!

See More Details After the Jump! 

Young Guns!

It's League of Extraordinary Bloggers time again! And since I've missed the last two topics due to moving, I have been itching to get in on some of the golden League-y goodness!

What's the topic this week? Young Guns!

In the spirit of Young Indiana Jones, Young Frankenstein, or Young Einstein, come up with a “Young ___” prequel or series.

What hasn't been done before I ask you? We've gotten stories detailing the youths of the gang from Star Wars, young Superman (two TV series!), and even the Muppets baby-hood has been done before. A Pup named Scooby Doo takes out another of my staples... And they've done a junior Inspector Gadget cartoon too! Even boardgames like CLUE have junior versions of their characters, stealing each others's pets and lunch money! There's a series of YA novels telling the story of Junior James Bond... so what's left? Hannibal Lector... done to death. The Flintstones Kids? So stone age. Alien got a prequel in Prometheus... we got to see what happened in the future/past of Terminator... Batman's had about twenty versions of Year One... Starfleet Academy... we've seen Mario and Luigi as babies... even the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles did an episode with them as kids. What is there left to do?

I suppose I could go with...

See my Young Guns after the Jump!

Want A Sneak Peek of the New Cave?

So I have literally one corner of my new Geek Cave set up. This I've been doing in my spare time, away from trying to get the rest of the house set up. I've made more progress since these pictures were taken, but I'm going to do a big reveal here in the upcoming weeks, and thought I'd just give you guys a little taste for today:

See the Goodwill Geek's Cave Preview After the Jump!

He's baaaack! Sort of... and Quick Stop!

So the family and I are finally moved into the new house, and we finally got internet/phone/TV hooked up. Here's the Goodwill Geek, back in all his glory! Sort of... I'm posting today, and then I'm probably going to drop off the grid for another day or two. I will be back for League of Extraordinary Bloggers Monday for sure, but getting myself, my wife, and three kids all settled in and happy has been (and still is) a chore. So posting will still be sporadic for a while.

Today I'm going to focus on a Quick Stop I made back before we were in the full-swing of moving homes. 

See the haul in detail after the jump!

Still internet free for a while...

So just a quick update to prove I'm not dead or anything...

I'm still waiting for Time-Warner to come hook up internet/phone/TV at my new house, believe it or not... so I'm using the computer at my in-laws place to contact the internets. I should have service by Wednesday and possibly be back blogging on a regular basis sometime soon after that.

See you all again soon!

The Purchase That Started All This...

So just a quickie tonight, as I am still in moving Hell...

But I've teased a couple of times about a great item I picked up at the Grand Opening of the Ellsworth, ME Goodwill. I mentioned back when I talked about those crazy ladies who bought up all the blanket checkers (go read it, I'll wait... look for the picture of the checkers, look for where it says "GET COMFORTABLE. THIS IS A STORY... and read from there.) during my first trip into the store. Well, my consolation prize, and the item that made me decide this Goodwill place was probably a store to check out again in the future (I wasn't at crack-head level yet... it was the bag of wonders in the display case I talked about awhile back that put me into that category).

So what was this item that gave me solace at a couple of nattering old nutcases made off with MY blanket checkers? Well, here's a vague hint:

See what it was after the jump!

Little People!

DISCLAIMER: I am running out of pictures stored on my hard drive, and I am lacking time and space to photograph other things I've found at Goodwill (or anywhere else for that matter). So one of the side-effects of this situation is that some of the photographs I have taken and not really taken the time to examine closely, are turning out to be complete crap... but I'm forced to use them anyway for now. Don't pretend like you haven't noticed. Some of the pictures I've featured in just the last few posts have been fuzzy as hell, not to mention from weeks ago. There's nothing I can do about it right now, but I have a strong suspicion that I will be going back to older entries and obsessively replacing photos with newly taken, more in-focus pictures. For now though, expect the worst. 

Now on to the actual post! I'm changing up my usual modus operandi a bit, and I am going to showcase an entire collection of something, even if some of the items have not been bought from Goodwill. Some of them were not bought at all in fact. A couple of the items were given to me in fact. 

What are these mysterious items you may ask? Well here's a hint: 

See the collection after the jump. Do it.

Now.

Another Goodwill Grab-Bag

So I'm back on the Goodwill Grab-Bags. Today I wanted to share some small items that came out of a particularly large bag of stuff that I bought a while back. I'm going to show you the five toys that I ended up keeping, and I won't go into great detail into the other items that I didn't keep, such as plastic kittens, Barbie shoes, broken Hotwheels cars, and a few other items I don't even remember. What I do remember is seeing a Happy Meal Muppet Babies Kermit, and deciding on that one toy alone that I would pay the 1.99 for the entire bag. I flipped and poked and looked some more and saw some other exciting toys inside, so there was no way I was leaving that store without that grab bag. 

1987 Happy Meal Muppet Baby Kermit

What else was in the bag? Let's explore together, after the jump!

Back to School!

I was wracking my brain trying to figure out what I was going to write for this week's League of Extraordinary Bloggers assignment.

Summer’s over, it’s time to go back to school! (Interpret it as you will.)

Gravedale High fanart by Makinita on Deviantart

Then I thought... hmmm... it's been a long time since I've gone to school. If I were to go to school nowadays, WHO would I like my teaching faculty to be comprised of?

See my staff after the jump!

What was brewing in Brewer

So I need to just go ahead and tell you about my trip to Brewer, ME a few weeks back already. Things are still crazy at my place, with the moving, and painting, and trying to get everything settled for three kids, but I need to just sit down and do it already. If I keep teasing it, you guys are going to think there was some miraculous discovery that cured cancer in that store... and believe me, there wasn't. There were, again, a handful of items that I found that were pretty cool, but that I am saving for my countdown to Halloween come October. But that only accounts for like... three things. 

So... I'll kick it off with some books, and I'll move into the toys. 

This was a neat little book of fable/riddles to read and try to figure out. I'm a sucker for logic puzzles, and a sucker for folktales and mythology... so this was a no-brainer. Probably the least exciting thing I picked up, depending on your interests. Got this for .99 cents. 

See the rest after the jump!