Best House Guest Ever

So my old roommate Christy the Witt came up from San Diego and stayed at my apartment for the past few days, and she decided that she needed to pay for her room with records! (!!!!) She’s actually the one who convinced me I needed to get a record player of my own.

Now my collection is about 110% more awesome than it was before. She gave me:

• Gloria Gaynor’s “Love Tracks” – with I Will Survive. It is awesome and needs to be blasted at all times. Seriously, I’m doing it right now.
• Toto’s “IV” – with Africa. Which really makes me happy largely because of Sam & Macrae’s 80’s Prom last year. Bless the rains.
• Tim Curry’s “Simplicity” – This makes me laugh so much. It also rounds out my Psych American Duos episode collection. He totally played the main judge on the show.
• Huey Lewis and the News’ “Fore” – with Hip to Be Square. I already have this song on my iPod, and it’s even more awesome on record. I also love them for another reason that will become more clear two bullet points down.
• The Dave Brubek Quartet – with Take Five. Christy said this is essential for any cultured person, and I totally believe her. It has wonderful, wonderful jazz. Little does Christy know, in elementary school KKJZ was my favorite radio station. They played all jazz all the time. Ya, I’m kind of a nerd.
• The BACK TO THE FUTURE SOUNDTRACK -- My absolute favorite (although there are many extremely close seconds), as this is one of my favorite movies of all time. For some reason when I got my record player I totally imagined playing Johnny B. Goode on it, and it’s definitely on the record. It even says Johnny B. Goode, performed by Marty McFly with the Starlighters. It’s perfect. I can recreate the Enchantment Under the Sea dance in my room.
• And a B.o.B single is arriving from her tomorrow! She said she wanted make sure I had some modern stuff too haha.

Christy’s staying here really required no effort on my part since she slept in Sam’s bed because Sam was out of town for a swim meet. But I am definitely keeping the records anyways… She’s way too nice to me.

(In case you wanted a visual)

Sister Shopping Spree

Today was possibly the most successful shopping trip ever. There were seriously the best sales in Salt Lake. Combined, I’m pretty sure my sister and I spent under $100, and we bought lots of stuff from Urban Outfitters, Anthropologie, Gap, Wet Seal, American Eagle, Victoria Secret and Graywhale. For example, I bought two shirts for $2.25 each. My mom definitely raised us to be bargain shoppers. We pretty much grew up in Ross.

Pictures of our success:

Also, there was a nice view of the city on the way from lunch at The Pie to the mall, so we immediately stopped the car on the side of the road and took these:

Also, best vinyl find of the day? Tears for Fears. I couldn’t stop laughing. Mostly because of this. (You really, really, really need to watch the whole episode. I couldn’t find the best clip on youtube, but this one is definitely sufficient because they’re holding the exact record I bought in it!) The record was even in pristine condition, like no one had touched it since 1985. I think the guy at the store was amused by how excited I was for it.

Please watch the whole thing. You so won’t regret it. Psych Season 2, Episode 1 American Duos.

Also, while I’m talking about psych, they’re having a competition on their web page to have a shout out for the college who gets the most points, and last I checked BYU was totally winning. So please help make it happen! You have no idea how happy that would make me. It’s pretty much my favorite show ever, as evidenced by my psych poster, mug and sweatshirt. Ok, I’m done now. Definitely didn’t mean to write that long about it at all. I just love it far too much.

Retro Tunes

I’ve been saving up rewards from my credit card for months, and it finally paid off. Yesterday my awesome new record player arrived in the mail.

My desire to own a record player began in earnest sophomore year when my then roommate Christy Witt entered my life. See below. She’s the gorgeous one on the far right.

She’s a sound recording technology major, and she had a beautiful record record player that sat on our kitchen table with endless stacks of records. I know I can play music on my computer or iPod, but this was different. It was a conversation piece, it was interactive, it was classic. And I wanted one of my own.

It’s a bigger purchase then I can usually justify, but with all of the gift cards I got from my credit card company it wasn’t bad at all. It’s at this point that I’m really wishing I bought more of those records I walked past all of the time in London, though. They were all over the place -- at markets and in music stores of all sizes. But I was paranoid they would break in my suitcase, and at the time the only thing I had to play them on was my parent’s old record player at home in Portland. So I just bought one for my dad for Christmas and left the rest sitting on the shelf. I guess I’ll just have to go back… somehow I am very ok with that idea. I’m always looking for excuses.

Right now I only have three records though, and they have absolutely nothing in common with each other: The Shins, Rick Springfield, and the Dark Knight Soundtrack. I’m sure I need to go to the store. One album I really want is this old Air Supply record below because we had some quality times with it in my old apartment. Let me know if you see it anywhere!

Here’s a glimpse of some of the excitement of opening my package up while I was “doing my homework,” because I know you are all just absolutely riveted by this blog post.

Just so you know, listening to the Dark Knight soundtrack while doing family finance homework makes it way more intense.

A couple more pictures because I’m a nerd and I can.

I can already tell we have some good times ahead of us.