We wouldn’t be able to talk about Brimfield if we didn’t talk about the freak June 1, 2011 tornado that ripped through the area last year. Most of our area watched our TVs in horror as a rather large tornado danced down Rt. 20 through Brimfield and Sturbridge and upended homes, trailers, and historic buildings.
Tag: antiques
First Brimfield report
Ok, it isn’t a report, just a link. But still, I love making the news.
http://www.telegram.com/article/20120512/NEWS/105129967/0/
Make sure to read the whole article.
~Kelly
A picture is worth a thousand words
When the picture is done properly.
I used to work in the retail and online auction industry. In fact, sometimes I was responsible for actually taking the pictures and photo editing them so that they could be put up online to sell stuff. That’s why when this photo showed up in my inbox the other day I literally had to do a double take.
TRS-80 Books and Manuals for Sale
I put this list together of all of the books that we have with the TRS-80 Model III and printers.
Model III Disk System Owner’s Manual
More TRS-80 Basic: A Self-Teaching Guide by Don Inman, Ramon Zamora, and Bob Albrecht
The TRS-80 Model II User’s Guide by Tony Bove and Leroy Fikel
TRS-80 Model III Operation and BASIC Language Reference Manual
Getting Started With TRS-80 BASIC
Fun With Microcomputers and BASIC by Donald D. Spencer
Instant Freeze-Dried Computer Programming in Basic, 2nd Astounding Edition by Jerald R. Brown
Announcing: Computer Games for Business, School and Home by J. Victor Nahigian and William S. Hodges
More Basic Computer Games: TRS-80 Edition edited by David H. Ahl. Preface by Chris Cerf
TRS-80 DWP-210 Operation Manual
Assembly Diagram for DWP-210 printer
VISICALC Pocket Reference for TRS-80 Model III
VISICALC User’s Guide by Dan Fylstra and Joyce Uggia (Xerox copy)
1987 Radio Shack Software Reference Guide
SuperSCRIPSIT Reference Manual
SuperSCRIPSIT Figures Book in 3 ring binder
Addendum to SuperSCRIPSIT
SuperSCRIPSIT 3 ring binder from Radio Shack Software Library
Profile III Plus 3 ring binder
TRS-80 Model III Micro-Computer System Start-Up Pamphlet
Understanding Basic pamphlet by Richard G. Peddicord
3 ring binder containing the following:
TRS-80 DWP-210 Operation Manual; Bidirectional Tractor Kit for DWP-210 Operation Manual; Xenos: A 32k Disk Adventure for TRS-80 Model I/III; plus multiple copies of business forms from Go Today.
FOR SALE- TRS-80 Computer with all the peripherals and manuals
You know, I often give Geoff grief about never throwing anything away. He likes to keep everything.
Sometimes this works in our favor and he ends up keeping something really, really cool. Like this.
We have for sale one TRS 80 Model III computer. It WORKS. It has not one but TWO printers which also work. Check it out.
And finally, the giant pile of manuals and stuff. We have SO much stuff. Check it out.
We’re selling everything individually. If you’re interested leave a comment here or send one of us an email and we’ll get right back to you. We need to make room for more wedding crap in our apartment and we’d like to see this stuff go to a good home.
Thanks!
~Kelly
Wedding working weekend insanity 2011
This weekend was a combination of Geoff’s Birthday, our cake tasting, prepping our centerpieces, making our final trip to the Alfred Angelo store for the Bridesmaid dress shopping, and meeting the awesome hair styling and makeup team to get our hair and makeup trial.
Giant Men and Flying Furniture
We were on our way home from taking Thumbelina to the vet* yesterday when I spotted a couple of guys from Gentle Giant on Binney Street in Cambridge in the middle of a move. Rerun was in my lap and I pointed them out to him and we waved in our typical dorky “I have a dachshund in my lap “way. It was then that I was reminded that I’d promised the Gentle Giant folks that I would post these pictures.
Correct Wedding Customs
Nope, this is not a post about me telling you what to do at the wedding. (That comes later… KIDDING!)
This is a post about a book. As you know if you’ve ever been to our house or seen photos, we have a lot of books. Many thousands of them. We collect books of various sorts and we have a vast reference library. We decided at Brimfield this year when we came up with some truly spectacular and funny finds that we’d take some time to share some of them with you from time to time. This may take the form of photos of really beautiful books or this may be by transcribing choice portions of really amusing texts.
This, is the the latter. Oh yes. This find was from Brimfield this year and was what sparked the idea. It is a gorgeous leather bound tome entitled Correct Wedding Customs. It is gorgeously put together and comes in its very own satin lined box. There is no copyright date or year listed, but it looks, in my estimation to be 1920’s- 30’s or so. It was published by Livermore & Knight Co. of Providence, R.I.
And if you’ve ever heard of these “correct customs” before, you’re doing better than me.
Page 54: “At a church wedding the wearing of hats by the bridesmaids is obligatory. These must be as carefully selected as the costumes themselves and must be in harmonious accord therewith. They may, without any risk of even an appearance of ostentation, take the form of a gift from the bride. At a home wedding, however, the maids may either appear with absolutely unadorned heads or with wreathes, crowns, aigrettes, ostrich tips or bows as may be preferred.”
Page 60: “Finally it is permissible, either in conjunction with these juvenile attendants or in lieu of them, to make use of the services of a “ring bearer,” a small boy in a page’s dress, who precedes the bride to the altar, carrying in both hands, at the level of his breast, a satin, flower-encircled cushion, on which rests the mystic ring of marriage, to be offered at the appropriate moment to the bridegroom preparatory to his placing it on the bride’s finger.”
Pages 117-120: “… the bride, following a pleasant old custom, is wont to throw her bridal bouquet, of which she has previously loosened the fastening, so that it falls more or less to pieces as she throws it. The maiden who is lucky enough to catch the largest portion is destined to marry before any of her companions. Then follow the hurried adieus, the bride’s last embrace of her mother, the front doors are flung open and the married pair step into the carriage which is to convey them to the station. At this point there too often takes place a scene or series of scenes which do rob of its gracious sentiment all that has gone before. Let it be said at once that the violent throwing of showers of rice in such a manner as to be a positive and intentional annoyance to the young couple, the hurling of ancient footgear with a strenuousness that approaches brutality, the beribboning of the carriage so as to attract the attention of the passer-by, the hand-cuffing together of bride and bridegroom, all or any of these acts of misplaced humor, can only be described as vulgarity of the most pronounced description. It is perfectly proper for the maid-of-honor to throw after the departing carriage a worn white satin slipper and thus preserve an ancient tradition which at least has antiquity to commend it.”
And that, I guess, is that. If you can read that, especially that last one, without laughing, you’re doing better than I am.
~Kelly
Recent event roundup
I’ve had some interesting things happen lately and I’ve meant to blog them but I haven’t. So I thought I’d just write everything up in one fell swoop. Lucky you, readers.
1) I have been a shopping NINJA. I’ve been questing for some summer suit jackets or suits to wear to interviews. Up to this point all of my jackets or suits except for one and possibly two were decidedly winter affairs and some were actually velvet and 100% wool. So, for interviewing in the summer I needed something less heavy. Last week I hit Filene’s Basement and got a Marina Rinaldi white cotton sateen blazer, a cranberry linen Marina Rinaldi shell/tank, a sapphire blue Calvin Klein satin cocktail dress, black-brown SPANX tights/pantyhose, and 7 hand painted greeting cards with various letters of the alphabet on them that are so beautiful they could be framed. Every single item I bought was marked down either 50% or 75%. For all that stuff I paid $88.88. Filene’s puts a little line on your receipt telling you how much you saved which always sort of amuses me. Basically, they list as a total how much all of your discounts and their markdowns saved you from the original price. My line, which nearly made me fall out of my seat on the T, said I’d saved over $1,200.00. Seriously, I have a black belt in shopping, people.
2) Last week I was running some errands in Central Square when I noticed that a great thrift shop from JP had opened a new store in Cambridge. Boomerang’s is an excellent shop and because I’m almost never in JP anymore, I hardly ever get there. Also, all proceeds go to AIDS research. I had to go to Radio Shack to look for a watch battery, but as soon as I was done I went into the new Central Square Boomerang’s. I totally scored. I discovered a cache of American Brilliant Period cut glass and a Towle Sterling Silver tray. I got 4 highball glasses, a port glass, a toothpick basket, and a gorgeous candy bowl. The tray is solid sterling silver and is about 10 inches in diameter. The tray and the bowl were $4 each and everything else was $2 each. Including tax I spent $20 and change.
3) All of this Rockstar Shopping led up to last Thursday’s interview. I interviewed with a music related company. The woman I met with would be my boss. She was great. The salary would be good, the commute would be fine, there is an on-site gym, and this company is big on work/life balance. The only snag, which they didn’t mention in the ad, is that the job requires someone who can drive. As I can’t do that, not now, not ever, she’s going to check and see if that is something that can be worked around. The fact that she’s willing to actually do that is a good thing, I think. Hopefully I’ll hear something this coming week.
4) Our friends from church choir, Tessa and Brian, got engaged this weekend. Yay!
I have more great jobs to apply to, so I’m back to application land tomorrow. I hope you all are well and have a restful and quiet Memorial Day tomorrow.
~Kelly
More on Brimfield
Geoff here – I have to say that we had a really good weekend at Brimfield. This was our first road trip in the new car, and it did quite well. It is phenomenal the gas mileage that thing gets. I did not have to refill the tank at all for the entire trip. In fact despite driving over 200 miles we barely made a dent in the gas tank – the gauge went down maybe a quarter. I haven’t figured out exactly what kind of mileage we got but it is probably somewhere around 40 on the interstate. We managed to get everything packed inside of it, and still have room left over for the things we bought AND to make a little space for the dogs to lie down and nap.
Anyway, we stayed at our usual place, the Publick House in Sturbridge, about 7 miles away. We love that place, it has always been good to us. And the restaurant is phenomenal. We usually try to eat breakfast there on Sunday and sometime we will have dinner there if we are meeting other people. This year we just went for breakfast. We did not go out much for dinner, since we were trying to be more thrifty. We brought our big cooler (to keep all the food in) and the small cooler (to put in the wagon to hold drinks). The wagon Jo (Kelly’s mom) got us is turning out to be the envy of everyone. Seriously, we must have been stopped at least 50 or 60 times so people could ask us where we got it. There were a few other people that had the same wagon, and whenever we would see them we would joke about it because they got the same questions. We even got our picture with them. See Kelly’s earlier post for that picture.
Of course, the dogs were also a center of attention wherever we went. We were greeted by all sorts of “awww”s and such, especially when the dogs were in the wagon looking particularly cute, which was often. Rerun especially got tired after a while, and by Saturday he really did not want to go anywhere. I even had to lift him out of the car and put him in the wagon that morning. So he stayed in there most of that day, and occasionally Thumbelina would join him. We saw a lot of other dogs this year. It seemed like more than we usually do, and this time we saw a lot of other dachshunds. It was quite cute to see how Rerun and Thumbelina would interact with the other dachshunds. Thumbelina definitely liked them more than the other dogs she saw.
We got a little sunburned on our first day, but after that we did pretty well. In fact, we got quite a bit of exercise ourselves. Kelly’s pedometer showed we had walked over 7 miles on one day – no wonder the dogs were tired! But the weather but cloudy and somewhat cool most of the time we were there, until late Saturday when it started to look like rain. Luckily it did not rain until after we had already quit for the day. The next day, Sunday, it was already raining by the time we got out there. So we decided to leave the dogs in the car where they were sleeping while we checked out the last few tents that we had missed the previous day. While we were inside the first tent, the skies really opened up. It was raining so hard that suddenly there were rivulets forming in the tents and vendors had to start moving things around. After an hour or so of heavy rain some tents had several inches of standing water in them, and low-lying areas near some tents had water that must have been close to a foot deep. People were quickly abandoning any hopes of shopping and many vendors were packing up. Still, we managed to wander through the last few tents and even find a few real bargains. It helps when the vendors would rather sell for a song then have to pack things away. Afterward we stopped by a couple of other places to pick up some things on our way out of town, and then we headed home. The dogs were asleep in their little bed area most of the drive back to Cambridge.
More later!
The Books are Taking Over... 