Guitar! (and Packing)

So, I went to the guitar store where I bought my old guitar. Turns out, they knew a guy who could actually fix it - if I wanted to pay as much or more than what I paid for it. So instead they showed me around the ones they had available for cheap, but decent quality. And for $250, I ended up getting a used Fender in really good condition. I'm "kinda" excited about it. The guy said that they sell for almost $1000 new. I haven't looked it up yet, but I'd believe that it was a pretty good quality guitar. Plus, it's a Fender. :) I've actually _heard_ of that brand. :) It's a natural finish, cut-away style, acoustic electric. They also sold me a used direct box for $25 (that kind sells for $50 new), so now I can even plug in at churches that don't provide them for us. :)

But all of this is more than a little bittersweet. Like when you bring a pet to the vet for the last time, I left my old guitar with them for a proper burial. They all got a chuckle out of that notion, but they understood. It was a good guitar and did me well.

In other news, I spent yesterday afternoon/evening under Jesse's house going through my stuff. It didn't take as long as I expected. All that I have left to do today is go through my book boxes, many of which are apparently full of old school notes and assignments (making the task significantly easier). I threw a lot of stuff away, and I've got a car-load full (with the back seat down too) of stuff for Purple Heart when they come by tomorrow.

The stuff did pretty well under Jesse's house. All of my remaining clothes and linens are musty (as are the books), but there were only three boxes that were sitting in puddles. One had stuff that I really didn't care about at all (old trinkets for my Sunday School class, old nail polish, etc.), one had dishes so it didn't do any damage, and one was my box of Cal Ripken memorabilia. Every time my mom would find an Orioles or Cal memento anywhere, she'd buy it for me, so I had a box full. But also in there were my ticket and souviener posters from Cal's 2131 game that I went to with Barbara. Only one corner of the box was wet, but it was, of course, the corner by the big and flat things. The posters were completely ruined, but the ticket is still readable, although a little worse for wear. It's got a blue-ish tinge now from the envelope that it was in for safe-keeping, and the embossing stamp that they used to mark the ticket (instead of ripping it like normal) is gone, but it's still legible.

My games were attacked by some paper-eating bug. The boxes are still in tact, but the top layer of paper is gone in a lot of places. There's only one set of "stuff" that I can't seem to find. I thought there was a box of old cassette tapes and CDs, but I can't find it. I'm pretty sure I put all of the CDs in one of those CD notebook things and recycled all of the cases since otherwise I would have had boxes and boxes of CDs, but I had a good number of tapes too, and I don't know where they are.

I managed to get a nice-sized "crick" in my neck that a heating pad and I are trying to get rid of right now, but after that, I'll go finish wading through the books. After that I just need to collect and organize all the stuff that's scattered around my parents' house now, then I'll be ready to go. :)