Weekend Finds (Dr. Doolittle, I presume?)

 Good morning!

I woke up this morning, got ready for work, walked into the green room, and had a little Twilight Zone style thrill of horror as I sat down at my computer to check the day's forecast. Perched on the top most part of my couch? Rex Harrison!

We need to build some trust in this relationship, Harrison. And those beady eyes are NOT. HELPING.

You may remember from previous posts (I mentioned him just last week in the Santa Fe Line entry, as well as again here and here), that I've never been a massive Rex Harrison flag waver. However! I was at an estate sale Saturday morning (bright and early, out near Briley Parkway in Donelson), and as I was processing my grief over how nonsensically expensive the tables-full of costume jewelry was (family run sale, so strands of glass beads and matching earring sets were like $20 instead of $5, and no discount on the second day...cue me weeping into my own elbow), I turned around to see a shelf full of cameras and THIS GUY.

         

But can you WALK with the animals? TALK with the animals?

Marked $15, and no worse for wear excepting that his original pull-string (which would have made him say 11 unique phrases when he was new!) yielded only a weird, wheezing spinning noise when pulled, I immediately picked him up. Me to Dad: "LOOK!" Dad to me: "Ah...it's Dr. Doolittle, huh?" ((as we discuss his size and condition, the eerie, plastic human face atop a doll's cloth body, the nonworking pull-string)). Dad to me: "Well, I guess the animals can talk to him, but he can only listen. And walk." Fair enough, Pappy. Fair enough. I picked up a blue caftan from Hawaii and a straw mail carrier from the same, and headed for the checkout table. Protesting against the non-functioning voice box, I talked them down to $10, and left a happy camper!

When I got home, I did some ebaying (naturally) and realized he is a) missing his top hat but even in that condition is, b) worth about $40! Too bad for prospective buyers that he's a $1,000,000 worth of creepy to me and is ranked second only to Snappy in the house now for "things that bring joy and sunshine into my heart by their sheer weirdness".

I need to display him alongside this:

I bought this jack-in-the box (or, giraffe in the box?) a year or two ago at another estate sale in Donelson. She still works! I (don't) need to round off my collection with the other Doolittle tie-in merchandise, which include this wind-up toy guitar (same illustration as the front of the giraffe box), this pushmi-pullyu (Rae has one! I'm secretly jealous!), and ton of other stuff you can see here on this listing. Who knows what weird subsets of collections I'll fall into next! In the meantime, I need to watch the movie again so I don't get embarrassed when someone asks me why I have so many tie-in items laying around the house when I-don't-even-like-Rex-Harrison.

Also this weekend, we had a party to celebrate school being back in! (And all of us being old enough not to have to go back to school!). For the occasion, the theme was "early 90's", which was when this young pup was in elementary school (I know, I know; it's shocking to me, too). While I somehow forgot to include the love-of-my-heart Sonic into the décor, I DID include an homage to one of the nastiest/best juice box drink of that decade, the now-extinct ECTO-COOLER. I meant to print out a picture of Slimer from the box while I was at work on Friday, forgot, and made this 3D-ish guy out of construction paper in about 10 minutes the day of the party, eyeballing it from a picture on the web. I think it turned out really well!! The actual "ecto-cooler" drink we had at the party bore little resemblance to the original, and was mostly made up of equal parts of diet ginger ale, diet Mountain Dew, lemon juice, yellow and blue food coloring, sliced limes, and vodka. We somehow went through about four punch bowls! I was very pleased with the success of this drink choice.

For the food, there was every kind of conceivable junk/stuff that ants wouldn't touch if you left it outside, but I have to say it was kind of neat to drink a Yoo Hoo and eat a stack of Pringles as a fully grown adult.I don't know what I've been doing with my life for the last fifteen years, but I know whatever it was, there were not enough NERDS candy boxes involved.

I took really fuzzy pictures, and none at all of the actual party in full swing (shame! on! me! I was too busy slinging hot cheetos as the supply dwindled and playing Apples to Apples), but imagine all but two of the people I made name tags for (below) made an appearance. My friend Jesse even brought me a butter curler as an early birthday present! It does exactly what the name would imply it does, and looks like this one on ebay... you'd better believe I'm using that next get together IN SOME WAY.  Great turn out, great fun!

How was your weekend? Find any good stuff? Start any collections you didn't ever intend on collecting? Brainstorm any party punch recipes off the cuff using mainly food coloring to create ambience? Do tell!

See you guys tomorrow!