Important news!

The news is simply that I still exist. 

I have not abandoned this blog as I have abandoned certain others; I've merely been sucked into the whirling eddy that is summer vacation. I'm not sure who planned out this summer, but whoever did certainly didn't give much careful consideration to my needs—for instance, my need to go to estate sales every Friday, to buy things to keep, to buy things to sell, to buy things for seemingly inexplicable reasons to be examined here, on this neglected blog. To research the value of things bought, to photograph them endlessly, to list them on etsy. Or to clean and then carefully arrange them in my teeny antiques mall stall, where they can be ignored by the kind of foot traffic that doesn't know from MCM to midcentury-atomic-eames-era-retro-danish mod-60s-70s-kitsch-whatever. Right now this summer is panning out to be just like the school year except that the kids aren't in school. I entertain them all day and then shuttle them to various one-hour-long extracurriculars, idle in parking lots and waiting rooms with other idling parents. What nonsense! Who's in charge here?

But today I can thank Carl Hiassen for deciding to write compelling novels for the young; right now, having played tennis, gone swimming and consumed tubs of Orange Leaf, my girls are working their way through his audiobooks, some of which are at least eight CDs long. Hurray! So I have been uploading a ton of photos for the blog as well as listing like a mofo at my etsy shoppe. Expect a flurry of postings and listings this week. As for the next two, I'm off to the homeland, where the flag flies forever half-mast for James Gandolfini, so it remains to be seen if I'll be able to keep it up (if nothing else my right thumb should be very busy instagramming). 

In the meantime, today I have Mad Men on the mind, having actually watched the season finale last night with the rest of the devotees of Sunday-nite prestige programming (previously it was shunted to Monday viewing in favor of Game of Thrones... now True Blood has been relegated to Monday nites). 

I found the episode quite satisfactory, and look forward to the final season (isn't it supposed to be final—it should be), mostly so I can continue to enjoy the great work the production and costume designers are doing, as that midcentury style evolves deeper into the ’70s. Do we think Banana Republic is going to embrace the Raggedy Ann polyester plaid pantsuit look and come out with another Mad Men line of chic office-friendly attire for youngish ladies? Har.

Coincidentally, I was seeing a lot of these Kodak slide Carousels on the estate-sale circuit these past few months. It's impossible to look at one without thinking of that tour-de-force Don Draper pitch scene that closed the first season, right?

Still, that's not quite enough to get me to buy one, as much as I love obsolete technology, just... no. I've got limits, though sometimes I forget what they are.