heroes in a half shell

over the years i have collected many toys, and sold almost as many in garage sales. some how the immediate cash flow was worth getting rid of so many toys that made me so happy. i used to have tons and tons of teenage mutant ninja turtles stuff! i had dozens of figures, i even had a really cool pizza shooter tank thingy! over time all of them have gone the way of the bargain bin garage sale. all except the original turtles themselves. i could never quite convince myself to give up these originals. and now, i'm glad i never did!
i spent so much time playing with these guys. if i wasnt playing with them, i was using my imagination pretending to be them! leonardo was always my favorite- he had two swords, after all!

alan jackson concert bill

growing up we used to listen to country. i would say that my parents forced us to, but i really liked it! papa and i always had our favorites (papa was actually my favorite, so i just liked whatever he liked...), and one of those favorites was alan jackson. when we were at the hight of our country music loving days, alan jackson actually came to michigan to play a concert. he was about as popular as elvis, so he was filling up the palace in detroit. thats where the pistons play, it can hold 23,000 people, and i think this particular show was actually sold out! we went with my cousin and best friend at the time jeff, along with papa's best friend at the time, my uncle ted. the drive down was miserable- it was one of the worst snowstorms in years, and we were on a long trip going straight through it! it took about twice as long as it was supposed to to get there, but we arrived on time and were ready for some concert fun! i dont think i had ever gone to a real concert before, so i was pumped. we got to our seats and my dad was angry- we had seats in the upper deck, near the back. he thought the seats were terrible, we actually had to use binoculars (which he had brought) in order to see alan very well. i didnt give that a second thought, i just figured this is how concerts are supposed to be. jeff and i had a blast, we sang along with all the songs and took turns using the binoculars. we had an amazing time, i dont think i stopped talking about the fun of that concert for two weeks after we went!

car pens

these came in a wendy's kids meal. they are just pens with caps in the shape of cars. i remember getting them and thinking 'aw, how lame- its not even from a movie or anything!', but then it turned out that they were tons of fun! the wheels on the cars actually turned better than some matchbox cars i've had! i loved the fact that i had two of them, that way i could always play with them like they were in a race or something. i would always imagine while i played with them that they were really fast cars, but when the caps came off, then they could turn into 'turbo' cars that could rocket into the air and could fly. ah, the imagination of youth!