Today, like every Monday, I went over to my friend's house to watch a bit of Monday Night Football and Wrestling (if that's not a guy's night then I don't know what is).

The night started pretty normal, us trying to cook some food and talking about something funny we heard and all of that good stuff. Not long after I got there though Richard gets a phone call from his uncle. Come to find out Richard's uncle just bought a house and he's going to remodel it and rent it out to someone. Well, he wanted us to come by and see if we wanted any of the stuff that the people left because they told him to just throw it away, so, of course, we go and see what he has.

When we first walked in things didn't look too good. The house smelled like dog, cat, and cigarette smoke, which, if you don't know, isn't too pleasant. There's a sofa in the living room that's blue, but it has coushins that are tan with flowers on them. We won't even talk about what was in the refrigerator. But one room had a big stack of video tapes where I grabbed up two volumes of "The Honeymooners: Lost Episodes" and a copy of "The best of Barney" (Fife that is).

Those are pretty cool, but nothing compares to what was there in that dump. I was able to grab up a nice looking record player. I couldn't believe it! I've been wanting a record player for a good while now but haven't had much luck and here one sits that I can get for free. Now I get to FINALLY listen to the stack of 45s that I own but never got to hear. I have some Ray Stevens, Beetles, Johnny Cash, Rodger Miller, Merle Haggard, and even one that has the Star Wars Cantina Band on it.

I was looking forward to listening to all of these tonight. I get it home and the speakers work fine. The AM and FM works wonderfully. But, of course, there's a problem with the turntable(?). It don't spin fast enough, so I can listen to "The Streak", but only in slow-mo mode. When you lift the lid it's kind of dirty inside, I'm hoping that it just needs to be taken apart and cleaned out, but if any of you know a good reason it would be doing that, please let me know. I have to put it on 72 instead of 45 for me to even hear words.

I'm very excited. I know it's odd for someone my age to want a record player so badly, but I think they're cool. I just hope my parents don't want to use it for themselves.

We"I just hope they don't realize that those records are actually theirs"dge