Put Me In, Coach

There's been a tremendous amount going on with my VHS collecting lately. I haven't been buying many tapes, since I'm trying to winnow down that pile of unwatched ones, but I have been receiving some as gifts. I will have to get more selective about what I even accept for free, because I fear I could very easily and very quickly find myself with an unmanageable number of them if I'm not careful. The thing is to tell people thanks, but no thanks.

Outside of tapes, there have been developments on the other end of things. I'd had the two VCRs for a while, with one in the bedroom and one in the living room. They were working nicely, and then suddenly one of them went bust. I started relying on the other one, shuttling it over between the bedroom and the living room as needed. Then what should happen but that the other one went bust as well, leaving me without any at all? Of course I rushed out to replace it.

The one I bought seemed good at the store, and it seemed good at first when I got it home. I thought I was all right. The noise unfortunately got to be too much, and I decided that since it was probably the fan, I didn't know enough to fix it. This kicked off an effort to see what my amateur efforts could do about getting any of the three busted VCRs I now had lying around back in action. As you may recall, I found that one had a label stuck in it, and I thought things were good. Unfortunately, it still seems iffy sometimes, like when I'm rewinding.

I bemoaned the state of things online, and a friend came to my aid with his combo DVD/VHS player, which I must assume he has little use for these days.  I gladly accepted his generous offer, and I am enjoying the reliability of this relatively recently made player. It has no remote, but it does what it needs to do, and I need only procure a decent universal remote. With that, I'll really be sitting pretty. This is one time when I'm glad I spoke up.