I would just like to take a moment to point out how amazing I am. (Modest, too.)

So I was coming home from the (crappy) mall today (with my bread, yogurt, and discount meat), and I see a garage sale sign that appeared not too far from my house.

So I detour. Decent garage sale; I wish I'd had more money on me. As it was, I had about $1.50. Oh well.

Since it was the last day, the woman was eager to get rid of things and gave me two boxes of pastels (marked $5 and $2 respectively) for my whole $1.50, and threw in a pair of headphones I was eying for free, because the cord had been severed. (My ex, Loren, had a pair, and he said he paid $60 for them, as did the woman who gave the broken pair to me. Looking up online, it looks like you can get them for about $35 now.) She said she'd tried unsuccessfully to fix them, and said if I could fix them I was more than welcome to take them off her hands.

Well, I took my finds home, and promptly sat down at my computer to see if anyone knew how to fix these sort of headphones. I'd done a little wiring in my day, but not in a looong time.

Long story short, five matches (for burning off the insulation) a length of electrical tape (I always keep electrical tape around, for just such times as this) and ten minutes later the headphones work! Mind, there's a bit of a scratching sound when I control the volume via the dial-thingie on the cord, but it's fine if I control the volume via the computer.

I ARE AWESOME!

(I always think about my friend butterbee when ever I do amazing thrifty things like this. While I was swearing at matches blowing out in the wind and lumpy electrical tape, I was thinking that she'd probably do this exact same thing, only a MILLION times better.)

Before&After