I thought I had my thing under control, as evidenced by months without gear acquisition and the exhibiting of a quiet sort of contentment with the stuff I had on the bench.
Then I went to the Salem Hamfest. I didn't plan on buying anything other than a couple of ARRL handbooks from the 80s as I was mostly focused on selling stuff I can't use. Got there when the load-in doors opened, set up my table, and figured I'd see if the coffee stand was open. That's when I saw the pallet with the stack of rack mount gear. And the guy carrying a box of tek plugins.
About two hours later, I discovered that my wallet was 225USD lighter and I had a pile of gear in the corner behind my table: a Fluke 6061A signal generator, a TM503 frame with the function generator, power supply, frequency counter and DVM plug-ins, an HP 5328A counter, and a B+K 501A curve tracer.
*sigh*
perhaps its time to start working the steps again. on the other hand, i just finished testing the hundred dollar 6061A and its pretty much and in spec, so maybe not.