Hello, melodeon neighbors!
I'll say about how I got here, then:
I always did think the accordion was something neat. (And over here, we do seem to call 'em all accordions. I'm in Utah.) So as soon as I got a little bit of money, I scooped one up off of ebay. This would have been, what, eight or nine years ago. It was a bayan: a great green Russian beast, a B-griff CBA with a full complement of Stradella basses and four or five registers. I got our local accordion repairman to bring it into playable condition, and noodled my way to the conclusion that it was all a bit overwhelming. Rather more accordion than I wanted to deal with.
So when my sister asked how the accordion was going, I said it's a bit much, and maybe I'll switch it out for a smaller one (thinking of a melodeon or something). She said "Oh, like one of those little hexagonal Italian ones!" Well, that was not what I had been thinking at all. So I said "Haha, no, that's a concertina. They aren't technically accordions at all! I don't think I would get one of those." So of course several hours of googling and researching and browsing the forums at concertina.net roll by before I've ordered an English concertina, and I go through a few upgrades over the next months and years.
Concertina did manage to hold me off for quite a while, but I've made it back around. My grandmother died last year, aged 101, and the family accordion came to me, as the (only?) grandchild who had shown any practical interest in it. It's an old German C/F, no brand name, that she inherited from her own father, who played it for dances back in his own college days.
Some repair brought it back to mostly-playable condition, but I knew I'd practice more if I got a really slick one. So last September I stopped by my favorite accordion store (The Button Box!) and picked up a Castagnari Laura G/C.
And signed up for melodeon.net, so I could make myself practice by posting in Tune of the Month!