Lot of 400 78s ... SOLD!!!

That was a much quicker turnaround that I had ever anticipated. Tonight, I sold my 78s. Woot! Sold them to a young fella who basically is in the mode that I was in 4 or 5 years ago. Young. Probably a new job. And lots of liquid cash just burning a hole in the pocket. How I miss those days. ;) He's buying a jukebox in the next couple of days and is contemplating buying my collection of 45s as well. Double woot! We'll see. But I'm very happy. Now we have some money and can go out to buy some much needed print cartridges for our computers, seeing as they are all out (or warning that they will go out).

Yay me!

I have alot of records

Here is approximately what 2300 45 RPM records looks like.


To give you an idea of how big the boxes are, the 'tiny' one at the top is a 7 inch by 7 inch by 7inch box. That box holds exactly 100 records.

How does one amass such a large and useless collection? The answer is simple. I am a collector by nature. I have stories that I wrote when I was in third grade about the collections I had then: stamps, rocks, bottle caps, and I forget what else. I am a collector by VOLUME. Not quality, VOLUME. Lots and lots of things is what I like. To a fault. So back in my bachelor days (in fact, in the months before I met Maryann), I went on an eBay rampage. One Saturday night around 3am I was on eBay and decided that I would put in bids on around 10 different lots of 45 RPMS, each of them numbering in the hundreds. My lucky before them was not so soon, so I figured that if I won 1 or 2 of them, then that would be cool. I ended up winning about 8 of them. So, there you go. At least I can say that I listened to the majority of them. I think there was probably only about 500 of them that I never listened to. The rest all saw the needle all the way through (unless is was so scratched that I had to pick up the needle to save it).

But, 2700 7 inch 45 records is TOO MANY when you live in a 1200 sq ft ranch with a wife and a kid and three cats.

So, today I spent nearly 8 hours going through the majority of my collection of 45s which I am eventually going to sell on eBay. It wasn't too painful of a process. I saved probably somewhere between 100 and 200 for me, mostly hits from the 80s that I can relate to (c'mon, who doesn't want to hear Hall and Oates since 'You Make My Dreams' a few more times.) So the picture above shows 2300 that are boxed up and ready to go. Not pictured are the 100-200 that I set aside while going through them today, another 100 that I already owned, another 50 or so that are 'special' that i will sell separately on eBay and another stack of 100 to 200 that are still in limbo, but will probably be used to pad out the boxes that people (hopefully) buy from me.

So... that's the tale for the 45s.

Yesterday I went through my collection of 78 RPM records. As an experiment, I put them up on craigslist. Up for grabs is 325+ 78 RPM records. I actually came across another 40 or so that I'll probably throw in as well. Hopefully someone wants them. There is no way I can shop them anywhere since they are so fragile. I'm (probably) asking too much, but hopefully there is someone out there like me who is looking to increase the size of their collection in one swoop.

As for LPs or CDs or cassettes. I have not guess at all as to how many I have. Again, the quick answer it too many. I sold off around 100 to 200 LPs (or 33s as you might know them by) at a garage sale last year. That was a big step for me. Against, as with the 45s except a little bit better, I have listened to each of them at least once. So, my collection is not for naught. I DO listen to the things I buy. But to attempt to sell it all off is a bit of a daunting task, but it's one I'm going to attempt. Wish me luck.

Everyone, Meet Dwight

This is our new cat, Dwight. We adopted him from my wife's mom who got him from my wife's niece who got it from my wife's sister. He looks pretty darn close to Stinky. However, instead of being 10 years old, he is 6 months old... and still has his claws and other parts. For now. :) We named him after our favorite character on The Office, Dwight Shrute. Other names that I was planning on calling the cat, but were quickly vetoed were: SFC, DFC and SOB. Stinky II and Junior were also at least considered, but since we named him on the run (ie... on the way to the vet, seeing how we arrived in Cinci to find him with an infected eye), we managed to agree on Dwight. He's already a fairly large kitten for his age. He's probably going to be another freakin' huge cat.

Norah's First 'words'

My 6 month old daughter Norah had her first 'typing lesson' today. I'm so proud of her! Here is what she had to say:

   B G U F DSL
   9PIMM,  JUI,.L089 PM  OP CCCC



--                            p
[[- b vgg'

Grubby Paws

I don't know what it is in people that think that just because you have 4 boxes of Hot Pockets in the freezer that it is okay for them to eat them. What the hell? I'm the one who paid $2.00 for that box and I can get 2 lunches out of it. It's bad enough that you put your grubby paws on my food to begin with, but you even bettered yourself by eating not one but BOTH hot pockets. WTF? Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

DOH!

Just wanted to say "Oops" to the people who left comments that went 'unmoderated' for months. I figured y'all just thought I sucked. I've mod'ed my config so that y'all will see you comments right away. D'oh! indeed.

I had a whole bunch of settings that were all goofy. I was looking at Tom and Todd's blogs going 'Why do they have a header for their posts and I don't?' Well, dummy (me), there is a setting called 'Show Title'. Great googily moogily!

So I think I have everything set up better now. I also moved to the 'Google' platform. We'll see if that move comes back to bite me in the ass. *sigh*

Stinky (1996 - 2006)

Last night Maryann and I lost a good friend, our cat Stinky. Maryann got him when he was just a kitten. Someone had found him in the engine compartment of their car having driven to the movie theater where Maryann was working. At frist she thought he was a grey cat, until she took him home and realized he was black and white. He earned his name manily from the fact that when he farted, you knew it. He could stink it up with the best of the dogs.

Stinky, at least initially, was not much of a people cat. But in the past few years we would let you pet him and when people came over he would come out of a corner somewhere and greet the visitors with his infamous broken-squeeky-toy meow and a rattle-snake-like shake of his tail.

Last night we had to say goodbye to Stinky. He will be sorely missed by both Maryann and I, as well as his brother and sister Little Cat and Lisa.

Not felling well...

I woke up yesterday around 5am with my stomach not feeling quite right. For the next 7 hours, I was up every 1/2 to hour with dry heaves. Then the other fun stuff kicked in. I progressively got worse until every muscle in my body ached. Blech. This sucks. I'm a helluva lot better today, thank goodness, but I'm still a little sore and woozy. But I'll be fine. Here's to hoping a feel better tomorrow.

Foxtrot

FoxTrot, one of the comics I read everyday as part of my morning ritual, is going to a Sunday-only format. Makes me very sad. But I wish Bill Amend all the success and fun in the world. His comic has brought me happiness for quite a few years and I guess they all deserve a break after a while.

Mmmmm.... Turducken!

Today, I had a very delectable dish called Turducken. To be more exact, we had Tony Chachere's Cajun Stuffed Tur-Duc-Hen.

For those of you who don't feel like clicking on links, turducken is a de-boned turkey stuffed with a de-boned duck, which itself is stuffed with a small de-boned chicken. Get it? Turkey + Duck + Chicken = Turducken.

Maryann's sister and husband picked us up a turducken after we all saw a Food Network special that featured it. We got it as a baby gift and since it needed to be made before it went bad, today was the day. So her sister, husband, their kid and Maryann's mom and dad came up to cook the feast.

The version we had was stuffed with rice based stuffing with shrimp and crawfish and it was.... TASTY! I mean TAAAAAASSSSSTTTTTY. Add to that some mashed potatoes, corn and a dessert of pumpkin layered cake with pumpkin/cool whip concoction with caramel drizzled on top that my wife made and ... mmmm mmm... it was a great meal. Man! Awesome!

The only misfire we had today was some exploding Achorware. Its glass bakeware and is freezer safe, oven safe, dishwasher safe, etc etc etc. The dish was a room temperature. We were making green bean casserole. The beans and cream of mushroom soup and crunchy onions... all room temp. We stuck it in the oven and though everything was fine. Then there was this clatter. We all though that Bart (the teenager) had run into the oven or something. He was all 'I didn't do anything'. Maryann's mom opened up the oven to find a glass all over the place and green bean casserole dripping all over the place. It had cracked and shattered into a quite a few pieces. So.... after getting all the glass cleaned up, it was corn, not green bean casserole for lunch. Needless to say, Anchorware will be getting a call from the wife tomorrow asking for an RMA so they can ship us some new, non-exploding stuff.

It was a wedding gift and we had already used one of the other dishes in the oven without a problem. I suspect that it was a manufacturing problem of some sort. As they say, glass is very strong... until it gives and then it just goes kablooey.

And again... turducken rules!

:09

Here's something that bugs me:

People who use the company microwave, but then leave the door open and the clock still sitting at :09.

If you're gonna use it, please, close the freakin' door and reset the timer. And if cheese from your sub sandwich spills inside the microwave (or butter from the microwave popcorn or soup that boiled over), please clean that up as well. Your mom doesn't work here (and if she does, she probably has better things to do than to go around to all the microwaves and clean them and close their doors and reset their timers for you.. and this shouldn't be the case even if she is part of the cleaning crew).

This also goes for you Mr. or Mrs. Missed Putting The Paper Towel Into The Garbage Can But I'll Just Leave It On The Floor For The Maintenance People To Pick Up.

Weird Dream - 11-18-2006

So, when I get really stressed, I tend to have really weird dreams. Here's the latestest installment which had 3 parts.

Part 1: Poor Kitty
The first part of my dream happened at 'my house' (ie, in my head it was my house, but it really wasn't my house). I remember looking as Lisa, our tabby cat who looks like this but a bit bigger, and was worreid because she was meowing weirdly. I told my wife this and she said we should probably have that looked at. Then I decided that I wanted to wash my hair, but i wanted to used a wash cloth, more specifically, a blue one. This was significant for some reason unknown to me. I went downstairs and found one in a pile clean laundry. I went upstairs and was happy that I found the wash cloth. And then that part ended.

Part 2: Trailer in the Woods
For some reason I was with my friend Brad at a trailer in the middle of the woods, but just off of a lake. We were yakking about somthing when he announced that he was going fishing. So he took out this cane fishing pole and just kinda threw the hook in the water, put the pole on the ground and then just walked away and started talking to me again. Wwe talked a while when i looked over and saw the bobber moving around so I said 'hey.. you have a bite I think'. So he picked up the pole and pulled out a huge bluegill that was about 2 feet in length. (Most of the ones I have ever caught were like 6 inches long.) He threw back then fish and put the hook back into the water and walked away again. And again, eventually the bobber would bounce around and I would tell him and he pulled out another large bluegill. At some point after this, I went into the trailer where Courtney Force was blabbing on and on about her boyfriend for whatever reason. I just sat there and looked at her funny for about 5 minutes wondering what she was talking about. And then that part ended.

Part 3: Bill Cosby is My Dad
The next part is pretty freakin' weird. I found myself in the middle of a warehouse, similar to a Sam's Club, with my daughter in two in her carrier. I was watching this big display of large plasma screen tvs when Bill Cosby approached me. In my dream, he was my dad. WTF? But it is what it is. So were watching these plasma screens which were showing what I would assume was one of those tv celeb gossip shows like Extra or Access Hollywood.

Two guys were next to the TVs and talking about a new moive that George Lucas had made. It was similar to the Star Wars franchise. Anyhoo, they were discussing how they were confused by Lucas' latest decision to release the movie on Super 8 film. They dicussed that there was no way that the nevel of detail that went into the movie could be seen in that format. They then discussed how Bill Cosby had 'supposedly' done the narration on the intro. The one looked at the other and said 'but you know he really didn't do it' meaning that he hadn't done the narration on the movie intro.

I looked at Bill and he seemed confused. I turned my attention to the stupid TV and there was a story about how Michael J. Fox had been part of this Lucas film, but he backed out when he found out that it wasn't going to premiere at a certain film festival. It then cut to him arriving at another film festival in a little red british polive car with the siren wailing. He was hanging out the the window holding a drawning he had done. On this drawing, was a picture of him hanging out of a british poilice car holding a B&W picture of a monster that looked simiar to the monster in the Bugs Bunny cartoon. He handed the drawing to a fan and then got out of the car and went somewhere.

At this point Bill Cosby got close to my ear and mumbled something "mmmmnn nu mmmmin n mm da mm", to which I said "What?". He then repeated it and this time, though still really muffled, he said, "Why don't you go ahead and get lunch. I don't know how long I'm gonna be. Go ahead and leave her here and I'll catch up with you at home". So I said, "Ok". So I handed him the carrier and walked away. As I was walking away, Bill said to make sure that I put the remote control on the stand when I left. At some point I had picked up a remote control of some sort. So I walked to the front of the building where, 30 feet back from the sliding door, there was a brown leather recliner and one of those round table / standing lamp combos right next to it. I carefully put the remote on the table and wondered for a second 'why the hell do I need to put the remote here' and then I left.

And then I woke up... obviously I was confused. I though that this was a decent dream so I quickly jotted down notes on a few post it notes before the haze of waking up had worn off.

The end.

Resurrection

I guess I am going to resurrect my blog here, for no particular reason other than a couple of my friends have blogs and they exist on the blogger.com farm.

Most of the time, my posts will be odd observations.

For example:
The other day I was driving to work when I saw a Dodge Neon. A plain-jane, off the lot, stock Neon. Why is this of any interest? Well, because this Dodge Neon had spinners. Just because you put spinners on your car, doesn't mean that it automatically makes your car cool. Actually, it just makes you look like a dork.

Yeah... ummm.. not much going on here.

But Devilcake still rocks!

Devilcake played Ruby Tuesday last night. Devilcake is still cool. Check out the gig diary here: http://devilcake.blogspot.com/

Devilcake is cool.

We had a show last night.

Read about it (and other gigs) here: http://devilcake.blogspot.com/

yeah... i'm still over at LJ. not sure why you're looking here. btw, i probably haven't posted on LJ either.

c ya!

------------:D

Okay... the reason for my long absense is that, well, I just happened to catch LiveJournal on a bad day when I made my comments on LiveJournal previously. Now, I like it alot. Most of da band is over there was well.

I'm here now. See ya on da other side.

------:D

Sorry it's been so long. I've just been busy and lazy.

First off, I have to say that I hate LiveJournal. I have never seen such a horrible site since the early days of GeoCities. I still have yet to see one of the four identical posts that I supposedly sent in. I would hit submit and it would say that it failed and I would hit it again. Four times I did this and it turns out that it took them all... I think. They never showed up on the main page, but if you went to the calendar view, it showed four. So with Blogger I will stay until they get their shit together.

Next,
We've been re-recording the album. We had about 5 songs done, but there were a few that none of us were happy with, so last weekend we re-recorded the drum tracks for those that failed and the remainder of the album. I think they cam out prett good. We will have to see how they hold up under a few layers of guitar, bass, keys and vox. Sometimes you discover late in the game that the snare wasn't miked heavily enough and it just doesn't sound right. But there's always some EQ work that can fix that.

We plan on recording another set of Gourley's solo album this weekend. The last set of songs we did came out pretty good. Now we only need 6 or 7 more.

We were hoping for a gig on Saturday with Stainless Mind, but they never responded to our email. Hmm. At least email back and tell us that we suck or whatever. And then we missed a cry for help from High 5 for a Thrusday gig. Dammit. We're not too good at the getting gigs thing. Boy do we need a manger who is less worried about how to package the box set and more interested in getting his (or her) band in front of people. *sigh*

I'm in a really pissy mood right now and I appologize for that. I think I am going to go kill some people in Carma 2 or GTA right now, while drinking beer, which should make it a little more interesting. I think I'll throw on some omre of the terrible tunes from the 80's that I've been listening to recently to really throw things outta whack.

------------:D

Woo! Well, we had practice tonight... however is was sans Gourley cause I forgot to call him and he made plans to clean up his house before the relatives showed up. But Todd, MCB and Ian showed up. And quite frankly, it was a good practice I think especially considering how few we have had in the past month or two. We rammed through all the new songs. I was a bit tired after that. Man, I really, really need to practice more. Then we went through the last set list from High Five minus a few songs. Ian's got a thing against Chicken Nuggets Of Sin. Not sure why, but don't count on hearing it at the next show... it prolly ain't gonna happen. Anyways, like I said, we went through the old set list and, darn it, it sounded pretty good. I screwed up on Cereal and Beer. It's a song I wrote and I still got totally lost. DOH!

I'm hoping now that I can convince my Dad not paint this weekend. I'm going to be out of town on Sunday so that would cut things a bit shorter than I think he would like. I know he wants to get it done and honestly so do I, but I really haven't had any down time with the band or by my lonesome for that matter. I usually require a couple days a week to just veg or do whatever I want to do and I really haven't had time to do that recently, which adds a bit to the little fits of depression you've been seeing. Work still stinks but I have a little better idea of what they want out of me. They've loosened the reins a little bit which is good. I still have a million things on the horizon there, but it's doesn't feel as pressing as it should... whatever that means. Basically, I realy do have a lot to do, but somehow I know that I'll get it done in time... as long as I get motivated, which recently has not been the case.

Well folks, I really need to get to sleep... so until next time... later! Hope to see you at the next show!!! (whenever that may be ;)

-------------------Darrin