Bye Bye, 2005

Welcome to another New Year's Eve: in this case, the rainy, cold, windy ass end of a rather...shall we say, dramatic 2005, and hopefully the start of a far more agreeable 2006.

Granted, a more sedate and calm new year free of financial surprises might portend a less vitriolic and/or miserable blog, I think I'll take that trade, thank you very much.

Aside from yesterday and today's relative business, the last week has been surprisingly calm at work. The day after Christmas turned into our best day-after we've had in the new location, with a sales figure more in line with the run-up to Christmas than the wind-down afterwards. From there, it was almost immediately back to normal business: a rather curious departure from last year's holiday season, where it was the week after Christmas that saved our winter storm-stalled momentum. We also managed to nail that half-million mark for the first time since we left Great Lakes Mall in 1997: a milestone that, if nothing else, tells us that we are doing something right in this Best Buy/Wal-Mart world.

Alright, without further ado, I Am A Bug presents a nice one-stop recap of the highlights and low tides of 2005 ...


January

Our first run-in with the infamous Inspector Scene in November 2004 is finally resolved with some slapdash hammering of wooden slats into the downstairs bathroom wall, immobilizing it and allowing the door to said area to close correctly at last (this repair lasts maybe three months).

Counterbalancing this, our ex-landlord kindly sues us for leaving our previous lease six months before it expired, despite our best efforts to resolve this matter with in advance of the move. Looking back on this from a year later, this kind of started the ball rolling right then and there.


February

January is the month that nothing happens in my business, but February is when all of the big tour/album news starts to fly fast and furious. As a result, there was much news of varying activities from many of my favorite artists this month. U2 announce a Cleveland show waaay early on, but my attendance this time was just not in the cards. The same is true with Nine Inch Nails, who announced a new album and tour as well. Bruce Springsteen came back from Limbo to announce Devils & Dust, which becomes one of my faves of the year. I then just about leap for joy when I read that The Cocteau Twins have reformed to play the Coachella Music Festival. However, a few days later it becomes apparent that no one had asked singer Elizabeth Fraser what she thought of this idea, and the whole thing fell apart before the good news had even started to sink in. Dead Can Dance also reformed for a tour, but there was to be no Cleveland date. Bugger.

On another musical note, I start writing what became a weekly column for 45RPM, a weblog run by my friend and ex-Record Den co-worker Mike Beaumont.


March

Without exaggeration, the snowiest freakin' winter in Northeast Ohio history continues unabated.

Thanks to the kindness of a regular customer at the store, Sarah and I head downtown to see Duran Duran and VHS Or Beta (the only concert we will see this year ... we just didn't know it then).

In an ominous sign of Things To Come, my car develops a rather expensive problem with the cooling system that requires immediate attention.


April

I get pretty damn sick at the beginning of the month: sick like I haven't been in years, really. Hell, I can't even think of the last time I called in sick to work, it was that nasty.

Spring joyously arrives a couple of weeks later and finally ends a terrible, endless winter.

A second car repair job in a month (as well as a couple of rather unpleasantly big heating bills) leaves me temporarily poleaxed financially.


May

I get an unannounced raise at work, which helps a bit to catch up with my car repair woes.

I also get to revisit my childhood one last time as Revenge Of The Sith finally comes out, which at once ends 28 years of being a drooling Star Wars nerd and reveals Darth Vader to be a complete rube with a hardon. Sad.


June

Life is ever-so-briefly Good as the weather is wonderful and I have no worries with money.

I am very pleasantly surprised that not only do I greatly enjoy War Of The Worlds, but that having Tom Cruise (in the midst of his public Cool Meltdown) as the lead character doesn't detract from the experience one iota.

Then, in the shocker of all shockers for the year, Pink Floyd announce that they will re-unite to play the Live 8 concert in London. With Roger Waters. Holyshit.


July

Following nineteen years of very public acrimony, David Gilmour and Roger Waters not only deign to be on the same stage as each other, but they smile and wrap arms around each other's shoulders during the group bow at the end of Pink Floyd's fucking amazing 23-minute reunion set. I am geeked up to an extent unseen since at least the summer of 1995, if not 1994. It's not a pretty sight.

From this high, it's only a few weeks until things head rapidly for rock-bottom. The tailspin that characterizes the second half of 2005 gets going at the end of the month: while trying to get my car to pass an emissions test, it seems like just about everything that can go wrong does goes wrong, and I get a whopping $1400 repair bill accrued in a matter of days, which pretty much atomizes my recently-rebuilt finances and sets me behind on bills and everything else for the next five months. Wheee.


August

Following a run of freakishly bad luck, running around, and very nearly losing my cool with people at all stops along the route, my car passes emissions and is back in my possession ... but oh, the cost ...

My friend Dave Lynch came to town for a Sunday and we headed down to the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame, watched the remake of Dawn Of The Dead, and he spent the night on our new hide-a-bed with Moe as a new best pal and bedmate.

Sarah also switched jobs at Case: in effect, going from working with people to hanging out and playing matchmaker with a gazillion immune-compromised mice. After eighteen years of dealing with other people on my job, I can't say I blame her.


September

I watch, appalled, as the United States Government goes to Hell in a handbasket in front of the whole world following the near-loss of New Orleans and a wide swath of southern Mississippi following the arrival of Hurricane Katrina (one of, like, five or so to hit the U.S. mainland this year). This is quite possibly the most embarrassing and infuriating moment in a very embarrassing and infuriating last five years. The prospect of three more years left to go under with these jokers in office just fills the heart with dread, doesn't it?

While all that is going on, my lower-left wisdom tooth (the last of these still in my head) begins to ache on a regular basis. Marvy.


October

Fall shows up and promptly screws up all the wonderful weather we've been having since the end of May, but also brings along the drama and edge-of-your-seat action of the League Championship Series followed by another anticlimactic World Series. While the Cleveland Indians went to hell at exactly the wrong time of the season, at least the Everfucking New York Yankees didn't win the title. In fact, they didn't make it past the second round. Bwaahaha.

Just after mid-month, 45RPM (or, to be more direct, Mike's ISP) gets threatened by the RIAA over the posting of a Strokes track and we pull the plug for the time being.

I also develop a nastier seasonal bout of what feels like bronchitis than I've ever had before, and it turns out later to be a mild form of asthma triggered by allergens (i.e., two cats) and crappy weather. Laid low by this attack, I make a partially successful attempt to quit smoking that lasts a whole month and change. Wheee.

Lastly, our Halloween is spiced up considerably by news of Sarah's bank account/debit card being hacked into and overdrawn by nearly $2000. That's a hell of a lot of online poker. Grrrr.


November

Winter arrives very early this year, as snow is on the ground a week before Thanksgiving for crissakes. Oh noooo.

I attend a funeral for my friend (and ex-Record Den co-worker) Jim's mother at midmonth.

My toothache recurs in a big way around the same time, and a big day-long spat of cleaning reactivates my asthmatic tendencies in a big way. Fed up with the wheeze and cough that this entails, I make arrangements to visit a doctor at the Lake County Free Clinic and get some free Albuterol for my troubles. I also set up an appointment with my dentist to have my wisdom tooth repaired, and to my surprise, I am directed to an oral surgeon for the procedure instead.

At the end of the month, said tooth was removed at a cost far greater than I'd expected to spend at the dentists' office. Life (or at least the holiday season) looks rather bleak at this point in time.

In a nice break from the unremitting gloom, Inspector Scene does his thing and finds absolutely nothing at all to bitch about for this year. Wooo!


December

I spend the first week of the month in misery from my tooth removal, which had far more lasting effects of discomfort than any I'd had done previously.

By the time all is finally copacetic once again, I have lapsed back into smoking, largely as a result of additional stress from another unplanned car repair. Luckily, this one goes far more smoothly than the rest, and at considerably less cost, but I am edgy as hell, regardless.

By midmonth, however, following months of worrying, my being able to participate in Christmas finally becomes a reality. Ho ho ho.

Incidentally, you gotta love Northeast Ohio weather sometimes: it snows like a son of a bitch for the entire first half of this month, and then the latter two weeks are full of the kind of weather that wouldn't seem out of place in, oh, April ...


Alright, back to a relaxing evening hanging out with the kitties and possibly tuning into America's Rockin' Eve (or whatever they call it these days) in morbid curiosity later on this evening. In case you haven't heard, they are planning on wheeling out dear old Dick Clark at some point during tonight's festivities. My money is on Dick's return to the public eye being previously-taped in case he should ask Ryan Seacrest for a handful of tapioca pudding and a blankee. At best, it'll be nice to see Clark still up and about again, if usurped as MC by Seacrest, the ultimate gigglemuppet. At worst, this could be one of those all-time cool bits of trainwreck T.V. that happen only once every few years.

Happy new year to all!


NP Eurythmics Ultimate Collection

Yule Wrap-Up

Please pardon the unintentional pun in the title: once again the hour groweth late and sleep beckons ...

All things considered, this was a nice enough Christmas this year, though the dull gray sky, rainy conditions and residual exhaustion from the last eight days (and these stupid extra keys on my brother's keyboard which keep tripping my hands up) made for a small damper on the day spiritually.

It was pretty hard dragging myself out of bed and into the shower this morning, holiday or not. We got to my parents' house just before 11 A.M. since my mom had to work in the afternoon, and thus we had our gift exchange at a relatively early hour for us (mine is the family that tends to do these things hours after most people seem to, on average).

Some highlights of the day's haul: Sarah gave me some gift cards to Borders and Kohls for books and clothes (yay!) which I will be utilizing in short order. I also scored some cool geek stuff from my boss in the form of Japanese editions of a few Pink Floyd CDs that I've been coveting for months. A real nice surprise from my friend Dave was a 2-DVD-R set of the entire run of Johnny Sokko And His Flying Robot. I also recieved some books that have been on my amazon wishlist for a while including The New York Times Guide To Essential Knowledge: A Desk Reference For The Curious Mind (hey, sounds like me!), Ben Fong-Torres' The Hits Just Keep On Coming: The History Of Top 40 Radio, and Wide Angle (a book of National Geographic photography).

Most of my wishlist this year was composed of DVD's, and I turned up a nice handful in the form of Field Of Dreams, The Looney Tunes Golden Collection Vol. 3, the seventh season of The Simpsons, and the two-DVD edition of Monty Python And The Holy Grail.

Lastly, I got another bundle of white socks. Rawk. It's kind of funny now to think that when I was a kid, opening boxes containing socks and clothes on Christmas morning was usually a drag, yet as an adult, these very things make me as happy as getting new Star Wars action figures did twenty-five years ago.

The big Christmas lesson to be learned for next year: I must go to greater lengths to avoid doubling up on things, perhaps even creating separate wishlists for different people. It wasn't a disaster: I was only given a couple of doubled-up DVDs from different people that I'll have to figure out a way to trade in without reciepts (I think I might re-gift one to a couple of friends, come to think of it), and I wound up doubling up on a gift for my mom with my sister since she bought the same item from my mother's amazon wishlist that I did from work. Ooops.

One double gift that did work out, however, falls into the super geek realm as I received the same making of The Dark Side Of The Moon book from my brother as my next-doo neighbor Steve, though in differing editions (one hardcover and one advance review copy of some kind in softcover), which is just ducky with me since I collect this kind of stuff (I do, after all, have all three editions of the Storm Thorgerson Floyd artwork collection Mind Over Matter).

Alright, my next goal is to head to bed and sleep for about, oh, ten hours or so, which is something I haven't been able to do in a couple of weeks now. Happy boxing day.


NP Various Artists The Narada Nutcracker

Merry Christmas!

At last, the day that makes the last few weeks (if not months) worth the slog.

I am so tired right now that when scanning the news headlines a few moments ago, I seriously thought for a surreal moment that the new Pope had just asked the world to be "Pacemakers" instead of "Peacemakers." If nothing else, that made for a seriously cool "HUH??" moment.

Anyway, just taking a moment to wish all who look in here a wonderful Christmas. Despite the utter lack of snow on thr ground, I'm off to a pretty good start, and I get two days off in a row (including the dreaded Day After! yaaaaay!) thanks to an intense -- if rather blurry and indistinct -- week at work. We kicked some serious ass this week on the sales front ever since last weekend, and Friday was the biggest sales day we've had in our current location to date. I've also worked 81.5 hours since last Thursday and am currently feeling like seriously burnt toast, so I'll leave this post at that and get some sleep since we need to be at the 'rents in about 9 hours for the family gift exchange followed by a loooong day of lounging around. I'd have it no other way.

More on this day later on. I crash now.


NP A.D. & The M.T.'s - "The 8 Days Of Hanukah" (an irreverent little gem from a locally-released holiday compilation that is pretty much utter crap otherwise)

This Post Has Nothing Whatsoever To Do With Canada

It feels weird noting that today is the first day of winter when we've had one of the snowiest Decembers in recent memory thus far. Then again, it's either feast or famine that way in this part of the U.S., it seems.

A few topics to cover before I head downstairs to watch a DVD with a bowl of chicken soup and some saltines ...

OK, I think it's official: David Gilmour hates me ... or maybe he thinks I smell.

See, it's not enough that my hero's first freakin' solo tour in 22 years does a nice looooong wide arc around my environs (and plays in venues so small in size that even if I were insane enough to truck off to Chicago to see him play, I would get cornholed on the tickets themselves), it also appears that he is terrified of somehow competing with himself, which is about the only reason that comes to mind for the news I heard at work today.

Hopeless fanboys like me nearly wet ourselves with joy a couple of months ago when Pink Floyd's eternally-delayed DVD release of Pulse was finally slated for release on December 20. Well, that news was too good to be true, we learned a few weeks ago, when the street date was pushed back to January 17, 2006.

Well, I found out earlier today that the January 17 date was also too good to be true, since the fucking thing has now been shoved into distribution Limbo once again: one source tells me that the title has been outright "cancelled," while amazon.com now lists a release date on January 1, 2010 (I'm not sure which is worse). AARRRGH!!

--

I'm nearly finished Christmas shopping ... just need to take care of some work friends and my siblings before I'm finally done. While scoping out some ideas, I bought a set of multi-colored "icicle lights" for the office, though I need to stop at the store sometime to pick up some nails and an extension cord so I can put them up as thumbtacks and reinforced packing tape didn't hold them up very long.

--

The Christmas tree went up on Sunday (along with a few lights in the window), and I'm now wondering if I'm going to bother with this again next year as Moe has been a complete butthead ever since. Almost immediately, he was attempting to climb/eat the tree while hidden underneath it, necessitating the placement of two Scat Mats on top of the tree skirt.

Moe quickly figured out a way to move these mats aside without shocking himself, of course, so I am at a loss as to how to proceed from there. Worse, it looks like he's also attempting to scale the tree from the outside, judging by the flattened bottom branches and a couple of bowed-downwards metal tree limbs. Grrrr.

--

The dry and cold conditions Weather Underground had been calling for last weekend never materialized, as we've been snowed on quite a bit instead. Here's hoping that they also called this weekend's forecast wrong as well: temperatures in the low 40s and rain! On Christmas! UGGGH!

--

Finally, some far happier news: after a slow start, we've been kicking some ass lately at the store. We finally reached the pace of sales we've been worried about all month long on Monday, and started padding our lead with a very good day today. Our increased pace should start getting noticeably more intense tomorrow night, followed by all-out mayhem on Thursday, Friday and Saturday morning.

Alright, time to relax a bit before facing the hordes again tomorrow. 'Night!

Buzzkill

Last week, my inner fanboy was sent into a tizzy with the announcement of a forthcoming new album and a possible U.S. tour from none other than David Gilmour. Squeeeeeeeeeee!!!

A quick break: If you have to ask who David Gilmour is, then get off my blog. Now.

Anyway, the above news was tempered with disappointment: as of today, it looks like I don't need to worry about how I'm going to afford concert tickets after all ...

Pink Floyd's Gilmour plans rare US/Canada tour

By Dean Goodman

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Pink Floyd fans waiting in vain for the band to reunite for a tour will have to make do with the next best thing: the first solo trek in more than 20 years by singer/guitarist David Gilmour.

A week after he announced plans to tour Europe in March, Gilmour on Monday said he would play 10 shows in five North American cities, beginning on April 4 with a two-night stand at Radio City Music Hall in New York.

The trek will also take him to Toronto (April 9-10, Massey Hall), Chicago (April 12-13, Rosemont Theater), Oakland, Calif. (April 16-17, Paramount Theater), and Los Angeles (April 19, Kodak Theater; April 20, Gibson Amphitheater).

Gilmour, 59, will be touring in support of his upcoming album, On An Island, a follow-up to his second solo release About Face, which came out in 1984, the last time he toured without Pink Floyd.

The new set is due in U.S. stores on March 7 via Columbia Records. The title track boasts guest vocals from David Crosby and Graham Nash. Pink Floyd keyboardist Rick Wright, Roxy Music lead guitarist Phil Manzanera, Robert Wyatt and Jools Holland also appear on the album.

Pink Floyd's reunion with estranged founder Roger Waters to play the Live 8 charity concert in London last July raised hopes that the band would hit the road for the first time since 1994. But Gilmour said in a statement, "I'm rather hoping that with this tour announcement people will believe me when I say, honestly, this is the only band I plan to tour with!"

The European trek, meanwhile, begins on March 10 in the German city of Dortmund -- four days after he turns 60 -- and proceeds through Hamburg, Paris, Frankfurt, Amsterdam, Milan and Rome, before ending on May 29-30 with a sold-out two-night stand at London's Royal Albert Hall.

Reuters/VNU

Bugger. Ah well, thank goodness for the internet: at least I can download the shows a few hours later. Muahahahaha.

The Tide Is Turning

It was a pretty busy day today at the store: the kind of busy that creeps up on you when your attention is elsewhere.

Even though we haven't worked a Christmas season in a mall setting since doing that hellish daily commute to Great Northern Mall at the end of 1997, the kind of unending, staggering volume of people and sales you get in a mall environment is very hard to forget (especially when you've done ten years of these). In our strip mall location, however, we are never continuously beseiged by a store full of shoppers like we were back then, so for us it never feels at this time of year like we are doing the kind of figures we should be doing. That said, when I think back on today and remember all the times I was updating sales and orders or hunting down stock in the back room and constantly being interrupted by the phone, or breaking off to ring up a sale, or answer a question from a customer, I realize that we were, in fact, kicking some butt ... just in a far less overwhelming manner than I am still accustomed to after all these years away from the mall-shopping throngs.

In short, with nearly every customer leaving the store after buying something (often a handful of somethings), there is now a glimmer of hope that we might make the month of December after all. Until today, we were running far enough behind the pace of December 2004 that it was beginning to look like we might not be able to catch up. Twenty-four hours later, having solidly beaten the comparable Saturday last year, we're still not completely back on pace, but our lag has been cut down considerably.

Brightening spirits a little more is that due to the way the calendar falls this year, we are going to get a longer run-up to the holiday than last year, and I'd bet we are going to get absolutely slammed the last three full days of sales (starting on the 21st). Also, we lost a few of the biggest potential sales days last season to crippling snow storms (what ended up saving our month last year was the week after Christmas), and meeting the figures of those rotten days should be a walk in the park as long as the weather (currently cold and very dry) holds up.

On that note, according to the fine folks at Weather Underground, we're starting to look rather iffy for a white Christmas ...

Whoop-Dee-Doo And Dickory Dock

It's been raining more than snowing the last 24 hours, and the combination of all the re-frozen, half-melted snow and the roiling gray sky reminds me more of yucky mid-January than mid-December. Despite the blah conditions, though, it is with some trepidation that I have observed this evening that things are looking the tiniest bit up lately.

If there has been one overriding theme in my personal posts to this blog over the last six months, it seems to be that "planning is pointless": it seems that every time I have announced plans or forecasts for work/money/the car/et cetera, things have spiralled out of control quickly afterwards. Thus, I feel slightly foolish and maybe even a bit ballsy tonight since I am writing about feeling well and being in a pretty good mood, all things considered.

Now, don't get me wrong: life is far from a bowl of cherries here, but it really does feel somehow like the worst of 2005 is finally past as even the bad news seems tempered with a ray or two of sunshine. Firstly, Sarah's bank account woes remain unresolved as I type this, though she has managed to get another account going and is in the process of getting all of this crap behind her. I'm still winding my way through finally catching up with my debts, and am really fucking tired of running in place financially as a result, yet the light is now truly visible at the end of the tunnel in that department at last. Lastly, we seem to be in for a rather damp squib of a December at work as we have fallen nearly 20% off-pace from last December's figures as of today, though starting tomorrow anything goes as our sales should finally start to break out.

About the only thing that has me a bit pissy right now is 100% my own fault: I've relapsed into smoking over the last week or two. I'll of course blame this on a combination of my latest car troubles, my ongoing 2005 fiscal crisis, and the lingering discomfort of my wisdom tooth extraction, but it really boils down to me being a weak little dweeb when things were bleak. A week later, I have a car that works fine, an extraction site nearly fully healed over, I can eat whatever I want in a normal fashion, I am getting close to not being behind on my finances ... and I have to quit cigarattes all over again. Fuckin' duhhh ...

All that aside, my own mood has also been lifted immeasurably the past few days by the realization that I will be able to do Christmas shopping this year after all. I've been pretty upset about this over the last few weeks, particularly as things seemed to be accelerating downhill towards the end of November. But I found to my surprise last weekend that I would actually be able to pull off a limited Christmas shopping spree, and I was knocked off about half of my shopping list in one-fell swoop late last night (all hail amazon.com). The next step in me getting as absurdly Christmassy as I always get will be stringing up some lights and dragging out the tree this weekend (followed by keeping Moe out of the damn thing for the two weeks or so it takes before I get fed up with his mischief and take it down for another year, heh heh).


NP Various Artists Merry Mixmas: Christmas Classics Remixed

December 8, 1980

I was 11 years old on December 8, 1980. I don't really have much of any memory of John Lennon's death as it happened. I heard about it at school, certainly, but I simply wasn't really into music at the time beyond what happened to be on the radio at home or in the car.

I do remember that one of my best friends at the time was a huge Beatles fan, and he played his 45s of "Starting Over" and "Woman" a hell of a lot in the months after that day (then again, we also wore out a copy of the Stars On 45 single a year later, so make of that what you will). I also clearly remember reading a Time magazine cover story about it at my Grandmother's house a few weeks later while we were visiting for Christmas. I probably felt like it was a real shame that one of the Beatles was dead, but didn't give it much thought beyond that.

Needless to say, it took years for the enormity of that day to sink in. It probably wasn't until a bunch of us from work went to go see Imagine: John Lennon when it came out in November of 1988 that the real impact of that day was made clear. The movie, like its subject, was alternately joyous, frustrating, funny, flawed and amazingly touching: a beautiful tribute to John's life within and outside of the Fab Four.

This tribute comes at a price, however: the scenes at the end of Imagine that deal with the events of December 8 and the emotional aftermath in New York City remain almost impossible to watch without feeling overwhelmed with sadness or rage.


What an incredibly sad and senseless loss.

RIP.

The Attempted Rimjob (or: More Fun At Conrad's Good Year)

Hey, kids! Ready for some more "SUDDEN CAR REPAIR!!! OH NOES!!!" stories?

Well, tough shit. Neither was I.

Early yesterday afternoon, I walked briskly to my car, jumped into the driver's seat, started the engine and drove about fifty feet or so before I realized something has gone rather terribly wrong with my passenger-side front tire. Upon investigation in the parking lot, I saw to my surprise that I had spent the last half-minute of driving on my tire rim: the rubber itself was collapsed around said rim and flopping about uselessly. I quickly reversed back into my parking slot and then headed inside to call for a tow.

To answer the questions before they leave your lips (as they have with everyone else's), there was no option of trying to put on the spare at this time. First off, our parking lot was largely encased in a sheet of ice and I felt no great desire to see how the manufacturer-supplied jack mechanism would hold up on that surface. Even if I had felt daring enough to attempt this stunt, the spare tire, jack and tire iron are out of my reach for the time being as the trunk lock on this car has been busted since about 2002, and perhaps earlier.

Secondly, I currently have no AAA coverage. Sometime later that night, I thought of that option and pulled out an outdated membership card from my wallet. I then asked Sarah if we had let our membership slip. She replied that she had renewed her membership, but I had opted to let mine lapse, and saying at the time "Bah, I really can't see a need for it at this time."

Yes indeed, good call, Brainiac ...

Anyway, calling around to towing companies yesterday was a fruitless endeavor: either the tow trucks couldn't get to me on time, or they couldn't reach me when they did arrive in my area (the phone lines here have been annoyingly prone to not working very well when calls that we actually need come through) and subsequently buzzed off to another call somewhere else. Being that Tuesday is a bit of a pressure-cooker day for getting orders done and product tagged and shelved, I was in a time crunch and couldn't wait around until dark for a tow truck, so I had give up the chase quickly and finagle a ride to work a couple hours late from my neighbor (and occasional co-worker) Steve.

With a veritable snowstorm dumping down on the area (thanks for the assist, Mother Nature!) I was up early this next morning to start calling around towing companies again as it is impossible to schedule these things ahead of time. At 11:30, the wrecker arrived and it was a rather suspenseful ride to Conrad's on unplowed roads in a flatbed wrecker with a car chained to the top. I'll take this time to say hats off to the guys who drive those trucks in these kind of shitty conditions: the driver was smoking and chatting relaxedly while I was tensely strapped in my seat, watching the road ahead and hoping this guy wouldn't roll us over or send us skidding into a ditch.

Following this white-knuckle trek through the thickest snowstorm we've had so far this winter, the car and I were left safe and sound at Conrad's Good Year. If you've been keeping up with events in this blog, then you'll recall that Conrad's is the same place that I dropped a fucking shit ton of money on car repairs back at the end of July: the end result of this sent my finances (and the rest of this year) into a tailspin that I am only now starting to see the end of at last.

I should make it clear that going to Conrad's was not a choice I was happy to make for a repair destination: I haven't been entirely sure how much I trusted these guys after seemingly everything that could have went wrong went wrong the last time I was here. However, I couldn't afford a tow to Cal's Marathon in Mentor (my longtime trusted car repair business) and even if that weren't an issue, Cal is nearly impossible to schedule repairs with on short notice.

So, the ideal plan for today was to get the car to Conrad's as early as possible, get a new tire popped on and get the hell out in time for work at 2. That plan went out the window pretty quickly as the manager informed me that it would be a couple of hours before my car could even be looked at, let alone repaired. This wasn't a horrible setback: I'd been formulating a backup plan in case of this happening. Everything I needed to get the important work for today (a couple of orders I needed to place with suppliers in New York and California) was at home in the office, so all I needed to do was get a taxi back to the condo and get to work. I called the taxi dispatcher and was told a ride would be on the scene in about twenty minutes. Rawkin'.

While waiting for the taxi to arrive, of course, my car must have shot to the front of the repair queue. The manager mentioned to me that the car was being looked at as we spoke, and I hurriedly called back the dispatcher to cancel the ride as it looked like I wouldn't be hanging around that long after all. Well, that changed pretty quickly too, as it turned out: I was then told a few minutes later that my car had been inspected, but couldn't be worked on for another couple of hours.

While that alone was enough to get me a wee bit exasperated as I realized I'd have to call the taxi dispatcher again and then re-arrange a ride home, I started to get angry with the manager as we discussed exactly what these guys had in mind for my car. I was not at all surprised at all to be told that the rims on the blown tire were pretty bent up from being briefly driven on (not to mention dragged onto the back of the wrecker), and I told the manager that it didn't matter anyway as I had no intention of replacing the rims if that were the case: a plain ol' new tire would be just fine.

Apparently, this didn't compute with the manager and he told me with palpable incredulity that I needed a new rim since my tire wouldn't match the other tires (he apparently hadn't noticed that one of my other tires already had no fancy rim) and there had to be a new rim on the tire to test the seal of the rubber and blah blah blah: in effect, he was forcing a brand new rim down my throat and asking $230 for the damn thing before even getting to mounting and balancing the damn thing. Oh Jesus, here we go again ...

I was going to be paying $230 for a goddamned new tire with a snazzy official Beretta rim when all I needed and wanted was a plain old black steel donut instead. Luckily, a mechanic nearby was one of the guys who had worked on my steering system over the summer and remembered all the hair-pulling and wild tossing about of money from back then and I'll be damned if he didn't steer the manager quickly away from his $230 hustle and down to a simple $75 replacement wheel instead, which is pretty much what I'd had in mind in the first place. It would probably be a few hours or maybe a day before a replacement tire was in the shop, but I was too relieved to care at that point.

Feeling a lot better since it appeared that this business was going to be a minor cash inconvenience and not the dreaded financial coup de grace that would cap off my 2005 with a bang, I called the taxi dispatcher again to re-schedule a ride and was told that all the drivers were backed up thanks to the continuing storm and I'd probably be waiting for an hour and change. I said that was fine and then sat down with an irritated sigh in front of the store's T.V. set, which was being manned by the three older women who were also waiting on their car repairs.

The communal choice as I sat down was the FOX network, which was at the time showing a typically hyper-caffeinated episode of Malcolm In The Middle. I wasn't very pleased with this choice, but let me tell you, Malcolm was fuckin' Masterpiece Theater compared to the inhospitably vicious, soul-sucking moral vacuum that was The Maury Povich Show, which came on immediately afterwards. I had no idea ol' Maury was still peddling this shit on the airwaves, and the unrelenting screaming and bleeped-bickering between the, uh, guests on stage was actually starting to make me miss The Jerry Springer Show. Thankfully, the taxi finally pulled up to the front of the store and I finally got the hell out of there.

A couple of hours later, with the necessary stock orders and sales work finished in the comfort of my home office, Sarah arrived home from work and was preparing to give me a lift to Record Den so that I could at least cover the evening shift when, to my surprise, Conrad's called to inform me that the car was done and I could come pick it up at my convenience. Huzzah! Upon arrival at the store, I was told that the tire was fixable after all, and that they had resealed the rubber to the refinished rim and all was good. I paid the amount, grateful to be mobile again, yet also swearing off Conrad's in the back of my mind (and making a note here for anyone who might be considering using them in the future) for any future non-emergency repair jobs. I was a bit wary of being screwed over after dropping so much cash there over the summertime, but being given the hard sell on a fucking expensive new rim and tire when the old one was still fixable (wow, imagine that!) the whole time pushed me far enough to stick these guys on my shit list. Jerks.

Cal's Marathon, I'm coming home.


NP American Top 40: The Top 100 Songs Of 1977

Nothing But The Tooth

I had my last wisdom tooth pulled yesterday morning, right on schedule. For whatever reason, this was the first time I had this done under General Anesthesia (which, in itself, is something I haven't been through since childhood), which was administered via I.V. even before I had a shot of novocaine. Looking back from now, if I'd had any idea how very different this experience would be compared to previous extractions, I might have reconsidered on the GA part. In fact, I likely would have: yesterday was pretty fuckin' rough.

Going into this, I felt pretty cocky: yesterday was going to be more of a "last free day off before Christmas" than a sick day. If you've never had a wisdom tooth pulled on novocaine, it's really no big deal at all. In fact, it's really no worse than having a couple of cavities filled. Yes, you'll be sore at times when the pain meds wear off, but you can drive yourself home afterwards and only have to worry about what not to eat for the first day or so and keeping the extraction site clean. Thus, I lined up some bottled water, chicken noodle soup, and a box of saltines to get me through the worst of this, and I had a prescription of hydrocodone that I'd picked up from Walgreen's on Tuesday morning. All systems go and ready to rock, you might say.

Along comes Wednesday morning. It was required that I have someone to drive me home afterwards, so Sarah opted to take the day off and be my medical chauffeur. We got to the offices of Great Lakes Jaw & Implant Surgery just before 8 A.M. and I was brought into an examination room a few minutes later. After a short wait (this guy seems to always be running behind), the place was buzzing with activity as the oral surgeon and two female attendants moved busily around the small room while raising my chair into a weirdly not-quite-uncomfortable position so that my head was tilted dramatically back away from my chest. They couldn't seem to get a vein going inside of my elbow, so I felt a pinprick on the back of my hand and within 30 seconds I was out like a light.

Actually, "out like a light" is kind of a misnomer as I have no memory of even falling asleep, per se. The next thing I recall was waking up suddenly with a very numb left jaw and some distant traumatic half-memory/dream (?) of being under a dentist's drill and signalling "OW THAT HURTS" (I chickened out when given the chance to ask if a drill was used on me during the procedure ... in retrospect, I really don't want to know). Whether that memory was a drug-induced nightmare or not, I was pretty damn out of it and I have hardly any memory at all of writing a check to cover the operation, the trip home, getting in the front door, you name it. I think I was largely doing okay with walking, for what it's worth, though I also remember Sarah giving me a supportive hand at odd times.

The real nightmare, however, began not long after we got back home and I was dazedly surfing the web, checking my e-mail, and replacing the bloody gauze pad in my mouth every 5-15 minutes, waiting for the worst of the bleeding to stop. I popped the first of my prescribed pills and within twenty minutes was starting to feel pretty dangerously queasy. I went to bed quickly and managed to slip into an uncomfortable snooze that lasted until sometime after 3 P.M., when I woke up in a hell of a lot of pain.

Popping another tablet, I attempted to get some soup down and failed. The sensation of the broth was too much to handle at that point, and trying to get down some water didn't feel much better: the left side of my face was a live wire. Not much later, the nausea returned full bore, and it was then that I realized that the pain pills were doing as more harm than good since taking them on an empty stomach was only making me sick. I returned to bed again and fought down the urge to ralph all over the damn place as I slipped back into dreamworld.

A part of my mind knows good and well that, when nauseated, the best thing to do is just head for the nearest commode and yak and get the agony over with. Problem is, I also hate throwing up so much that I will frequently battle this urge with all the willpower I have to keep that from happening. Thus, I spent most of yesterday afternoon and evening lying semi-comatose in bed, moaning in misery, popping the odd pills, trying to get something into my stomach to keep it from freaking out over the pills, and generally trying very hard not to retch (a battle I finally lost around 10 P.M. and the results of which will probably kill my appetite for chicken noodle soup for a long time).

Somewhere around 2 or 3 A.M., I had finally had enough of being awake for a half hour before getting sick to my stomach again and decided to call it a night.

This morning went far better: I woke up around 8:30 and did some tentative puttering around, swished around my mouth with some Aquafina, ate a bowl of Apples & Cinnamon oatmeal and returned to bed around 11. A couple of hours later, I was up out of bed and getting ready for work, the only remnants of yesterday's agony being a dull soreness behind my bottom left molar. The worst is over. This year soon will be as well. Hallelujah.