The tone I've been looking for

When people are looking through over 40 years of your life on one side of the room, and you are on the other - holding forth and making gin cocktails, it can get a bit stressful.

The Westgate Cavern was festive on Saturday night. We had a very nice party and everyone hung out in the basement this time out. People were looking through my record collection without me hovering over them, judging my life's work. I'm sure all the cool stuff they liked was added by my wife. In the end, it all worked out. The worst thing was one record being misfiled - I hope a librarian did not do that. Got to add some new vinyl as my brother's partner came to the party, gifting me of his record collection. I spent some time yesterday weeding out the duplicates and what will move along and added some cool stuff and things he had that I lost in the flood to Discogs. That Lloyd Cole Rattlesnakes record is damn good.

There's a new member of the family also. Finally bit the bullet and got a new amp. The Supro Comet is a little tube dynamo. A ten inch speaker powered by six or fourteen watts of power, and it cranks at both. Good reverb and a smooth tremolo makes it what will be the last amp I ever need.

It was a bit of adventure getting the amp. I had bought from the company before and thought I put in my new address. I did not. Saw that it was shipped to the old address and races over there right away. When I got there, the guy had his laptop open and said, "You work for Ohio State." He was googling me to find some contact info as he suspected I'd need this, and he was right. And he is an honest man, this renter of my old house. Also, apologies to all the people I spoke with at UPS over the past week. My tone was not appropriate.

So it is good, a solid party turn out despite steady rain that ranged from a hard drizzle to near biblical. The puddle in the downstairs bathroom held off forming until after everyone left.

Working at home

Took on the unenviable task of cataloging my record collection this past week. A lot of dust. A lot of memories. Lost a lot through downsizing and a basement flood. Kept a few records that show flood damage, should probably replace them at some point. The work involved a lot of bending and peering at serial numbers. Put it all onto the Discogs online database, which is fairly simple to use. Most of my collection was already in there so all I had to do was punch up the serial number. Many of my Beatles bootlegs are on file, as were my weird Uruguayan imports.

Discogs is also a place you can sell your records, but I have no plans on doing that. A lot of the vinyl does have an assigned value based on previous sales, if there have been any. The prices do seem to fluctuate quite a bit so I can't take their value too seriously. It is good to have a tangible file of my collection available that gives forty years of my life more context than simply putting it all on a spreadsheet.

When I finished the records my wife asked if they took CDs as well, so I ended up putting them all in too. This was a bit easier as most of what we have had a bar code, so searching was very easy.

She brought over a lot of interesting discs from the olde country. I do believe we now have the largest collection of records from The Pastels in the United States.

If we catalog the books, she gets to do that, it's too close to work for me.

I am not an avian landlord

In a frenzy on Saturday, I organized my record albums for the first time in well over a decade. Mostly in alphabetical order, spread out among some wood, plastic and cardboard crates in the back room. I counted them yesterday. 473. There used to be more, but I got rid of some to goodwill, sold some others and lost quite a few in a basement flood about six years ago. I was looking for some yesterday. Where's my copy of U2's War? Where Procol Harum's Greatest Hits? What was Born to Laugh at Tornadoes by Was (Not Was)?

All gone. I do not think I had the opportunity to mourn the loss.

We all got together and met the young women who will be my son's caregiver this summer. She's a junior at OSU, a special education student who came recommended by my son's teacher. I think this is going to work out for everyone, she promised not to bite him. He was bitten, twice, last year at day camp.

Tonight I got the lawn mower back from the shop. It needed servicing, a blade sharpening and other fixes. After I wrote the check and handed it to the guy I mowed the back lawn and will finish the front tomorrow.

There may be birds living in the underside of the gutter on the back of the house. Not cool with this. They knock out the siding under the gutter and set up shop. I cleared out some nesting materials out of there earlier and sealed it up (though they keep opening it) and noticed some birds looking a bit stressed out. God, I hope there are no eggs in there.