RECORD STORE TALES #1249: Winter’s Call

Fall leaves have changed their color,
Winter’s on its way,
I’m lookin’ for the sunny part of town,
And leaving on, I hear the wicked cold winds call me,
They say, don’t fly away…

I feel it earlier this year.  The chill of the cold.  The dark of the sky.  The dreaded Seasonal Affective Disorder.  It is coming.

What is unexpected about this is that I didn’t have it last year.  I barely felt it the year before.  I can feel it readying its return in 2026.

I think what prompted this was my recent realization that I’ve only gotten a fraction of the things done that I wanted to do this summer.  Many projects started, and without the time left to complete them.  I’m speaking specifically of cottage projects.  My Transformers collection lives there, because it is the best environment for animation.  I did get a lot of animation done this year, and hope to complete at least two more shorts before we close up.  This is a lot less than I had hoped.

We hit several goals.  Food experiments were a success this year.  I haven’t even talked about this stuff here, because I’ve been feeling less shackled to writing (most of my writing has been fiction, with Harrison).  2026 was greeted by a new Napoleon four-burner barbecue, and we just finished off its first wagyu and tomahawk steaks.  Wait until you see some of this stuff!  I have other things that I’ll be presenting in video form, that being my current medium of choice.  I’ve been writing about music since about 1994, but I’ve been making videos even longer.  This summer represented new achievements in the video realm, outside of animation.

In order to make it through winter, I need to focus on creative goals for home.  We just don’t have as much space here at home to do videos the way I want to, so certain projects must take a back seat while I turn to home hobbies.

At home, we took cooking indoors to a massive upgrade by making my own spaghetti sauce from scratch.  There’s no reason not to continue exploring in that direction.  I have to admit, Stanley Tucci’s series Tucci in Italy has been a massive inspiration.  There’s that to remember when the months turn cold.

This is the winter I decided to learn how to draw, and I’m preparing now.  I have two drawing books, that I purchased from Treats & Tales in Kincardine Ontario.  These are How to Draw Comic Book Heroes by Mark Bergin, and 1978’s classic How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way, by Stan Lee and John Buscema.  I’m going to buy some drawing supplies and take a shot at it this winter.  I may be in over my head.  I’m not used to drawing; I’ve never been trained and I haven’t attempted drawing since the early 90s.  However, I never said my goal was to draw a comic book.  My goal is to learn how to draw.  So here we go.  That’ll be something to keep me occupied this winter.

I think that’s enough for a start.

Example of the kind of videos that work best at the cottage