RECORD STORE TALES #1048: Covid Chronicles 3 – Sharing is Caring
Day Three
Fatigued and restful, I did need more sleep. What I did not need was to pass this Covid on to Jen. Our pharmacist advised it was inevitable that I would, given our small living space.
She has a scratchy throat, a cough, and now her sense of taste has gone completely out of whack. Sprite tastes like fish.
I am grateful that I have not gotten worse, but I feel terrible about this latest turn of events.
Not much to be said here, just four guys at a mall signing autographs for throngs of fans! From the Pepsi Power Hour.
RECORD STORE TALES #1048: Covid Chronicles 2
Day Two
I slept for hours! Lost track of how many hours. In the morning I was still testing positive. Jen is still negative. In the afternoon, my sore throat went away, leaving me only tired and achey.
Monday will be a sick day from work. I am hoping to go back on Tuesday. Only the test will tell.
How it happened, I can’t fathom. I haven’t done much except go to work, and I have limited contact there with anyone. Jen has been to the hospital a couple times, so my current theory is that she brought Covid home from there without getting sick herself. I’m positive, she’s negative.
My health has been all out of whack lately, with a nasty stomach bug the week before. Stress levels are close to all-time highs. I’m triple-vaxxed, but I had a panic attack the day I was supposed to get a booster and never did the fourth.
So here’s the Covid Chronicles, check ’em out and see how I’m doing.
RECORD STORE TALES #1048: Covid Chronicles 1
Day One
I woke up Saturday morning bright and early with creative juices flowing. In a long and effortless spurt, I completed 7000 words of Tee Bone Man vs. Edie Van Heelin’, some of my best fictional writing to date. It took a few hours, and several spins of Night Ranger’s Greatest Hits, to finish. I had a tickle in my throat, but felt fine otherwise. Tired, yes, but I only had four hours of sleep, so that was to be expected.
I tested myself shortly after lunch. I was shocked when the line filled in immediately and strongly. Covid? No way! It didn’t seem possible. It still doesn’t.
I went to go lie down and caught a couple more hours of sleep. I talked to a few people and got some advice. Everyone said to hydrate. I placed an order with a convenience store for a few gallons of Gatorade, and some ice cream. Why not? Why not enjoy something, while I still can. We ordered drumsticks. What a delight. I hadn’t had drumsticks in years! This one had to be the best I’d ever tasted. The saltiness of the nuts, the sweet of the chocolate and caramel, and the perfect creaminess of the ice cream. Suck on that, Covid.
Jen made steaks and carrots for dinner. They too were also great. I had the leftovers for breakfast this morning and they still tasted great.
At present, everything smells and tastes normal. I have some mild body aches, a dry throat, and some fatigue. I also haven’t slept much; I caught about five hours and two more hours in a couple spurts last night. I’ve been up since roughly four in the morning. It’s not that Covid is keeping me up, it’s that I feel relatively normal and my creative juices are waking me up. I had a really productive day yesterday and my brain wants to continue that today, though I want to try and stay horizontal for most of today.
I’ll test again later and keep you posted as best I can.
I don’t mind me a little Static-X. Listening to a whole album of these songs in one sitting is a little much, but taken one at a time, their music is heavy, fun, and bizarrely catchy. A lot of that had to do with the unique vocal stylings of the late lead singer, Wayne Static.
Today, Static-X are touring as a tribute to Wayne, with a man named Xer0 fronting them, wearing an eye-catching Wayne-like robot suit. Xer0 is said to be portrayed by Edsel Dope, of the band Dope, and friend of Static-X.
I think this is a pretty cool way for a band to carry on when the frontman is gone forever. Bassist Tony Campos is passionate and enthusiastic, and the crowd eat it all up!
Thanks Tim for having me on the show again. Join Tim and I as we go through all of Triumph history from the first album(s) to the last.
Last night was a bounty of success, except for poor Mr. Jex, who suffered from wi-fi issues all night. Thank you to Jexciter for showing up and playing along! Rob Daniels, John T. Snow, and special surprise guest @MarriedAndHeels all joined in last night for a casual chat!
We successfully streamed to Rob’s Facebook, and the 2loud2oldmusic & Jex’s Vinyl World pages! This will help us reach more viewers in the future.
Unfortunately, Tim Durling could not join us, which is a real shame since he was responsible for two of the albums I unboxed, both Japanese imports.
John had some rare Whitesnake and Bon Jovi to show us, Rob had a book and a Helix-related soundtrack, and Jex some Judas Priest and monster movies.
The California Girl known as @MarriedAndHeels showed us her new Nike’s that took her on a 12.5 mile run earlier this week!
We had a lively discussion about Richie Sambora/Bon Jovi, Kiss’ Farewell Tour, Star Wars and a myriad of topics!
Thanks for watching, and if you haven’t, then please give it a watch below!
RECORD STORE TALES #1047: A Pretty Good Day
The worst and most tiring kind of days at the Record Store were the ones with customers bringing in endless boxes of discs for us to buy. These took up a lot of time and counter space to keep organized. I hated it when multiple customers with multiple boxes arrived at once. All you could say is say “leave your name and number and we’ll get through these as quickly as possible. It could be a couple hours.”
Some customers understood, some did not. That’s retail.
By contrast the best kind of days were often the ones without the pileup of CD boxes. If everything came in at staggered times, that was ideal. Even better if all the discs were in good shape. Icing on the top of the cake if the customer wasn’t a jerk about pricing. Everybody assumed their discs were worth solid gold. To be truly the best kind of day, customers would be bringing in good stock that you wanted for yourself! Whether it be a new release or something rarer from a back catalogue, those were the good days. You’d slap your name on a post-it note, stick it to the CD and claim it for self-musical enrichment.
I may have mentioned this a couple times before: the Big Boss Man hated when we bought stock for ourselves. But that was 50% of the reason people wanted to work in a music store. The best of days were those when the Big Boss Man and his underlings were not around!
One factor that didn’t affect whether the day was good or bad: who I was working with. I liked virtually every single person that worked in my store. There were one or two who made me pull my hair out, but they never lasted very long. I was very fortunate to have good working relationships with just about everyone in my staff. I tried to show my appreciation by buying them CDs or dinner.
Speaking of dinner, one of the best days I had was in the late 90s. A Jack Astor’s restaurant opened in the plaza across the street. I was working one afternoon minding my own business when a guy showed up at my door with a “Jack Attack”. I was shaking my head “no” as if to tell him I didn’t order any food, when he explained it was all complimentary! A bucket of wings and six bottles (bottles! Not cans!) of root beer. He dropped off a menu with ordering instructions for delivery. That was a very good day. I was working alone, but I left a couple bottles of pop for the night shift. (A couple. I was thirsty.)
I liked working alone, but eating a meal on a lone shift was tricky. Even the best of days were food-free days. The boss absolutely hated when we ate meals at the counter, but where else was there to go? We were working alone, we couldn’t leave the store. We couldn’t go into the back room to eat for 15 minutes. So most days, at least the ones working alone, were junk food only. Chips, pop, candy bars, pepperoni. That was it.
But combined with good tunes and no bosses, a pretty good day!
Always appreciative of helpful, constructive comments like this.
The rest of the world is trying to get me to write 200 or 500 word reviews. Padraig isn’t happy with 912 though. Waiting for him to post a link to his Sultans of Ping F.C. review. I’m sure his punctuation will be immaculate.
Instagram spam often goes like this. See below and beware of fake accounts! Always for “real fans”.
Note the poor English. Anyone who follows the real Nita knows this isn’t how she writes.
mikeladano.com 