A Christmas Yuleblog

In March of 2007, I travelled to Chicago sans wife & kids to search through the bowels of Chicago thrift stores, flea markets, and rare record stores to search for Christmas LPs for my collection. This past weekend, I travelled again to Chicago sans wife & kids to do the exact same thing. Upon learning the news, the Chicago River turned green with envy (keep reading). My weekend trip began last Friday and I stopped at various flea markets and antique stores along the Lincoln Highway from Fort Wayne to Chicago. I walked away with two Christmas albums (both have been shared out by our friend Ernie (Not Bert) - keep reading). After getting to Illinois, I went to a thrift store location that two years ago had just opened, had one entire corner of their store reserved for LPs, and yielded a good portion of the titles I shared out last year. Upon my return this year, their selection was reduced to an eight ft. folding table with about 10 milk crates full of LPs. Sadly, I ...

Dear Christmas music lovers everywhere... About three months ago, I decided that it would be good for me to break the wintertime blues and audition for a play for a local theater group in Fort Wayne. The play is called "Lend Me A Tenor" and I got cast as the world famous Italian tenor Tito Merelli, known to his fans as "Il Stupendo". As March turned into April, I had to buckle down and learn a bunch of lines and master deliberate and delicate movements on the stage in order to get the role properly. I also was the only member of the cast who had free time to help build sets, paint floors & walls, etc., etc.. Needless to say, this took up much of my free time (thereby robbing me of the time I used to devote to this blog). When April turned into May (quite the operation she had), everything came together. Each cast member trusted their lines and movements, the light and sound cues were on the money. I added one final touch to my physical transformation ...