Observations from the forefront:
After 16 years of being part of the printing room operations Ed Schneiter has decided to retire next friday. Basically he remains a very special part of this life for it was Ed who was my first trainee when he got hired fulltime when we were in Iowa City. I knew it was coming for he told me once he turned 65 that he would retire. I will miss his rant and ravings about the printers, the co workers and seeing that old red flannel shirt and baseball cap as he would walk around the area. I'll certainly miss the dude come monday.
August is going to be a very slow month for new music so therefore I don't forsee any big trips to the big cities before the Arizona trip. It will also give me some time to straighten up the music room and rooting out music that I don't play anymore. Somebody at the Salvation Army is going to reap the rewards here. And since August is a slow month in the music chat and blog area, I'll going to take it easy and perhaps take a few off in here too. But I'm sure when I get to my third home at Half Priced Books in town I'm certain that I'll keep finding forgotten music of the past. I'm still working on finalizing the AZ trip and places of where I'm going. Looks like it's Kingman again via Flagstaff. And of course an afternoon of meditation at Crookton Pass Bridge. And then visit the Hastings stores as a farewell. I look at Hastings like I do FYE, yeah they are a big box used store and yes their prices are outrageous and I still pissed Hastings closed up in Ames but I also know that I have found many many cheap CDs that are part of my ongoing showcase called Pawnshoppe Classics, therefore I go there just because.
I have put the word out of when I'll be in AZ and where I'll be staying. As much as I would like to visit with them and have a drink or two I will not bother them if they don't want to be bothered or if they want to spend quality time with their sons. I respect their privacy and besides I'll be hitting the ground running once the plane rolls into Mesa. You have a month, if I don't hear from any of my arizona friends I do have a plan B in place and roll on down the line. After all, a moment being bored to death with somebody going through the motions is a moment taken away looking for cds at Zia's or FYE or Hastings. Maybe I'll look up the famous Stinkweeds down in AZ for the first time ever. I'm hoping the body will not fall apart like it did when I walked to downtown Flagstaff and back to my hotel room and getting rigor mortis the next day.
We all know had I lived in Tempe all these years my cd collection would 20,000. The amazing part of AZ is that in everytime I have gone there I found the intended cds I was looking for. And to have this come and go freedom to do so has been lotsa fun. But like Ed, I made the decision to retire at age 50 from flying out and buying out every cd store that i have come across. Times are changing and nowadays downloading is the way of most folks. Not mine, I have yet to own an IPOD or read a Kindle and even have a cellphone to text back and forth. And being the old set in ways coot I don't see myself running to the Itunes store anytime soon. I still enjoy the lure of finding the actual album or cd and reading the liner notes although I have to keep getting a different set of reading glasses to read the small print.
I'd love to do this another 10 years but while the spirit is willing the body isn't as sure and usually I pay for it at the end of trip. It happened last year there and it happened this year in Michigan. Yeah, I thought last year's 10 Days was the end but this year is a bonus and perhaps the exclaimation point to something I have done the last 20 plus years of going on vacation. It always lead to Arizona (except for a year that Portland and Seattle was the destination). And I really don't mind the heat there, it's usually the rains I have a problem with since they tend to follow me from up here. But I'm hoping that I'll get there and we won't have to deal with the monsoons after dealing with them up here in June and July.
But in the meantime, I still have four weeks to go.
