And here I thought

...it might not rain this morning. But it's 7:30 a.m. and... it's raining.

I've been house sitting at my friends' Howard and Linda's place for the last week and a bit. Except for last Wednesday morning the rain has foiled my attempts to walk to work in the morning... it's a 50+ minute walk so it's tough to dodge raindrops all that way. The Fredericton bus schedule leaves little in the leeway way. So it's either be an hour early for work or an hour and a quarter late.

Now it's raining really hard.

The wind last night blew apart the mosquito netting enclosure on the back deck. I know it's not as devastating as the whole hurricane thingy, but it affects ME directly. I apologize.

One benefit of the distance from the *ahem* city centre is the possibility of an uninterrupted timespan to get work done... i.e. reviews, writing, reading (no 'rithmetic, though). However this house comes appointed not only with tools which make this work simpler and pleasureable (computers, coffee makers, light bulbs), but also tools which make this work easy to put off (computers, satellite television, playstation games, lightbulbs).

I have managed to put up a new show on my radio blog, SURGERY, and have been listening and re-listening to new music I've promised to review on the page... but I've gotten bogged down trying to decide on how to present the reviews. I'd like to put up a more interactive html model versus a simpler linked-to-only word document, but the two parts of my work ethic... copy+paste+get it over with AND/OR study+research+obsess for days and days... are at war with each other as usual.

Hey, now it's raining really hard.

Marc and Andrea visited last week... didn't get to see them much as they were cruising the seashores and I was visiting my folks up north... but since I had just been up to Ottawa it wasn't such a big deal. A session of making wax dice at John and James' last backyard party at 220 Church was a pleasant way to wish them off to their Manitoba leg of touring.

John Born and James MacGregor have moved into their respective Saunders St. enclaves. Don't know if they have backyards there... but we all know it wouldn't be the same... ah well.

Hey, now it's raining a little softer... but it's still raining.

The store has been unusually busy for late August... lots of interesting used stuff coming in to sell. And of course the pre-requisite phone inquiries about rubbish vinyl. Here is a nearly verbatim example... it occured yesterday, but believe me, this same conversation recurs on a twice weekly basis:

Telephone: ring ring

Me: Backstreet

The Guy: Yeah... uh... do yous buy records [note the yous part is not a typo]

Me: Yes [to be read tersely, with a little intake of breath in preparation for the stock interaction about to occur] but we're only doing trade at the moment because we've already purchase a few hundred records and a couple hundred CDs this week [true].

The Guy: Uh... well, yeah... I have about a thousand records to sell. How much do you pay?

Me: [Breath, prepare stock spiel] It depends on the condition of the record, the title, whether or not it's something we think we can resell. Our sale prices for average stuff is between a dollar and five bucks and we offer a third of that amount in cash and half in trade.

The Guy: Well... Uh... I have about a thousand.

Me: Yeah. Do you have a list? What type of music is it mostly?

The Guy: All different.

Me: [Already aged two weeks in the last 45 seconds] So every record is completely different from the previous one?

The Guy: No... Well... there's a lot of opera and country... and...

Me: [interrupting] We don't take in classical or country... or easy listening.

The Guy: ...you don't sell Country!!!

Me: No.

The Guy: That's the only music worth listening to these days.

Me: Well, you see most of our customers tend to be between the ages of 15 and 25 so opera and country aren't really what they're into [note: invariably whenever I say this over the phone there happens to be a man/woman in their forties in the store proving be wrong]. We mostly are after classic rock... stuff like Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath... that sells best for us, but we really like punk, metal, new wave, folk, jazz, blues, etc.

The Guy: What about box sets?

Me: Of vinyl?

The Guy: Yeah.

Me: Not usually, especially if they're Time Life or Readers Digest collections, they have no resale value for us. What do you have, for example... do you have any Beatles, Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd...?

The Guy: Well... uh, let's see... [sounds of fumbling around] this one is a box, it says "Great..." uh, "...Recordings of... Classic Operas" ...and it's from Readers Digest.

[note: I wish I was making this shit up, but...]

Me: Again, we don't take classical, we don't take boxes, we don't take Readers Digest.

The Guy: Oh, uh... ok this one is jazz...

Me: Is it a box?

The Guy: Yeah, uh, but I can't tell who made it. I think it's from the U.S.

Me: We don't take boxes. Do you have anything that isn't a box you could tell me about? [note: at a certain easily determinable point in any of these conversations you will realize you can be as direct/rude to people like this, short of asking them to take one of your organs into one of their orifices and they will not realize that you're being impolite] Maybe something I said we do take... like The Beatles?

The Guy: Well... uh, let me go over to another box over here... if the phone can reach... heh heh... they're kind of everywhere.

Me: [silence]

The Guy: What's this one? I can't really make out the writing... Hits of...

Me: Don't you know if you have any classic rock... 60s, 70s, 80s even.. anything along those lines?

The Guy: Well, I'm not sure.

Me: Are these your records your selling?

The Guy: Yeah... yeah.

Me: Why don't you know what any of them are, then?

The Guy: It's been a while since I bought them. Why don't I go through them and give you a call back later?

Me: Yeah... [sigh] ...we don't take country, classical, easy listening... so no opera, no Barabara Mandrell, no Gospelaires, no Neil Diamond... ok?

The Guy: Yeah... yeah, I'll call back later.

Me: OK.

No further contact was made.

The rain is letting up a little... stopping even... I'll likely try to give the walk its due chances. I can almost guarantee 24 minutes out what will happen...