MEANWHILE, SINCE LAST YEAR’S LIST #99 – ramblings and blog-type stuff:

SO, WHAT HAVE I BEEN DOING THE PAST YEAR?  Very happy to say this might be the CLOSEST I’ve come to getting the nest list out in ONE YEAR OR LESS, than I’ve come at any time in the past eighteen years.  At least as I start typing here, it “feels” like I’ll miss the one-year goal by only two to five days.  (The “TIMETABLE” above reflects estimated scheduling, as of the time I finished my typing.)  This past year has been so busy that most of my typical travel has been curtailed – IN 2026 ONLY – though I ended 2025 with consistently-heavy travel throughout the year.  ACTUALLY, FOR FOURTEEN MONTHS, because of the 41 day November-December trip in 2024, too. 
HAPPENINGS IN AND NEAR CHICAGO:  I’ve had some visitors since the last list, including Danilo (an Ecuador native from one building north of me), Ted P. from suburban Philadelphia (attending Northalsted Market Days festival), Jackie P. locally, John C. from Peoria, Paul M. from Monmouth County NJ (we saw the Cubs beat the Cardinals 4-3 at Wrigley), Josh S. locally, and I went to visit Dante C. who has bought large quantities of close-out 45s from me in the past.  I can’t remember if Lisa A. was in Chicago this year, or if it was before fall 2025.  (There was NO “spare” Chicago time in 2025 during and after last year’s record list!)  I continue to play Scrabble in a group on nearly any Sunday that I’m in Chicago, which was more often than usual this year.  II also attend two men’s events, which incorporate elements of yoga and massage, or cuddling.  It is not “sexual” for me in any way (and I wouldn’t even want that), but with nurturing spirituality and utmost mutual respect.  I also always enjoy “discovering” cool restaurants in Chicago – this city, I feel, EQUALS New York City with the best food in the US.  I most recently tried an Uzbek rice dish, which was marvelous, and my favorite restaurant in the city is Ethiopian.  I got too busy to do the Taste of Chicago.  The fish and chips at Duke of Perth (Scottish restaurant) is the best I’ve ever had: they use haddock, not cod.  

HAPPENINGS IN MACOMB IL:   I made a few trips there in the past year, including two trips to get my 2025 taxes finished and sent in time without needing an extension.  The trips were mostly short, as even with the relative absence of heavy traveling in 2026, preparing this list took more time than usual, partly due to including so many new punk records which take a lot of time to process.  Some, I can spend forever trying to determine which is which on record label name, band name, and title!  Once, or perhaps it was twice, we (Tom, Darryl, Lisa, me, and some variation between Jackie, Kevin, and a newcomer) met for Trivial Pursuit and food at the Hy-Vee dining area.  They have no issue with us sitting there for hours.  I went to Heritage Days at the end of June, a very old annual festival where a small carnival, and booths/vendors, etc. are set up.  I was surprised when I found out THE FLESHTONES were gonna perform Friday night!  OF COURSE I WENT, and they’re still good!  That was so cool, and it was a little humorous when the lead singer, going into the audience as they usually do at gigs, lowered the orange plastic fence directly in front of me, and still slightly tripped going over it, and his right hand briefly found my left leg to keep his balance.  That’s a cool memory.  I  went through the Christmas records and “peeled off a whole new layer” which will be on this list, if time complies.  Major processing left to be done, especially with albums – see the first page which describes what’s there that I want to get rid of!  I even managed to attend a radio station board meeting in person, for their nonprofit community radio station.  That’s about all I did in Macomb, and the few stays were short.  
RECORD ACQUISITIONS:   I actively avoid buying large quantities, and even buying premium items “to make my list look great” is less.  Hoping for only ONE more record list (with maybe a PUNK “closer” #102 later), I’m loath to pay “good dealer prices” for rare records, maybe having no reliable outlet for the pricier ones after #101.  However, I still ended up acquiring SOME records.  During the 40-day trip (covering the last 39 days of 2025) which I’ll describe below, I picked up perhaps 200 records, so it wasn’t a “business trip” for the most part.  In May, I took around 1,800 LPs to Boston [Waltham], almost entirely radio shows and transcriptions, and if absolutely felt wonderful to free up the space…but, on the way home, a friend in Indiana wanted me to pick up HIS record collection before he dies.  (This is literal – he’s in a nursing home.)  So yeah it felt so wonderful to get rid of a big batch of records, then I had to come back with more than BEFORE THE TRIP, ARRGGHH!  Many of the LPs I’ll list this time (but NOT THE PUNK) came from him.  Also, he had thirteen white boxes of 45s which were almost entirely NOVELTY AND CHRISTMAS, which contributed to those sections being extremely ROBUST this year.   The other reason is that I brought a lot of novelty and Christmas boxes up from Macomb.
POSTAL WOES DURING 2025 LIST///future list scheduling:  I ended up shipping more than twenty packages on the FINAL DAY where it was still physically possible for me to take the trip below (22 November), without changing plans.  But, those packages encountered issues!  Those were nearly all OVERSEAS packages, and most of them simply bounced all over the United States until early JANUARY, when they finally started going to Europe.  (Several packages to Japan did not have that issue, why?)  Thankfully ALL PACKAGE GOT DELIVERED, but it was frustrating!  I hope to able to ship A FEW DAYS EARLIER than 22 November.  If I can get rid of a large portion of the records I want to get rid of in 2027, hopefully that gives me enough income to write-off my substantial overhead against, AND THEREFORE NO NEW LIST SHOULD BE NEEDED BEFORE JANUARY 2028.  I hope to get rid of the storages in Macomb IL, downsize my living quarters, and reduce my life-costs in a massive way.  Yes, **JANUARY** 2028, which is my “Holy Grail” of timing for a list.  I haven’t been on that schedule since the late 00’s, as I’ve NEVER managed to get a list out in less than a year since at least 2008 or 2009.  It’s always been 53 to 56 weeks between lists, and a new list can never, ever creep any later into the year than right now!!  

40 DAY TRIP, END OF 2025:  I rounded off an EXTREMELY ambitious traveling-year by taking a major foray into the Far West USA.  The northern part of the trip started AT MIDNIGHT on 22/23 November, driving way up to Eau Claire, Wisconsin – about five hours away, only hours after mailing about thirty packages on the 22nd.  I couldn’t have started EVEN ONE DAY LATER.   I visited two friends in Minneapolis (a transgendered female couple who I consider “entirely women” and I’m absolutely comfortable with that), then a stop in Watertown, SD (start of the 24th) at the tarot card and spiritual shop I stopped at in 2023.  (Some may recall my story about stopping in there, and the cashier bought my “guitar shirt” right off my back for $50.)  Sadly, not only did it move, now on a side street where they’re guaranteed to fail, but the woman who bought my shirt is no longer there, though I had a great conversation with the woman who now owns it.  That day I drove from there to Chadron NE, via a side trip JUST BARELY entering Montana (and turn around) from Bowman ND.  It became evident that I couldn’t have done all this even one day later.  I tried to travel south “the back way” (U. S. 385) but I hit SNOW at Deadwood SD (the only real snow on the trip!) which was wet and very slick, and with NO ROAD CREWS working.  I escaped by going eleven miles east to I-90 to go south, instead.  I joined U. S. 385 well farther south and it was OK:   GALE force wind, but no snow!  That day, and the next two days, I traveled 2,148 miles IN THREE DAYS.  Colorado was a tiny side trip and turnaround, and all other states I “had to hit” (including Nevada and Idaho) were just along the way. Those three days of driving got me to Tom and Kathy Clark’s place in Oregon JUST IN TIME for bed, then for a carefree Thanksgiving and the next day visiting them.    Thank you for hosting me!  Onward to Seattle to visit some non-record-friends there, and Bob Pegg/Don Kirsch in Tacoma.  Missing Portland was unthinkable, but I did – I went directly to Warrenton OR to visit a radio-hobby friend, and I missed another friend in Tillamook because the scheduled PLATTER PARTY in Medford (hosted by Roger) left no additional time.  Sadly I’m wondering if those have run their course, because there were only five people there, including me.  I took responsibility for getting Brad (Grants Pass) there and back.  Some people in the original group have died or stopped coming, though these events were never huge.  I did exactly what I’m notorious for:  stumping the group on “mystery artist” records.  As usual, I came up with some dandies, including a Rosemary Clooney record on a late 1960s Dot which is northern soul.  I was also very fortunate to find Ron and Brenda Davis at home and available, they are two wonderful people and a hoot to hang with.  Lloyd supplied me with most of the “200 records on the trip” while I was around, too – that is why you are seeing GOOD ROCKABILLY records this time!  Then to California; I picked up about 30 records from a couple about half an hour from Yreka (in the far north), and I stayed with Jello Biafra for close to three days, as always a great visit, and visited his girlfriend across the Bay on the way south.  I stopped in Santa Cruz and continued south, simply because I hadn’t been there in FAR TOO LONG;  this time I walked around and explored.  I was realizing, now, that I REALLY needed to stop for a couple of days to “hole-up” and catch up with emails and other stuff, stopping at the “unlikely” Bakersfield.  I stayed close to three days, doing a lot of typing and catch-up, and some just-chilling-out, and a good amount of exploring downtown.  It may be a bland city, but it’s not “horrible” but…reasonable.  I was surprised to find F. W. WOOLWORTH’S there, which is a restaurant, not a department store.  I had their genuine chocolate malted, and that means I’ve visited what I think are both F. W. WOOLWORTH’S in the United States.  The other one, which is in Asheville (NC), has a restored/”original” lunch counter and is a huge art gallery, where I’ve also had the malted, lol.  Woolworth’s went out of business as a department store over half a century ago, and the TRADEMARK HAS LAPSED, so these two places can have the full F. W. Woolworth’s sign without any trademark infringement, which is pretty damn cool.  In the Los Angeles area, I didn’t buy records from Dick Blackburn, but we met and had a cool meal and hanging out at the iconic Mel’s Drive-In in West Hollywood.  I also visited Dr. Demento and I got perhaps 35 records from him; this was limited by the amount of time I chose to allot to that mini-hunt.  I did more visiting in the Inland Empire (Riverside-San Bernardino area), and Oceanside and San Diego.  I walked around Riverside and Palm Springs, and later Tempe AZ just before visiting somebody in Scottsdale.  I no longer know anybody in Tucson, but I drove south to Nogales (where I’d never been) and, again, some substantial exploring that rather unsafe town on foot.  I went on to visit Ed Smith in Bisbee (a historic record dealer, but I did no buying), who is a cool guy in an iconically-eccentric town, and this time I walked to the top of Tombstone Canyon which has good elevation gain.  Various stops between there and Santa Fe – a real surprise was in tiny Vaughn, New Mexico in the middle of nowhere about 9:30 at night, and I was hungry, and I knew I’d find nothing, right?  NOT SO FAST.  I found a place called Penny’s Diner.   Good from-scratch food, and an AMAZING PLACE.  Do you know about them?  It’s a CHAIN, and all locations seem to be open 24/7/365 (even Christmas!), and they are usually in SMALL RAILROAD TOWNS.  Somehow I had not noticed these before.  Most are west of the Mississippi.  The meal (I THINK I had soup, and liver-and-onions?) hit the spot that I thought would go empty except for donuts or something closer to Santa Fe.  There, the next day, I went to House Of Eternal Return, - it’s an interactive and extreme art installation in a large building, built by a company named Meow Wolf.  Think of it as a psychedelic fun house for adults and some children, and it’s amazing!  Entire spaces have light shows, an “ordinary” clothes dryer opens up to a light-studded flashing slide to a lower level, there is cool abstract stuff everywhere, intricacies, secret panels, faux science fiction, etc.  The company is expanding, soon to be coast-to-coast (Los Angeles and NY City) with six locations.  I hope they come to Chicago!  No apparent plans yet.  This was on Christmas Eve, and on Christmas I was driving across the Texas Panhandle.  My car showed a temperature of 86!  The records show a record high reported 87 that date, and it was WINDY!  (I’m SURE the previous record was SHATTERED, because in not-far-away Amarillo the record high was 71 up to Christmas 2024.)  I was traveling east, and the winds were PUSHING me and my car.  My mileage registered at 37.8 miles per gallon at one point, and a remaining RANGE of 720 miles.  My car had never registered anything over 31.0 before, and my record range (from a fill-up, NOT ALREADY EIGHTY MILES after the fill-up as the 720 was, so I “started around 800”) had been 680 miles, interestingly in New Mexico.  I saw Rhett Lake in Oklahoma; sadly the visit with Sherry was minimally interactive because she was in advanced dementia, and she died only a few months later.  I continued to Manhattan, Kansas to visit a friend/couple there.  On the way I explored both Arkansas City and Winfield in Kansas, about ten miles apart…Winfield seems to be thriving, but WHAT IN THE HELL happened to “Ark” City?  That town is entirely gutted!  The historical buildings tell me that it was once a vibrant little city.  I was going to do some visiting in eastern Iowa, but the weather wouldn’t allow it, so I continued to Macomb IL where I visited with some friends, briefly.  Instead of going directly back to Chicago, the weather cooperated just enough at the last minute that I could take a side trip to Madison WI and spend New Year’s Eve-and-day with Rick C. whose wife died in the middle of 2025 (and he broke a femur in September), so it wasn’t “his year” at all.  The weather was whiplashing too much to PLAN TO take Tom and Darryl to Madison with me, so they got there on the train.  OH, I SAID WEATHER?  On this long trip, I had bad and/or winter weather “chasing me” REPEATEDLY.  The snow I ran into in South Dakota didn’t extend just eleven miles east, and I got out of that.  Parts of the trip were below freezing, and there COULD HAVE been snow, but there wasn’t.  Driving over Snoqualmie Pass had 31 degrees F, and snow flurries, with apparent heavier snow just after I went through.  Heavy rain was “chasing me” in California, and I let it pass over me when I was in Bakersfield.  Most notable was heading east across “the top” of Missouri (Cameron and east).  The entire way to Macomb, 200 miles, had a cold front coming through diagonally, and the entire route was 32 to 34 degrees, and raining.  The entire way, the temperatures behind me fell below 32 and it turned to snow.  An hour later I used my phone to look up Cameron, for example, where it had been 32, and only an hour later it was 27 degrees and snowing.  The same happened in several other places. I think during most of the 200 miles, I “missed winter” by no more than FIFTEEN MINUTES.  I accomplished the trip much later in the season than should have been possible without consequences, and I was back in Chicago safely on New Year’s night.  With the side trips to hit Montana and Colorado, and coming back through Kansas, I ended up DRIVING TO 48 STATES + D.C. IN 2025.  I figured I’d do it NOW (first and last time) because I’m extremely unlikely to ever get another chance.

MAY AND MIDSUMMER TRIPS, MORE SIMILAR THAN NOT:  Both trips emphasized visiting deep-mourning Rich in Metuchen NJ.  Visiting Rich is where one foot it often in an alternate reality, and there IS truth to that, even if we’ve smoked anything yet.  Rich found The Touch Of the Phoenix (too involved to describe here – incredibly spiritual), coincidentally (OR NOT?) on what we call OMD – Odometric Millennium Day.  01 January 2000.  The new millennium began on 1/1/2001, but 2000 was when “all the numbers turned over.”  We have an incredibly unusual friendship, which often involves flowing spiritual energy, beyond what I experience from yoga.  If it was possible to come up with a list of the fifty most unusual friendships currently on this entire planet, this would be one of them. Also I’m his only friend.  Visits totaled about eleven days on the two trips.  Both trips shared four friends:  Chaim, Rich, Mike A. in Queens (both times with Chaim, way cool!), and Scott B. in Waltham MA.  I did a short New England trip with Chaim in May, making sure I was around on Fridays to go with him to WESU Radio (Wesleyan U, Middletown CT) and be part of his Friday “Anything Goes” show.  We did shows on 08 May and 31 July.  We agreed, and I provided, OUTSIDER/BIZARRE/”WTF?” 45s to play on his show.  I mean, truly weird stuff, and even examples of some of the most horrible possible songs.  (You haven’t heard HORRIBLE until you’ve heard “Charlie Brown” by The Superior Street Singer, but I don’t think any of you will ever hear this, because I think my copy may be a unicorn!)  My May visit with Scott in Waltham had me bringing those RADIO SHOWS (countdowns, comedy, interviews, etc.) there to sell, and the July visit was only to stop and say hi and hang a little.  The May destinations had the four friends, and a stop to visit a long-time friend in Indianapolis.  (He’s good at Scrabble!)  On the way I got a COVID booster shot in Wheeling, W. Va. which now makes it *TEN* states where I’ve had the shots, none of which I’ve ever lived in!  I’m sure nobody else can truthfully claim this.  THE JULY/AUGUST TRIP also included visits with two friends (well, three – one is a couple) in the Southern Tier of New York.   It was also very cool that I was able to watch the recently-released BILLY PRESTON documentary while Out East, suggested by Chaim.   July/Aug. trip was LIMITED IN TIME...WHY?  Before my trip, at the last minute, I remembered that I needed to renew my driver’s license before I left, because it would expire during my trip.  I went to DMV and all was fine, until I FAILED THE VISION TEST!  The trip was still important, but I chopped a week off its end because I needed to be back in a Chicago a DAY BEFORE my birthday.  I scurried, finding an optometrist who could take me on that July afternoon (in the far suburbs, but it’ll do) to test my eyes, and get me a prescription for new ones.  It was a Walmart vision center, which thankfully was competent, and they promised that I could pick up my glasses by my pre-birthday deadline, so I made the trip.  I also made an ophthalmologist appointment before I left, and the same pre-birthday date was available (but my birthday wasn’t), so I chose that.  Whatever was going to happen with my new glasses would be “IT” for now – nothing else could be done AND still have me be able to travel.  After picking up my glasses and having the ophthalmology exam, it was too late to go to DMV, so I had to go on my birthday.  I was “sweating bullets” but, in my hands, I was also carrying a form given to me on July by DMV that the ophthalmologist filled out the day before after testing my vision, and the DMV accepted the revised vision without further exam and I GOT MY LICENSE RENEWED on my birthday!  This came down to the SCIENCE of scheduling!  Too close call even for me!  UPDATE:  I’ve now had cataract surgery on both eyes, and I see much better.  My new prescription eyeglasses  will tweak my reading and distance vision to 20/20, and I’ll always want glasses as “protection” against anything (such as flying pebbles) that may target me.