Well, dear readers, I am sitting here like so much fish, not going left, not going right – I tell you it’s like I’m losing my mind. What am I, Stepehen Sondheim all of a sudden? But it’s true, you see – when I went left I coughed a deep, disgusting, nauseating, chest-filled-with-phlegm cough and so I had to turn and when I went right I had to spit what came up in the sink, and at that point I said to myself, “Myself, I’d better not go left or right because one way or another whichever direction I go will result in a disgusting result. I thought this phlegm and snot show would be gone by now and of course none of it is good for my voice, which I’ve been dutifully resting since Thursday. Doing my best, but we’ll just have to see how it goes today. I do feel better and I had the last quarter of a cup of NyQuil last night, so hopefully I’m done with that for a while. Meanwhile, yesterday was a complete day of not going left and not going right, and trying to avoid coughing, which I was mostly successful about save for a few disgusting instances. I got nine hours of sleep, had a turkey sandwich for food, watched some YouTube videos, dozed off for ninety minutes, puttered around the home environment, did a few things on the computer, had a small pastrami from Togo’s for second meal, all pills but one taken, and the final one will be taken when I post these here notes. Then I finally settled on something to watch, a documentary from last year entitled Selling Superman, about a dad who amassed a huge comic book collection unknown to anyone but his immediate family, with them not being allowed to tell anyone or ever talk about it. Every corner of their downstairs basement and his upstairs office was floor to ceiling boxes, filled with rare comic books – not so rare when he bought them, but in the crazed world of collectibles, which really took off in 2000 in ways no one could have imagined, rare, rare, and rare, with the prizes being both Superman and Batman number one. For example, there were only four known high-grade Superman number one comics – two graded at 8.0 and two at 7.0 with the one in this guy’s collection being one of the 7.0 grades. The dad, of course, eventually dies and it’s left to one of his two sons to deal with it, which is what the documentary is about. He sells a few things through Heritage Auctions early on, getting 10K and more for certain comics. Then he lets a couple of reputable dealers take mid-level stuff and sell those on consignment. That’s the first two episodes of the four-episode series (it’s just over two hours for the whole thing so why not just make it one complete thing? Who knows? I’ll watch the rest today after I’m done with our finessing and recording session. And that was pretty much it for not going left and not going right and losing my mind.

Today, I’ll be up by ten, I’ll try and clear my voice for takeoff at noon-thirty, and then we’ll see if I can get through the song decently. I sure hope so. Otherwise, we’ll be finessing the rest of the mixes we haven’t done, which shouldn’t take too long, and then I have to finesse the vocals we did last week and that should go quickly as the roughs are close. Then I’ll do a quick Gelson’s run and get something for food, come home, eat, catch up on e-mails, then watch, listen, and relax.

Tomorrow could be a Capital Grill or Smoke House meal, Tuesday I have an early lunch meeting, Wednesday is our annual New Year’s Rockin’ Eve Bash, Thursday, I begin a new book and then have a few people over for food and laughter, then we are back rehearsing on Friday evening, putting the show onto the set – not a run-through, as I’m sure we’ll have to adjust staging as we go. Saturday, we’ll do two run-throughs, if we can, and Sunday, same thing.

Let’s all put on our pointy party hats and our colored tights and pantaloons, let’s all break out the cheese slices and the ham chunks, let’s all dance the Hora and the Wah-Watusi, for today is the birthday of relatively new dear reader, MichaelG. So, let’s give a big haineshisway.com birthday cheer to relatively new dear reader, MichaelG. On the count of three: One, two, three – A BIG HAINESHISWAY.COM BIRTHDAY CHEER TO RELATIVELY NEW DEAR READER, MICHAELG!!!

Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, be up by ten, try and clear my voice for the noon-thirty session, do that, finesse mixes and the vocals from last week, get food, eat food, then watch, listen, and relax. Today’s topic of discussion: It’s free-for-all day, the day in which you dear readers get to make with the topics and we all get to post about them. So, let’s have loads of lovely topics and loads of lovely postings, shall we, whilst I hit the road to dreamland, where I shall hopefully go left and right and not lose my mind.