CATALINA TRIP AND A RECORDING

Well, it's been awhile since I've written here. It's been a very busy month with a new district manager coming in at work and solving all of the problems at work. The health department was out and is requiring us to fix damaged ceiling tiles and holes that may lead to the roof. it also appears that our mall has an infestation problem of mice and some roaches which all must be controlled with a non-chemical means-- glue traps and mice traps. Then the fire department came in and cited us for not having our fire extinguishers being current and lighting faulty ballasts in the neon lighting. Wow! John Nugent and I finally got a day off and went to Catalina. Peaceful! Great boat trip! I had never been there on a January day -- and it was certainly very quiet over there. John loved it. We took a city tour and then toured the famous Casino that was built by William Wrigley (the chewing gum guy) and oh what opulence. The movie house downstairs has perfect acoustics and it's art deco design is simply stunning. Upstairs in the ballroom, we saw where some of the greatest bandleader entertainers in the world played. Benny Goodman, Bob Crosby and his "Bobcats" and Count Basie. Then the next day, I discovered I had won the Christmas camera contest at work and won another expensive cam corder and another expensive digital camera. Now what the heck was i going to do with more cameras? So I discovered that Jerry Jackson wanted one of them and one of my customers at work who plays the piano wanted the other. So I traded each camera for time at the studio and the services of a piano player and got a wonderful recording of several new songs from different shows recorded including "SEVEN" which John and I have renamed "SEVENLY" (because a murder mystery musical is being made with that name plus "The Wild Swans" (another story from Hans Christian Andersen) and a third show entitled "A Little Bit of Broadway" . We got twelve songs recorded that night for absolutely FREE. You don't get any better than that. Maybe my luck is finally beginning to change. I have decided that the approach is to get as many songs recorded as possible in an evening if nothing else but to get the tracks down. Then one can always go back and fix up the problems on a smaller scale evening. Well, its off to another busy day at work!