Yesterday was a rare day off, so did I get out of my home office for once? Of course not (sigh). I made the mistake of attaching my “new” vertical turntable (directly behind me when I took this photo) to the rest of my stereo system (the black boxes above all those records). “It’s a 10-minute job,” I told myself. Sometimes I really am an idiot. I didn’t recognize that it would be a multi-hour plod packed with recursive issues that included, in no particular order, dusting, choking on dust, carefully moving hundreds of records, labeling speaker wires, losing said speaker wires behind that wall of records, moving MORE records while in search of those speaker wires, removing a Technics EQ I’ve used maybe twice since I found it at a garage sale 15 years ago (seen here on the couch), inventing a number of new expletives while troubleshooting, and most notably, falling off that $&@#%!! stepstool, which, all jokes aside, hurt a lot more than my pride. Today, everything is back in place and it all looks Zoom meeting-ready once again (I always angle the camera to cut out that Thomas Dolby poster; brilliant though it may be, it’s too loud for a meeting). The vertical turntable now comes out the same speakers as my regular turntable (far right, fourth square from the bottom). I’ll A/B test them soon enough and it probably won’t sound as good, but for now, I’m just happy this disaster is cleaned up and it didn’t kill me in the process (though it tried).