Finally in Illinois

First, the post-script to the airline debacle.

After getting my flight canceled (and get a free bonus visit with JO), I fully expected to arrive in Illinois without my bag. I figured there’s no chance it gets on the plane with me.

So I wasn’t surprised in the least when about 25 bags came out for the 25 people waiting. There should be about 40 bags, because women have two.

Then I was stunned when I got to the counter and there were a stack of bags waiting for us 10 annoyed fliers who thought we were bagless.

Which leads me to wonder: HOW DID MY BAG GET TO ILLINOIS WITHOUT ME? WHAT FLIGHT DID IT TAKE AND WHY COULDN’T I BE ON THAT FLIGHT WITH IT?

Secondly, on Christmas I posted that my cousin has a vast CD collection. “Vast” doesn’t do it justice. He tells people how many CDs he has, and people think “Oh, that’s cool.” But you don’t quite grasp how big it is until you see it.

When I moved, I realized “I have too many CDs” and tossed the jewel cases of about 2/3 of my collection and put the rest in a binder. The binder holds 288, so I have about 240 CDs.

My cousin stopped counting years ago at 3000. This is most of his CDs:

There's also random stacks scattered around

He also has random songs that he doesn’t have on CD, because the album wasn’t worth purchasing. That is one 500 gig hard drive full of mp3s. The average music fan has a 60 gig iPod loaded up with their music. My cousin, would need at least 220 (60 gig) iPods to hold all his music.

Crafty (Do Not Alert The RIAA)

My cousin has a very vast collection of music. We’re talking  “have to put six bookcases in his media room, but buy 18 bookcases so he has enough shelves” vast.

So every Christmas, he usually looks at people’s musical wishes, and “gives” anything he has from his own collection.

Each year, I’d get a collection of CDs — some stuff I want, some stuff he thinks I might like based on what else I want/like — and usually on top is the FBI warning against it being unlawful to copy the CDs and make illegal bootleg copies.

This year, I was surprised that he got me a book:

It’s a book. No music to be found

Then I noticed there was a little tab sticking out of the bottom. I opened the book and saw this:

How’d THAT get in there?

The DVD has the entire Top 100 Albums of All-Time in MP3 format.

He didn’t put it there. I didn’t put it there. It’s a Christmas Miracle.