The Comfy Chair

Remember Monty Python and "The Comfy Chair"?

I asked that of Pennario once and he was not amused. Pennario did not care for Monty Python. But I remember the Comfy Chair very fondly. My dad and I used to laugh about it.

Anyway, I purchased a comfy chair at a garage sale a week ago. Never use the word "bought" when you can use the word "purchased," you know? I, ahem, purchased this chair with the help of my friend Lizzie. She spotted it and then she talked it down from $70 to $25 and then she schlepped it to my house in her gigantic SUV and then she helped me move it in. Everyone should have a friend like Lizzie but alas few people do. She can solve every problem you have in life.

But let me get to the point.

My new chair became the focus of a story by my colleague Susan Martin in Sunday's Buffalo News!

I am nameless in the story but the picture of the chair ran big and now that it has been published I do not think anyone would mind if I bragged on my Web log that it is my chair.

Everything that is in the story was true. I could not move the chair into the chaotic sun room and so I cleaned the chaotic sun room. I weeded out the record collection which was multiplying like the bishop's weed. There is a pile of really nice records earmarked now for my brother George. And there is a box devoted just to Leonard Pennario records I have purchased on eBay and wherever. And there is a box of junk records headed to Goodwill. I did all this in addition to getting in four hours a day on the book project.

Now you can move and breathe now in the sun room. You can open windows. You can sit in the comfy chair! Here is the chair that touched off this revolution.

And here is the restroom, I mean the rest of the room.

Ha, ha! With anyone else that would be this huge mess, with the cardboard boxes and everything. And on the couch is a pile of plastic record sleeves I meant to throw out. But anyway, for me this is serious progress.

Howard admired the chair because who could not.

It is as most excellent chair for when you want to put your feet up and listen to a Leonard Pennario record or to someone playing the upright piano, or when you want to read a magazine or say a rosary or have a glass of wine or pray to one or another of an array of nearby saints....

... or simply think about life.

I am laughing looking at The News' Web site. In the paper the picture is in black and white and it is cropped. But in the online edition it is in color and you can see the Infant of Prague as well as a little more of my religious paraphernalia. That is too funny. There are no secrets here in Buffalo!

Anyway. Cheers to my chair.

It was a wonderful and productive purchase!