3- A Horse is a Hoarse of course of coarse

I've been running my pub quiz for almost two and half years. Somehow, that seems amazing to me. What's more amazing? I haven't had a Tuesday night off in more than a year. I'm not really trying to complain, but I'm complaining a little.

Towards the end of November, my microphone started to act a little funky- cutting out at odd times, working even when the on/off switch was clearly off, things like that. Eventually, which is to say in a week or so, the poor thing just gave up. I took it apart to find that it had literally, fallen apart. Wires were not connecting to give amplification to my voice, and I was sad.

About a week later, they found some weird headset thing that had two earphones and a mic, but it didn't work worth a damn. Instead of speaking into the mic, you were supposed to speak into one of the earphones. It didn't work very well, and honestly, I had to put my mouth right on the damn thing, which meant I could taste yummy, yummy foam or just shout out my questions.

I chose to shout.

It was fine for a while, but only while crowds were small, with the holidays going on and all that jazz. Now things are picking up, and crowds are back, and I'm spending my Wednesdays nursing my voice back to health, a process that lately has been taking days.

This is cutting into my karaoke time. Although it has been suggested that I start doing Tom Waits songs. In my experience, they're pretty hard to come by in karaoke bars.

Right now the solution is Sugar-Free Halls and Lemon tea. And, because I'm tired and it seems like a good idea, even though I hate to do it, I added a shot or so of single malt sketch. The Assassin (that's the girlfriend's new codename, FYI) likes to baby me with cough drops and lemon tea with rum when I stay over after pub quiz.

Me, I just like it when she babys me.

Anyways, I know I have some readers who are frequent singers, even if only in karaoke bars, and I'm hoping that someone or two or three of you were like me, and spent a lot of your primary and secondary schools in some form of chorus classes, and that you might have a suggestion or remember what they always taught us back then, because I clearly haven't found the right mix.

After all, in high school, we were all about vodka and beer.

Suggestions? Please e-mail or comment. Thanks in advance.

Oh, and I promise to catch up on the 365 thing, too.