Men and Urinals

Why do so many men spit when they pee? I don't understand it. I think it actually makes peeing even more gross. And what about the men that flush BEFORE they pee. I can see if someone has pee block and needs the sound of water to get them going, but then why don't they flush again when they are done. I just don't get it.

Ripping CDs

That's right, tonight is ripping CDs night. I got out all of my Yes CDs and now I am ripping them to my MAC. Soon they will be on my iPod for me to take with me where ever I want. And they all fit right in my pocket.

Not too long ago it wasn't that easy to take your music with you. The most common way to listen to music was on the radio, AM radio no less. You needed a record player to play your own music (33, 45,78 RPMs), then it was 8-tracks or cassettes, boom boxes, Walkmans, (remember mini-discs?) and finally, where we are today, media players like the iPod and Zune. I have no idea how many times I have purchased the same pieces of music because of these changes. Now I don't even buy CDs, I just buy files off iTunes. I have no idea what I am going to do when I need a new computer or, heaven forbid, my harddrive crashes.

Sure I back things up but still, I've never tried to restore anything before. What if it doesn't work right? Then where will I be?

I think it says something about the disposable mindset we all live in these days. Everything seems so temporary. Nothing appears to be made to last. Things have a lifespan of 3-5 years before it is deemed outdated and in need of an upgrade. Not like in earlier times when people tied to keep things as long as they could. It meant something to have anything for 20 to 30 to 50 years.

People may finally be seeing what's happening, missing some of the long term benefits of keeping things around. Global warming, the Green movement, reuse, recycle, all of these ideas are picking up steam in the world. If you aren't involved in something green then, by God, you just don't care about our planet and life in general. It's amazing. The world view is changing once again. I wonder if it will all align and come to the top with the year 2012. Wouldn't that be bazaar in a cosmic sort of way.

I know, all of this rambling because I starting ripping CDs. Oh how my mind wanders.

The rain must be in Spain.

Here in the southeast we are known for our hot, sunny days (we average around 300 days of sunshine a year). We may not have the highest temperatures in the continental US but it does get warm. It also gets very humid which makes having the heat a little hard to take some times. It feels like you're walking through a steam bath some days.

I'm originally from the northeast where it might get into the 90's for a few days every summer. Here in the southeast, we can be in the 90's for weeks at a time. And when those weeks match up with high humidity and little precipitation, that means trouble.

We have only just gotten out of a 7-8 year draught and I'm starting to see a pattern of no rain that may just put us back into one. Oh, we did get a few drops of rain over night but that barely got the ground wet and that was the first drops of rain we've had in over two weeks. I'm watering the lawn this morning in hopes of keeping it alive. Soon we'll be back on water restrictions and then the watering will have to stop.

The first year we had little rain after moving here I was amazed at how hard the clay soil got. I was used to digging in brown dirt just about any time of the year. In the southeast, if it hasn't rained lately, forget about digging in the latter part of the summer. The clay dirt turns into cement. You need powered equipment to get into the ground. That's why most houses in these parts don't have a basement either. The ground gets crazy hard.

I hope it rains soon. We need a good couple of days of steady rain.