A red-light camera
On the way to work today, my car and I were nearly hit by a golf ball. Surprised and distracted I looked toward the golf course that I routinely drive past. In the process I nearly ran the red light and had to slam on my brakes. The intersection was completely clear. Red-light cameras automate the human decision making process when driving. Sometimes that is good and sometimes it isn't. Despite logically knowing that I was not placed in a dangerous situation, I feel that I could have been. Weird situations are bound to arise. Split decisions should be made on the basis of safety and risk and not made on the basis of accruing tickets.
Keith got married, and I discover Audible.
My brother who has been living in Utah for some time is now going to be in Dallas for the summer. He and his wife will be within weekend-visiting distance and I think my wife and I will take full advantage.
My wife has met Keith's bride somewhat briefly. I myself have met her only a touch more.
While my wife was too chicken to fly, I have always enjoyed flying. Until I was 10, my dad was a military man and we traveled the globe. As a kid I found take-offs very fun. Landings were ok, but they lack the fun. As an adult, I find the seats more cramped and the cabin-whine annoying, but it is still my preferred way to travel for trips that are more than a day's drive.
I flew to his wedding in Utah.
When Keith and Leslie made their first trip to Texas, her father recommended
Audible. (It's often too easy to ignore good advice.) Audible is an online audio book club. There are only two real ways to enjoy legal downloaded audiobooks: the
iTunes store and Audible. There are other services, but their selections are limited as most publishers require some form of
Digital copy
Rights
Management commonly referred to as
DRM. Audible and iTunes provide DRM.
iTunes is a great music source that also sells some audiobooks. Audible is an incredible audiobook source that also sells miniscule musical selections.
My wife could spend hundreds at iTunes. I could spend hundreds at Audible. This is the very reason that I joined one of their monthly listener programs. For $15-22/month one can get one to two audio books a month. (It's a little complicated because you get credits, but I haven't found a book yet that required multiple credits.) This means I scale my purchases back from what I want to one audiobook a month. One of the perks of signing up for a 1 year commitment to audible is that they will sell you an iPod for one-hundred dollars cheaper than you can otherwise get one. We decided to take advantage of this and purchase the entry level iPod video for my wife since I already had a Nano.
It is remarkable that my iPod drove the desire to subscribe to audible which drove the desire to take advantage of the iPod savings.
iPods are great products that I would heartily recommend with only a single complaint to Apple: The screens are back-lit but the buttons aren't... At night, skipping a track on a car-docked iPod requires flipping on cabin lights or fairly good memorization of control location. Believe it or not, it's more difficult than it should be. While switching a playlist could result in a dangerous situation, simply skipping a track should be easy and is sometimes an ordeal without back-lit buttons. It's simply too easy at night to hit the center button or the wrong part of the outer ring.
This complaint is somewhat minimal when I consider the number of hours I use it in the daylight and the enjoyment and ease of having over 20 CDs stored into a player that is smaller than a credit card except for being about an 1/8th to a 1/4th of an inch thick instead of being a few millimeters thick.
When I see Keith's wife this summer, I'll be sure to tell her to thank her dad for telling me about his Nano and Audible subscription. And by the way, should you decide that Audible is the way for you to go, please let me know!
Happy Listening!
Cat tales
I cannot claim to be one of those people who dislike animals although I do question the sanity of anyone who has more animals than an eager Catholic has children. Even still though, I have attempted to stifle my wife's yearning for pets. We once "owned" a stray that took to illness, and, without attempting a pun, the situation was very short lived. While the situation was regrettable, the cat had proved friendly and relatively care-free. An outdoor cat had been almost ideal.
My wife itched to get another pet. Her first attempt was a Chihuahua. If there are people who can house-break dogs, it was quickly apparent that we are not among them. Many times we took the puppy outside, and it played gleefully. After variable amounts of time ranging from fifteen minutes to an hour, we would decide that the dog didn't have to go and come inside. At that moment some inexplicable and seemingly hard-wired switch would flip in the little dogs brain; she would immediately charge towards any carpeted area and go. We had a choice. We could attempt to ignore murderous impulses to punish the dog- a seemingly daunting task as each failure at training compounded our frustration, or we could place the Chihuahua up for adoption.
Anticipating failure, we gave the dog to someone with large amounts of dog-training experience. This failure of the pet to be endearing briefly held my wife at bay. The pet had not proved to be easy to love. It filled none of the reasons one gets a pet. If she thought that our "baby" would be occupied and play with the dog, the Chihuahua proved to play too roughly. The baby both loved and feared the dog. The only thing the dog did do was create an immense amount of frustrating, resentful work. The guilt we felt about sending the puppy packing was quickly assuaged immediately by the increased sense of peace in our home. Confident that we, although both of us had grown up with pets, would be a pet-free home, I was satisfied.
If my fears that Shana would want a pet had been allayed, they were mistakenly so. One day while petitioning my wife to take a look at something (I often feel this way, that to ask her to take an interest in something that I am interested in or amused by is a terrible mistake sure to disappoint me), she quickly said, "I have something I want you to look at."If her lack of enjoyment in my curiosities and interests was ever troubling, it was just as unsettling to have her respond with a bold and challenging assertion. She nodded toward the newspaper unfolded to reveal the classified ads.
If I have a fault, it is that I am quite often a passive individual. On occasion Shana takes me out of my comfort zone and places me where I ought to be. Expecting the employment section, my nervousness increased when I realized what she had circled, "Free cats to good homes..."After spending a few moments attempting to gently negotiate a no-cat-household, I found myself beleaguered. I, against one I love, was cornered. Being allergic was immediately countered with an interesting truth; my parents had indeed once had a cat albeit very briefly. The cat had been a beautiful Siamese that my mother had taken off the hands of one of her coworkers. While I liked Hermes, my parents had decided that allergies and Asthma would be unwise companions over time.
Incrementally she won the argument. "Let's just go look" was the first and most terrible petition. Each subsequent event would only culminate in a disastrous chain of events. Each event led to another event in which the denial would become harder and more heartless.
Foolishly acceding I consented to "look." Resigning myself to the hope that she would not see a cat she liked- and thus permit me to work on her over time, I was deluded. With the subtle battle lost, I had already lost their. We arrived at the cat lady's house. It was clean. It didn't smell of cats. Both were terrible blows. If her hygiene and her house's cleanliness had been substandard, my wife, herself, would probably be repulsed and abandon the idea. (Although here slept a small risk- that this situation could backfire as well if she deems the cats need rescuing).
The cat lady seemed nice and we were directed to several cats. If I remember accurately, she described one as mean. This one was clearly out of the question. Next was a cat so ugly it was cute. It had long hair. It was friendly. My wife wanted it. Objecting I said that it had long hair, and as such was more likely to inflame my allergies. I believe this is true about animals in general.
But this was only a part of the equation. The cat was beyond friendly. It was needy. This is the reason that the Chihuahua was doomed in our house. I suggested the prettiest cat of the bunch. The cat had short hair and was friendly but not excessively so. We agreed to return with Wal-mart supplies including a pet carrier. It was a concession, but it was also a victory.
Returning home with a kitty that clearly objected to being in a carrier, we found our daughter elated. This excitement has slowly dwindled but never died out. The best description would be to say that she annoys the cat. The line between cruel and annoying is one that she manages blur. Initially we tried to teach her to be gentle, but it has slowly progressed to "Leave the cat ALONE!" The other common refrains are "be nice" and "be gentle." Recently she attempted to sit on the cat. The cat endures the torture with an unbelievable amount of tolerance.
All cats must be named and my wife immediately disliked the original christening. My wife and I have a daunting inability to agree on names. The cat is female, so "Ron" for Ronald Reagan is out. Shana has already claimed the name "Reagan" for any girl we might have in the future. For some reason I really wanted to have a Republican cat. Reagan was also called Dutch and he played the "Gipper," but Gipper never left my mouth. Dutch... Dutchess... Duchess.
I would have spelled it incorrectly to credit Reagan. My wife would spell it correctly. Given that we both know what spawned the name, we spelled it properly. A cat, given such a proper and refined name, would usually inspire a spoiled and fluffed feline starring in a cat food commercial. Duchess is, however, a bundle of random energy often suddenly leaping into motion and moving at lightning speed. She is agile but not refined. She is however quite content to occasionally sit in your lap and rest. She is entertaining.
The lady from whom we acquired the cat said the cat was a rare and sought after breed. Duchess is a "Mongolian Leopard Cat," or, as the veterinarian says, she is a standard American Short Hair. I'm still debating on whether the cat lady was out of her mind or such a cat lover that she would lie to deliver the cat a good home. My wife is confident that the lady is out of her mind.
The cat lady informed us prior to getting the cat that she would call us in two weeks to check up the cat. This sounded obsessive but ok. When we missed her call the next day, we noted the number and decided to no answer. It has now been in the neighborhood of three weeks, and we've already had the cat "fixed," so it seems fair to say that we're keeping the cat. If allergies prove torrential, we'll see if Mollo wants to make a Trip to east Texas to pick up her new pet. ;-)
Allergy Season
I arrived today at work with a headache. More precisely on the way to work I at one point realized that my head hurt. I took two, generic Aleve.
30 minutes later starting to feel a medicated fog, I'm still aware of the pain. Typically Aleve works quickly and effectively, although it often generates a disconnect with more than pain. It creates a desire to sleep. I sincere believe that what Aleve does is not alleviate pain but assuage all senses.
At any rate, every spring I love the weather and hate the headaches, sniffles, and sneezes. Indeed, allergies trouble me beyond the normal individual. Athsma symptoms become more common, and my entire body seems to suffer more.
The fall has similar weather and I think I prefer it; fewer allergens...
Out of Shana's parents house.
I just realized that I never mentioned that we are out of Shana's parents house and back into our own house. I need to post some pictures and I also have a story or two to tell about a cat...
A man and electronics.
Ok, I admit it. Owing to certain male genetics, I love electronics. This lifelong passion however has forced me to realize something: Women love electronics too.
Specifically my wife loves electronics. More specifically, she does not love them in the way that some women and seemingly all men love them. She loves the moment that she gets to tell friends and acquaintances alike that I am obsessed. "I'm going to get," she remarks, "one of those handheld click counters to see how many times in a day he says 'receiver'."
I've considered actually buying her one off eBay- another obsession. The counters are easily found by "handheld tally", but since I've told her that I'm going to avoid spending money on eBay, I'll make is short and sweet: Less than five.
Ok, ok, I'll concede... That if we were to include the times that I thought about electronics, including the word receiver, it would be an arduous task.
When selecting our new receiver, I spent atleast a month wavering between products always looking for the absolute best deal. I have a partial preference for brands that were sold under the "Home Entertainment" franchise before it was swallowed in the Tweeter Corporation. As such, I always look at Sony, Pioneer, Denon, and Yamaha. I'm aware enough to know names better than these, but when my wife heard that I wanted to buy "nice" models from their respective lines, I knew instantly that higher prices were out of the question.
When I first met my wife's brother, he felt slighted when I admitted I knew little about the Onkyo brand. This admission was nothing more or less. He knew that I had worked at Home Entertainment before. He interpreted that the brand was unworthy of the store which isn't the case. The real secret around Houston wasn't Home Entertainment (or Tweeter), it was "The Home Theater" store on Westhiemer. There one could dream and even buy with an extremely and generously endowed wallet. Home Entertainment made Circuit City feel like Wal-Mart. Oddly enough the Home Theater store doesn't make the feel of any other chain seem like a bargain basement clearance center or diminish them at all. It is Disney World for geeks, nerds, and technophiles--well audiophiles at least. You'll still need to shop Fry's electronics for your other technophile dreams.
So when my wife claims I'm obsessed, I know it's true even if I might pretend it isn't.
