The Modernish Father

Yesterday was a crazy weather day around here, or at least it was billed as one by everyone and anyone with a passing familiarity with meteorology. By the end of the day though, none of the doomsday predictions of gopher-sized hail or tornadoes had actually come to fruition (fortunately).

Still, there was plenty of rain, wind, thunder and lightning. And some guy from the Weather Channel was doing live remote shots in front of our local TGI Friday’s. That’s rarely a good sign.

So how did I pass my stormy Saturday? Well, The Wife took the children to the in-laws’ retirement commune for the weekend so it was just me and the furry ones at home. I had a whole bunch of side projects to work on, so I mostly I just sat in front of the computer saving my work every thirty seconds in an attempt to minimize the impact of the inevitable power outages.

That got tiresome after a while (and I was afraid the “CTRL” and “S” keys were going to wear out on my keyboard), so I decided to work on one of those “when I have time” projects that I never seem to have time for – eliminating my compact disc collection.

Not quite 8-tracks, but still…

About a year ago, I looked at the impressive amount of dust on my living room stereo and realized that I didn’t really ever listen to my compact discs any more. In fact, all of my music listening was taking place either in the car (where my satellite radio reigns supreme) or at a computer (where I listen to something streaming online or something that I’ve ripped to mp3). Yet my collection of hundreds of CDs was still sitting there, taking up space and collecting dust.

So I decided to rip all of my CDs into mp3s and get rid of the physical discs. I knew that digitizing my collection would take a while, but due primarily to my own laziness, the vast majority of my library still hasn’t been converted. I took the opportunity to knock about 30 more discs yesterday afternoon.

Now I’ve probably spent thousands upon thousands of dollars buying this music over the past twenty years, but for the most part I think I’ve gotten my money’s worth out of them. I’m not really concerned with reselling the discs for maximum value. I don’t really have the time to hassle with eBay or craigslist foolishness and all the subsequent shipping issues. Plus, I’m just plain lazy.

So I decided to sell all my old discs to a local music store and then use the store credit to buy some used discs which I could in turn rip and build up my library a little before selling them back again. I realize its a cycle of diminishing returns, but I figured it was a good way to get some more music while getting rid of discs that I don’t need anymore.

Selling plastic by the pound

Having a stash of recently ripped discs in my possession and a few hours to spare before the arrival of the alleged-Perfect Storm, I headed down to Hastings and did some trading. They gave me a little more than $240 in store credit, nearly all of which I had spent within thirty minutes on some more music.

Well, actually I used a large chunk of that to buy Series 3 of Doctor Who on DVD and some new headphones. But the rest I used on music. I picked up some stuff from Queen, Genesis, solo Phil Collins, They Might Be Giants, Information Society, Simon and Garfunkel, R.E.M., the Cranberries and Chumbawamba (no, not Tubthumper – they’ve got over two decades of other stuff, you know).

The great thing about not pretending to be cool or hip is that I don’t have to apologize for my taste in music. It’s about 15 years behind the rest of society, so just deal with it. I’m just now getting into some of the stuff that was popular when I was in high school. The brilliance of Green Day was a recent discovery for me. I’ve also started listening to some of bouncy eurodance/house stuff that everybody went crazy for in the late 90s. Once again, no apologies.

So I brought home all of my new stuff and, having the house all to myself, listened to it very, very loudly for the rest of the evening. This caused some consternation for The Dog, but she was already all worked up over the rumbling thunder. And I don’t really care about The Cat.

And now for something completely different…

I was walking past a window at work on Friday when I noticed something you don’t see every day on campus – hundreds of plastic flamingos.

Apparently the horticulture department has a former student who owns a gardening business and takes it upon himself to plant them outside their building around Valentine’s Day each year. Having never spent any time on West Campus as a student, I was totally unaware of this tradition. It’s harmless goofy fun of which I officially approve.

I took a whole bunch of photos, including some of the humorous signs they had posted to thwart would-be flamingo absconders. They also have themed shirts printed up each year, but I wasn’t able to get a photo of one of those.