Author: garyjlittle_gd13bd

Erin made and flipped her own pancake for the first time.

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After working in the yard all morning we went up to Hillsborough to see the garden sculpture exhibition . We very nearly purchased one called ‘Quantum Dog’… still deliberating about it… might get a kayak instead. Who knows? We put some photo’s on flickr. After we met Josh and Jamie for a few beers in Carrboro. The Kentuky Derby was on TV.. but I think we ended up watching the wrong race.

Note to self. Horse racing is pretty boring unless you have money on it.

So I’m sitting in my kitchen deleting emails – as you do, when the phone rings. At the other end of the line is an earnest man asking me to contribute to ‘dogs against drugs’. As you can imagine, I thought it was someone taking the piss, but no – they were really cold calling, asking for a 100% tax deductible donation to what turns out to be a program where police officers take drug sniffing dogs to schools, and pitch the little buggers on the danger of ingesting unknown chemicals sold by shady geezers.

It all sounds very worthy, but I’m not sure I can take seriously anyone who opens their pitch with ‘would you like to donate to dogs against drugs’.

In Borders (the book shop) I noticed that they had one of those central stands full of Vinyl records. There was an odd selection, I can remember seeing the new Radiohead album (or was it Coldplay, I can never really remember which is which) and bizarrely the ‘Violator’ by Depeche Mode. Anyhow I realised what a genius idea it is for record companies start pushing vinyl records.

• It’s easy to convince customers via nostalgia that vinyl sounds better than CD, and so they should pay a premium price.(*)
• It’s a real pain in the arse to copy a vinyl record and share it with your friends.

(*)The records were prices at around $24 whilst CD’s are more like $15. In terms of fidelity, I think that a properly setup vinyl HiFi probably is superior to CD, but for the layman I still reckon CD’s are easier to get a decent sound from.

Sometimes I get confused; when I read IOW. Is it ‘Isle Of Wight’ or ‘In Other Words’? To me it will always be ‘Isle of Wight’ so much so that when it doesn’t make sense I have to stop reading and pause. It’s very annoying.

This weekend we went to the local theme park, it was just over 2 and a half hours away, but that’s pretty local to most Americans, except probably New Yorkers who seem to be a bit like Londoners who generally think, that ‘The West Country’ is whatever comes after Hammersmith… but anyway at the park there is what you could probably call a giant swing. There is an enourmous arch, from which a pair of steel cables hang down. A third cable is connected to a pilon, about 150 ft back, and 150 ft high. You each step into an oversized bib, the sort of thing that hang-gliders use (apparently). Anyhow everyone gets hooked together, and then winched up the pilon. Then one of the ‘flyers’ pulls the ripcord and you swoop down.. The scariest part is immediately after the cord is pulled, and before there is any tension in the swing cables. At that point you are in a very short and unexpected freefall before accelerating towards the ground at around 60 mph. We have a video on youtube here

So, we decided against buying the ‘giant shed’ for one thing I think the sellers have an unrealistic expectation of the price (since obviously I am an expert in these matters) any how we have made an offer on this place (below) and have had that offer accepted. I was there this morning with the house inspectors, and there were only a few very minor issues. Next up is the air-conditioning guy and then finally Mr. Termite. I haven’t heard anything bad from the mortgage broker so I am assuming all is well there.