I can’t think of anything witty to put here, so I’ll just start by summarizing this past weekend.
Elise worked for us again on Friday. We left the office around 5:30 and headed home. After she watched a little TV and I ripped a few more CDs, we decide to catch as much of the nice weather as we could on the trusty Shadow. Elise grabbed the disposal camera and a couple rolls of film and we took them to HEB to get developed. We came home and returned to our respected zones and continued as we were.
I’ve recently switched to the full version of Musicmatch Jukebox 7.5 for my digital audio needs. I was a Winamp guy, then I started using Microsoft’s Media Player 8 when I switched to XP. Now I’m in front of Musicmatch a lot. I think I’ve increased our MP3 collection by approximately 9GB. Come tomorrow, I’m fairly certain I’m going to have to network Elise’s computer for more storage space. Anyway – I spent Friday night ripping a very, very small fraction of our CD collection.
I woke up at 7-something on Saturday morning. I came into the office and made sure all of our tax information was together and organized. I goofed around on the computer for a while and then woke Elise up. We got to Jackson Hewitt just after they had opened their doors and we were the first ones in to get our taxes done. I really thought we would have to wait in line. It took a little over two hours to get our taxes done because tax-doer-person-man couldn’t type.
We stopped for a late breakfast at the taco/donut spot across the street from our apartment. We got home and I ripped more CDs. Elise went to Target to buy a gift for Andrea Karotkin’s baby shower.
Elise came home from Target to find me ripping CDs. Elise showered and got ready for the baby shower. I ripped CDs. Elise went to the baby shower. I ripped CDs. While Elise was still at the baby shower, I took a nap (CD still ripping on the computer), got up and decided that it was too nice of a day to not take the motorcycle for a ride. I put another CD in the computer to be ripped, threw on the leathers and hit Mopac. Mopac is a lot more fun than I-35. I didn’t really go for a ‘ride’ – I just made an accelerated trip to Fry’s Electronics. I spent a couple hours there, just wishing. Man am I glad we’ve written off credit cards and have learned to curb stuffitis temptations. My real intent was to price portable MP3 players. And in-dash CD/MP3 players. And digital cameras. And PC hardware. And PS2 games. And DVDs. And flatbed scanners. And photo printers. And negative scanners. And RC cars. And 167″ wide/flat/plasma screen, dolby digital 94.2 surround sound TVs with fold out bongo band. But really… I went to check out portable MP3 players.
I’m still walking to work and it would be that much more enjoyable with some tunes. I’d like an MP3 player with a lot of storage space because 1) it’s a longer walk and 2) it would be easier to have a lot of storage space so I can just leave all of my MP3s in the player versus have to remove and upload new songs every day.
I started looking at MP3 players last week. I asked John for an unbiased opinion (D’oh) about the iPod which is made my Apple. He said it’s great. From what I’ve read, it is, but it’s waaaaaaaay too expensive and you can’t replace the battery. This is the case for a lot of the hard-drive MP3 players. So basically after a year or two, your battery won’t hold a charge and you have a $500 paperweight. I sang to myself on the way to work this morning. Looks like it’ll be that way for a while!
Anyway, I got home from Fry’s and Elise told me that we were going to see John and Christine. We stopped at the grocery store on our way and arrived at John and Christine’s around 9:00. John made fajitas – I made some pitiful frozen margaritas – I guess they did the trick though. We ate on the back patio and came inside to watch an episode of Saturday Night Live that was pitiful enough to make my eyelids very heavy.
Elise and I got home around midnight and I showed her how to use Musicmatch. That didn’t last very long as we were both really tired.
I got up around 9 on Sunday morning, showered and cleaned the inside of the Jeep. Elise and I got out of the house around noon and went to Sam’s to buy a kite. We found a cool double-decker winged jobber with flames painted on it. We headed down to Zilker Park and got stuck in traffic. I had no idea that an annual kite festival would be so crowded. We did a little urban off-roading, got a nice little parking spot and walked down to where the action (or lack there of) was. While we were there, I think there were two gusts of wind that might have been powerful enough to knock over a tissue standing upright. I carefully constructed our kite in hopes that we would be able to fly it. Elise and I both attempted to get the thing in the air but failed, as did everyone else with their kites. Instead, my wife and I just sat there in the grass, watch people and talked about everything and nothing. That was just as good as flying a kite.
We got home a little shy of 5:00 and made a big pot of red beans, rice and sausage. Since we hadn’t been spending much money, we treated ourselves to a couple movie rentals and some ice cream. We rented Panic Room and My Big Fat Greek Wedding. I liked the former, despite what I had heard about it. MBFGW was… ehhh – I guess it was okay.
So, that was our weekend. The weather has been getting nicer… we’re excited about getting out and doing things. “I’m sick of this cold weather” says my wife from the Midwest.
Okay, all of this writing is digging into my CD ripping time.
