Stereo and Hats

Well the Magnavox stereo is in the house. Here's some lovely photos from my camera phone....

Beauty Shot:

The turn table:

Me with one of my new woven fedoras:

Hedges, Clouds, Chores

I had the day off, so I am putting in a few blog entries.

I'm still waiting for my Royal Empresses to do anything. Four of my six fruit trees have leaves, and I am waiting for two to leaf out. My hedges in the flowerbed have gone nuts along with the festuca grass (which is going to seed) and I am gonna need to trim them this weekend! We're having tornado warnings and t-storms all day today so I am sure the plants will love the rain.

I am waiting to get out and go to the store to pick up some toiletries, a case of diet coke, some yogurt, and basic groceries. It'll be this evening most likely since I am waiting for my new hats to show up.

I took my original hat boxes, and put my fall/winter fedoras away. I scrubbed and washed the trash cans and waste baskets from around the house, and vacuumed. Now it's time to go fold and put away the laundry!

Oh, gasoline, it's $3.45 a gallon right now. I rode my bike once this week, and am going to be watching the weather from now on because I need to ride it as it costs me $1.00 to $1.50 roundtrip depending on whether it's the Buell or the Vulcan... and to drive it's $3.45 now for the trip roundtrip in the truck.

Science Fiction Podcasts

I've been listening to Escape Pod at escapepod.org now for maybe a month and a half? two months? I donno. Steve Ely puts on a fine production, and the other Escape Artists sites: pseudopod.org (horror), and podcastle.org (fantasy) are good as well. They offer basically short stories, that you can listen to, movie reviews, etc... The player is flash based, and easy to use. They take monthly and one time donations. Recently though I've seen starshipsofa.com advertised heavily on other sites, like MySpace. I checked it out, and it's also another sci-fi podcast. Where Escape Pod, and it's sister podcasts have a new feel and new look to them starshipsofa looks like older print publications I remember seeing at cons. It has Spider Robinson (love his work), but I can't help but feel it would have been great if they'd collaborated with Steve. I realize that there are splinter groups in fandom, and groups split and politics can prevail at time and everyone wants to be the captain of their ship... but I love Escape Pod, and what Steve and the Escape Artists are doing. I'm gonna try and give starshipsofa a chance, because when I run out of stuff to listen to on Escape Pod I am always looking for more.. but I wish they'd get a flash player because I like listening to podcasts on the page versus using Windows Media Player.

Sniffles

I'm sniffling right now due to the pollen. I mowed the yard - front, back, and behind the fence today. I also edged the driveway and the front walking path. It was sprinkling as I was doing it, but it never really rained enough to get things soaked. It's supposed to rain today though. My privet hedges are still growing, flowering out with leaves and my pyrocanthus hedge is covered in tiny white blooms. I'm hoping for good growth out of them and the rose of sharon hedges this year. Four of my six fruit trees have leaves on them. I'm going to try shedded paper mulch around them this next week, we'll see how that goes. I bought $15.00 worth of supplies to fix my rain barrels, new taps (again), PVC threaded adapters to go inside, PVC cement, and construction adhesive. I'm got one completely new barrel, and I need to turn it into one, and then fix one of the barrels using plastic from the one which I am going to retire. I'm gonna cut the bottom out, and cut it into two pieces and use them as composters.

I got my grandmother's old Magnavox stereo yesterday. Sitting on the turn table was a 45, Chicago. :-) Talk about taking me back. I used to love Chicago. The music always seemed dreamy and romantic to me. Songs about love, love lost, those kinds of things. I took the back off of the stereo, vaccumed it out, dusted it, and then wiped the whole thing down with Honda Spray Cleaner and Polish (it's what I had on hand). I then wiped the tubes off, cleaned the electrics inside, and plugged it in. It worked like a charm. It has such a rich sound since it has tubes, and I never realized the speakers inside were so BIG. I reinstalled the back and the sound was even warmer. It looks almost like new, except it's from an era 50 years in the past. It picked up KLove really well. I'll need help hauling it into the house, and I've got a spot set aside for it where I can plug it in and listen to it. It'll give me a place to put all my old records. The only thing I need for it to be perfect is I need to get a needle for the stylus and wipe it down with some furniture polish. I'll post a photo when I get it in the house.