Day 1111

I made another trip to the storage warehouse this afternoon. Since I had already dealt with the vinyl albums, I decided to tackle the cassette tapes today. Since tape cassettes are so small, I was surprised to fill an entire packing box with the things. Some tapes were music I used to play in the car when I commuted between Seattle and Portland. Other tapes were samples of radio commercials I'd written and produced over the years. There were a lot of tapes.

The record industry has quite a racket going. They've somehow managed to con us into buying the same songs over and over again on different media. I've purchased vinyl albums, only to purchase the same thing again, first on cassette tape, then on a CD, and finally as an iTunes download. What will they think of next?

As I've been packing my music away, it has struck me that there hasn't been a lot of really memorable music in the past ten or fifteen years. The old albums I was packing away are still being played on the radio today. Actually, they're played everywhere from iPods to elevators. As I was watching the Kennedy Center Honors on TV the other day, I was mesmerized at the audience reaction to Nancy and Ann Wilson as they sang "Stairway to Heaven" during the tribute to Led Zeppelin. Everyone knew that song by heart and still loved it after all these years. Can you think of a similar reaction to anything you've heard recently? Probably not. Like it or not, the music that defined my generation, still defines music.

On the way back from the storage warehouse, I stopped by Home Depot to see if they had any less expensive floor lamps. They did. Although the lamps I looked at were dirt cheap, it only took a few seconds to see why. The pole lamps I looked at in the design studio the other day were fabricated from solid rods of stainless steel. The Home Depot poles were all constructed out of three foot sections of cheap aluminum that you had to assemble yourself. The lamps looked like they were made from old tent poles. The reason some floor lamps are $24 and others are $2400 is the same reason that a Lamborghini is not a Ford Focus. You get what you pay for. Too bad I can't afford either a Lamborghini or a fancy designer pole lamp.

The dogs don't worry about such things. For them, the best things in life are free. They certainly enjoyed their excursion to the dog park today. The weather was cold and brisk and it put all the dogs in the park in a frisky mood. Dash was exceptionally playful today and he even managed to get Dot to run with him for a while.

You'd think tomorrow would be a holiday, since Christmas Eve was a holiday last Monday. Apparently it's a work day though. Janet's working. Most of my clients are working. I'll probably be working as well.

Penny is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day