I'm always a little late to the party.

Always.

This Christmas, I have discovered a love for iTunes.  Hubs had fiddled with it a bit before, but since we were running with a computer potentially older than the dinosaurs, it just didn't process things well.  I mean, a few windows could be toggled at a time, but there were delays.  Big delays.

Back to this past Christmas.  Hubs bought me a lovely pile of mostly gently used music and I have replaced my Pinterest pin feeds of You Tube in the CDs of my choice with the actual CDs.  I have no CD player in the bedroom, but Hubs has one with his clock.  He's always weird when I use it, because I don't put his CD away where I don't know where it goes and it is always a rather large hassle.  I have found that I could easily plunk the CD into the computer, load it into iTunes and listen to 13 PJ CDs on random rotation and life is good!

Laundry is folded.

E-mails are read.

Things are straightened.

The world is a good place.

Like I said, I'm generally a little late to the party, but I love that I can take the physical CDs that we buy, drop them in, pull up the album art and the world is a good sounding place.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have some laundry to fold and PJ to listen to.  :)

Don't buy Pantera at Walmart.

Hubs and I got on to talking about CDs this evening.  As we were watching PJ 20 on VH1, I was telling her that Hubs thinks that Vitalogy was the first CD I ever purchased for myself.

"I think it is the only CD you have purchased for yourself."

"Nah!  It's probably the only NEW CD.  Oh wait!  I have Natalie Imbruglia!  I got that one new.  I only got that new because I had to fight Walmart over you being dumb enough to buy a Pantera CD there."

You see, many years ago-- years well prior to K's existence-- Hubs got some wild hair and decided to purchase a Pantera CD at Walmart.  Now you see, I love myself some Pantera but was a bit shocked that he bought Pantera there.  The CD listed that it was "edited."  Hubs thought it was shortened in some way.  

It wasn't shortened.  It was the absolute worst censoring we've ever heard.  They left blank spots where all of the "bad words" were.  

Blank spots.  

They (not Walmart) didn't even try.  They didn't try to blend them in like they are on the radio.  I told Hubs that we would take it back.  I went through several managers until I got to the store manager who agreed to return the CD, though it was open, for the exact same CD.

"Sir.  I agree that perhaps my adult husband should not purchase music like Pantera here.  I understand that your CD was labeled 'edited' but if you look 'edited' up in the dictionary, I believe that you will find that it would mean shortened.  To edit something like a CD is not suggesting that there are huge blank spots throughout where any curse word would be."

I swore to him that if he would return that CD for something that was not edited, we would never buy music from Walmart again.  He agreed and we have never ever purchased music from Walmart again.

And we won't.  Frankly, we try not to really patronize the Wal anyhow.  

But there you go.  Lesson learned.  If you need for some heavy metal with questionable lyrics, Walmart is not the place to purchase your music.  

This PSA brought to you by the Bailey's Leaf family.  

The time that I ate a dumpster cookie from a homeless man.

We went up to Burke Lakefront Airport with a borrowed spotting scope to look at Snowy Owls.  This is the first time that K and I have ever seen any, and I believe that it is the same for Hubs.  It was delightful.  We were able to find one near a runway, sitting in wait for a vole or another critter to cross so that it might have some lunch.  After Burke, we decided to visit the Cleveland Museum of Art.  We visit there a few times a year and generally stop by the same things.  Today as we were going on our general roam through the contemporary art, Hubs said, "Hey K, ask Mom about that picnic that I took her on."

I laughed out loud.

"What Mom?"

"Well, Dad decided to take me on a romantic picnic here when we were dating.  He packed up a lunch and took me to the lagoon out back.  He pulled everything out and all was going well until Dad decided to pull out a map.  Every homeless person within a 10 block radius popped up out of the bushes, but one got to us first.  He got on to talking and telling us about the area.  He talked for a good 10 minutes, then started in about his need for money.  I offered no money, but I did offer the apple and the banana that we had.  In exchange, he offered us some cookies.  Dad declined, but I didn't want him to feel bad.  I took the cookie.  I had the intention of pitching it later, but he kept saying that I had to try it.  He explained that he had gotten them from a dumpster after a wedding and that they were good and he wanted me to enjoy one.  It was powder sugar coated and in hindsight, my fear of it being a cocaine-coated cookie was a little far fetched, but I had to eat the cookie."

K surprisingly asked, "You ate the cookie?  A cookie that you knew came from a dumpster?"

Hubs replied with a laugh, "I was surprised that she did, but she did eat the cookie from the dumpster."

"Not only did I eat the cookie from the homeless man who said that he got it from the dumpster (it was in a ziploc bag), but I also prayed for God's protection because I didn't want to die from the cookie because I only ate it because I didn't want to make the man feel bad.  Obviously, I survived."

You'd be glad to know that in those days, I hadn't developed my massive case of germophobia.  It still makes me shake my head.

I ate a dumpster cookie.

I ate a dumpster cookie from a homeless man.

I ate a dumpster cookie from a homeless man who handed it to me and goodness only knows when either one of us cleaned our hands last.  That alone should get me to let up a bit on the germophobia.  We did laugh the rest of the way through the art museum.  We all decided that a blog post was a must.  I can't imagine the google searches I'm going to pop up on.