3 posts tagged “ice”

Led Zeppelin will finally offer their music online starting next month.   Of the music you buy, about how much of it do you download and how much do you buy on physical formats (CDs, vinyl, etc.)?

100% physical graffiti.

I'm not opposed to digi, I just haven't done it, ever, for purchased music.

With a physical album, you can put it on, turn down the lights for the evening, fill a tumbler with your choice of spirit, recline in a comfortable chair with a blanket over your legs, and lazily flip through the liner notes and melt away.

I've just never found an elegant way to do that with digi music.

My head hurt and I felt nauseous.

So I shoveled the snow off the driveway and front steps.

It only makes sense if you're me and you're where I am.

But while I was out there, steam billowing up through the neck of my coat, I was randomized by my mind.

I wonder if my kids, or their kids will hang out with kids, or their kids, from the current zones of conflict?

Specifically not immigrants and assimilants to this country or the West in general (and who decided we were the "West" anyway?  West of what?  I didn't get a vote), but current citizens of places that are now the hot-spots in the news who travel here (or my kids travel there).

See, here's the history behind the randomization:

Both of my grandfathers were in World War Two.

One grandfather's ship was sunk at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii by the Japanese.

The other grandfather was riding on a tank in France when it was blown up by the Germans.

They both survived the war, and carried on with their lives, hence my bloodline.

They both carried shrapnel from their respective wartime injuries to their passing in their 80's.

By the time I was in highschool I had a friend who was a German exchange student.

Early in college I befriended two Japanese students enrolled in a college broadcasting program I was also taking.

It occured to me, even back then in the haze of youth, that it was conceivable that all of our grandfathers had been shooting at each other, and I was only able to be friends with them because small bits of fiery hot metal were a few inches this side or that of my grandfathers' various vital organs.

Then I reached the bottom of the drive, no longer nauseous, if a bit sweaty, and walked back inside hoping it all sorts itself out better the next time around.

Maybe it's the brisk, clear air...

Or maybe I'm just frozen numb.

Our first four winters in the Midwest were frigid.

And snowy, very, very, snowy; except when it was too cold to snow.

Everybody told us that it usually wasn't that bad.

We believed them the first year on blind trust.

The second year they told us that we began to grow suspicious.

The third year they told us that we began to let on that we knew they were full of shit and they could stop it anytime they wished, thank you.

The fourth winter we told them that it was just cruel, that we were now in on the joke, and seriously, please stop it, we now know what to expect.

We have four seasons alright,
1) Almost Winter
2) Winter
3) Still Winter
4) Road Construction

I huddled inside, as if withstanding a siege.

Except then this year happens.

The high today was 54 degrees.  In mid-freaking-December, 54 degrees!

Every other year, I don't remember it being above freezing, for the high, from early November until late March.

If this is what the weather really is like, most of the time, yeah, then this isn't so bad.

Our perceived realities are relative to our own diverse experience.

And now this place could grow on me.

I like the vast library.  I love the expansive gym.  I adore the two jacuzzi pools within the gym, and the waterslides, and the leisure pool, the lap-pool, and the sanity-saving child-center. 

The changing colors of the trees are fantastic.

The diversity of wildlife grazing through our backyard is magnificent.

And now that I'm getting okay with staying here, the wife is getting more and more appealing offers to relocate.

Ain't that just the way of it?  I'd like to think the lesson learned is to embrace and appreciate a place earlier on, but this place just really wasn't loveable those first four winters and I don't really know what I'd do differently.