Monday Meanderings - Aug 3

I mostly listen to Classic Rock in the car, and Pink Floyd is certainly part of that genre. But compared to the entire body of work for Rock in the 70's and early 80's how often should a Pink Floyd song show up on the rotation? Not that often right? Unless Mom gets in the car. If Mom and I start out somewhere it is not a question of if Pink Floyd will show up - it's which PF song will play. I can understand on XM - I mean they do broadcast from satellites and everybody knows that the government is secretly spying on us with satellites and Google Earth and the like... but this has been going on since back when a local station played classic rock. Mom gets in, turn it up. It's gonna be Pink Floyd.

The Austin streets are such an interesting part of the weirdness that marks this city. Coming home the other day I stopped at an intersection and the driver of the car next to me jumped out of his car, ran around to the passenger side front window and then ran back to his seat with his cell phone in his hand. I'm guessing that it was on the roof when he started, slid down to the windshield washer well when he stopped, and he got lucky.

At the very next stop, the door of the car in front of me suddenly opened and a back-pack came flying out onto the street. Then an angry man jumped out, grabbed the back-pack and started off on foot. The people in the car yelled something at him, but he didn't look back. Keep Austin weird, Dude!

After commenting about how many water bottles were used and tossed (literally) in the Tour de France, we saw a few interesting water bottle incidents. In the first, reporters were interviewing Lance just before his individual time trial and he was hydrating like crazy during the interview. When he finished one bottle he tossed it into the roped-off spectator area and you expected fists to be thrown in the mad scramble for that bottle.

On another occasion, he was passing through one of the many spots along the Tour where the spectators were pressed in WAY TOO CLOSE, and he simply handed an empty bottle to one of the loonies running alongside him; the guy was so startled it looked like he was going to tumble head-over-heels for a moment. Later, out in the countryside, another rider took careful aim, launched an empty - and scored a direct hit in the back of an open hatch-back auto parked beside the road. I hope it was really empty.

Barbara says - Well, before I finished it, I was calling it Book Without End, rather than World Without End, but I did finish it. If someone asked if I liked it, I think I'd say, "No", but I did finish it and I've been known to stop in the middle, especially with a book club book. I did decide a couple of things about life in the 1300s: 1) I wouldn't have wanted to live then, and 2) I especially wouldn't have wanted to be a woman who lived then.

Another he said/she said story --

Background: He (and she) have realized that she has a funny sound that she makes without really recognizing she's making it, and he has been bringing this to her attention when she does it by repeating it. Thus, this occurred:

She - hmmm, hmmm.

He - humm, hmmm.

She - Well, at least I know where I'm going.

He - But you go weird ways.

She - I go ways you think are weird, because I think it's a better way to go. You go weird ways because you have no idea where you're going.

He - Hummm.