This and That

I'm just in from the day's errands... there's always sumthin' and today it was dropping off laundry at the wash 'n' fold and paying my Yucca Telecom bill.  I enjoy paying my Yucca bill in person as it's always a pleasant experience to interact with those folks, if paying bills can be described as "pleasant."  But this is.

So, some sweet young thang and I were leaving Yucca's premises at the same time so I held the door for her and was graced with a dazzling smile and a "Thaaank Yew!"  (Aside:  we have THE most pleasing of regional accents in this part o' the world, with the possible exception of Jawja.)  Which made me think back to a couple of occasions in SFO when I held the door for a woman and was graced (heh) with a snotty "I can do it MYSELF!"  Well, screw you too, Madam.  This is just another example of why life in a small town in rural New Mexico is better than livin' in The Big City.  But I DO wish we had a Starbucks.

Apropos o' laundry... I did a quick inventory of the 501 bench stock and was chagrined to see we have five pairs of 29x30 501s and two pairs of 28x30 501s, NONE of which I can fit into any longer.  ALL our 30x30/32 501s are either on my skinny ass or in the laundry, as we speak.  Long-time Gentle Readers know I lost a lot of weight during my two-year "Adventures in Modern Dentistry" odyssey (my appellation for getting five dental implants and all the associated surgeries, yadda, yadda) which necessitated the replacement of most of my wardrobe, especially in the 501 area.  Now we have to go through all that krep AGAIN, since the "Buck Pennington Weight-Gain-On-Two-Beers-A-Day" diet (pat pending) has been wildly successful.  Good Will will love me later this month.

And then there's this from the in-box:

Hey, it's Tim from Pandora - 

I'm writing to wish you a very Happy New Year from all of us here at Pandora! And what a year it was...
First, a heartfelt thanks to all of you for continuing to be such engaged listeners and such wonderful evangelists. In 2010 we more than doubled our audience to over 75 million people! And that was mostly thanks to continued word of mouth. For that we are deeply appreciative. 

As always, interacting with listeners continues to be our greatest joy, and greatest source of feedback. You now send us over 25,000 emails every month. What an incredible fountain of information, constructive feedback, and validation that continues to be... and those thumbs! This year alone you thumbed over 3 billion songs (mostly thumbs-up... phew!).

Getting your stations right continues to be our obsession - and a work in progress. It's a (wonderfully) hard problem and something we continue to work on every day. Your feedback is invaluable to that effort. 

[...]

Last, but not least, a shout-out to all the great new music from working artists everywhere. Keep your submissions coming. We're furiously adding music so listeners can keep discovering. The Music Genome Project surpassed 850,000 songs and is now rapidly becoming a more international collection. 

It goes without sayin' I think Pandora is the greatest thing since sliced bread The Tube O' You.  I never thought a radio station would EVER supplant my personal music collection but then Pandora happened.  True story, that.

Lastly... it's almost warm enough... at 50-something degrees and NO wind...  to do an outdoors Happy Hour today.  Srsly.  But the key word is "almost."  I'm thinkin' if we hit our forecast high of 56 tomorrow we most certainly WILL be sitting outside at this time on the morrow.  It's been a while.