So in about seven hours

My son starts eighth grade today. We transferred him to a new school that focuses on students with autism and special needs. Middle school has been tough. The communication from his teacher was poor, despite our efforts to get information about him. When your son is non-verbal, he cannot really tell you how his day was, and we rarely got news. There were other factors in out decision also. A decision both I and his Mother felt had to be done.

So the transitions for the next few weeks will once again be challenging, probably. There is no bus service so one of us will be dropping him off and picking him up, every day.

I got a short tour of the school on Monday, his Mother went to the open house yesterday and met his new teacher - as did he. I was at a library convention I had previously committed to. I'll pick him up later, and see how traffic is before 4PM in the northern part of Columbus.

The New Next Thing

After a few tries I received an invite to Spotify, the new internet music streaming site that all the kids are into. Spotify has been very popular in Europe for the past couple of years and finally launched in the United States a couple of days ago.

My first impression is that it's very similar to your iTunes, but it's like looking at everyone's iTunes. At once. There is a huge amount of songs available, but not everything is. No Beatles or Led Zeppelin to name a couple. But you probably own or have access to those already, right?

Been putting together a playlist. Goofing around, and have been waiting a couple of minutes for an ad to end so the next song can play. Obviously there are limits for the free user, but if you pay you eliminate the advertising and have access to a few more features, like offline access. It is very easy to use. I do not mind the ads, but when they do not play, and there is silence that does not end (which is happening as I write this), it makes me go away from the cloud. Hopefully this glitch will go away.

Is it going to blow everyone's mind? Is it a cult like TurntableFM? Or is it another application that will get lost as so many new ways to listen to music are invented every hour it seems. This one I think has a shot to rise above the noise.

A Vegetable I like

Gardening is completely new to me, and I believe, to my Scottish Wife. She's grown things from seeds before, not me. I kill colonies of Sea Monkeys. Pole beans though, are a childhood memory, one of the few good ones. Our neighbor grew them along the fence between our houses and what came though to our side we'd eat off the vine. Delicious!

I cleared out most of the space in the yard, she put the seeds down and the tepee trellises. I added the larger poles and the wood trellis. If all goes wrong, it's an experiment.

So we're watching the vine grow. I swear it grew about six inches yesterday. It's stretching from pole to pole. One vine was growing out behind the fence, on the ground. They're doing what they should, but it's hard to tame them!




Did some weeding around it, tried to put the vines where they're going up instead of across - we'll see what happens.

When do the beans start showing up?

Tried to upload a couple of pictures but the ones I took off the iPod, Blogger would not upload. First world problem.

I was able to upload the picture about seven hours after posting.