Multiple 4 AM Heart Attacks

Recently the wife (and I suppose the rest of us in the Dieterman household) have been trying to reestablish pack order.  When McKinney (our 8 month old standard poodle) joined our household there was some jostling for position of course but recently (or maybe for quite some time) Nina has been using what is known as social climbing to try to improve her place in the pack.

I am the alpha male and no one denies this (remember we are talking more about pack order as used by dogs, not by wives).  The dogs all understand that I am in charge.  Nina (our Doberman) goes so far as to look at me after being given a command by someone else.  It is one of those “Really dude, do I have to?” looks.  The wife is an understood 2nd in command.  From there it gets tricky.  The son and daughter should be next in line but Nina is attempting to change that.  Due to this, all dogs have recently lost some privileges (with the exception of Oreo who, as the wife puts it, is really our 3rd child). 

We removed the one chair that Nina is allowed to be on and we have banned McKinney from all furniture.  She had the run of the house when it came to furniture due to her lack of shedding (Nina sheds so she had only the one chair).  We also have given the daughter the job of feeding the dogs and making them do a few tricks before she sets down the bowls.  Both big dogs have also been put back in their crates when we are sleeping at night.

McKinney spent almost all of her nights in her crate normally but one or two nights I allowed her to remain on our bed.  Nina usually gets the run of the house and moves back and forth between the chair (she used to be allowed on) and her crate.  That is until around 4 AM.

On almost any night, Nina will arrive (inches from my face mind you) at 4 AM and “announce” that she needs to go outside.  Ignoring her really is not an option as she is quite insistent.  Her barking is like one of those alarm clocks that gets progressively louder the more you ignore it.  No, you cannot ignore her for long.  Sending her to her crate is more akin to hitting the snooze button then turning off the alarm.

In her defense, she really does need to go outside.  Her gastrointestinal clock is set for the early AM and it is quite consistent.  She is out and back in usually in less than 5 minutes and the I go back to bed.  The wife claims not to hear Nina (I have my suspicions about this) so it is always I that has his sleep interrupted.  Due to this, I have not had a straight 8 hours of sleep on a regular basis for a long, long time.

When I wake up at 4 AM (or rather when I am woken up), I usually use the restroom myself and also get a drink of water.  I have 5 minutes to kill while Nina is outside taking care of her business and since I do this almost every night I have fallen into a little bit of a routine myself.  First, I head toward the kitchen (where the back door is located) and flip on a light.  Usually I flip on the light over the stove as it produces the smallest amount of light and I do not want to wake the kids.  Next I let out Nina and then I get a drink of water from the kitchen sink.  I then head back into our bedroom and into the master bathroom that is connected to our bedroom.  I am in there for a minute and then I head out and then I have a heart attack.  Let me explain, but first let me show you this picture.

Sorry for the poor quality.  The lighting is not very good in our bedroom and this was taken with my cell phone.  For our needs though it will suffice.  The door on the right is to our bathroom.  To the left (but not in this photo) is the door out of the bedroom.  Now, as I previously mentioned, I first go into the kitchen (to the left of this picture) and turn on a light while letting Nina outside.  I leave that light on while I head to the bathroom (again, the door to the right here).  As I am leaving the bathroom, I turn off the bathroom light.  Now the only light on in the house is in the kitchen and I am walking from darkness into that (small) light.  Please note the globe on the top left of the bookshelf.  It sits about the same height as my head and is (being a globe) of course round.  To my 4 AM eyes (aided by the poor lighting) this appears as a round shadow at the same height of a human head.  My body, night after night, initially interprets this shadowy figure as another human.  This, dear reader, is where my heart gives out every morning.  Morning after morning I interpret this circular shadow the same way, only for a moment mind you, but just long enough to have a heart attack.  After the adrenaline kicks in, my senses come back to me and I see it for what it is (just a harmless globe).  I then go let Nina back into the house and go back to bed.

I do not sleep usually as the adrenaline is still there denying me rest.  Sometimes I get 15 minutes of fitful rest before 6 AM arrives but either way, my real sleeping is done for the night.  Nina has no trouble going back to sleep.  The wife (remember she denies even knowing that Nina wants out or that I take care of this).sleeps on without interruption.  Oreo (who is usually “sharing” my pillow by this time of the night) is mildly interrupted but has no trouble returning to his slumber.  It is only I that is inconvenienced in all of this.

This is why I am excited about the pack reordering exercise that we are going through in the Dieterman household.  Nina in her crate equals more sleep for Jon.  Also, my heart can use a break.

Jon

The Listening Project-Week 21

Well another week has passed by and I was able to get through a few more CDs in my listening project.  I worked a 1/2 day this week on Friday but I was still able to get through 22 CDs and managed to stay on pace for my 20 per week goal.  You can reference this blog entry for details about this project.  Here are the CDs I knocked off of my list this week.

#	Artist	Album	Date	Again?
402	Jacob's Trouble	Jacob's Trouble	12/12/2011	Yes
403	Alanis Morissette	Jagged Little Pill	12/12/2011	Yes
404	Jars Of Clay	Jars Of Clay	12/12/2011	Yes
405	dc Talk	Jesus Freak	12/12/2011	Yes
406	Jocelyn Enriquez	Jocelyn	12/12/2011	Yes
407	John Denver	John Denver's Greatest Hits	12/12/2011	Yes
408	John Michael Montgomery	John Michael Montgomery	12/13/2011	Yes
409	Lyle Lovett	Joshua Judges Ruth	12/13/2011	Yes
410	Bryan Duncan	Joyride	12/13/2011	Yes
411	Roxette	Joyride	12/13/2011	Yes
412	Judson Spence	Judson Spence	12/13/2011	Yes
413	U2	The Joshue Tree	12/14/2011	Yes
414	Various Artists	Jump In Soundtrack	12/14/2011	No
415	Various Artists	Jumping The Highest	12/14/2011	Yes
416	Jennifer Knapp	Kansas	12/14/2011	Yes
417	Kim Boyce	Kim Boyce	12/14/2011	Yes
418	Kim Hill	Kim Hill	12/14/2011	Yes
419	Belly	King	12/15/2011	Yes
420	Delirious?	King of Fools	12/15/2011	Yes
421	Charlie Peacock	Kingdom Come	12/16/2011	Yes
422	Resurrection Band	Lament	12/16/2011	Yes
423	Bryan Duncan	The Last Time I Was Here	12/16/2011	Yes

Here are my thoughts on a few of these CDs that I have listened to over the past week…

• Jars Of Clay “Jars Of Clay”: I have a few more CDs by this band but this is still my favorite.  They do have the last track annoyingly long (27 minutes) with mostly silence but a few small songs scattered throughout.  I think at one time I had converted these into individual tracks but those were no where to be found.  There are several CDs in this project that are like this.  I do allow myself to fast forward past the silence to get to the actual music.
• dc Talk “Jesus Freak”: I recently introduced this band to my son who is a big TobyMac fan.  He was a little disappointed that TobyMac was not featured on every song but he does love the title track.  This was the CD that put this band on the map (and spawned an actual hit song on the radio "- “Between You And Me”).
• John Denver “John Denver’s Greatest Hits”: Don’t judge me.
• Lyle Lovett “Joshua Judges Ruth”: I saw Lyle Lovett (and his Large Band) for the first time when watching Austin City Limits.  Awesome and funny.  Not quite country, not quite big band, hard to fit in a category but very enjoyable.
• Bryan Duncan “Joyride” and “The Last Time I Was Here”: I first heard this singer as the lead singer of Sweet Comfort Band.  Once that band broke up, Bryan went solo and the lead guitarist formed Allies (with the Butterfly Kisses guy as the lead singer).  I have a few of his releases on LP as well.
• U2 “The Joshua Tree”: I messed up in my ordering this week.  When I am going into the office to work, I usually copy the next few CDs onto my mp3 player.  This album should have come after the Lyle Lovett (Joshua Judges Ruth) CD but since it starts with a “The” I missed it when copying over CDs.  I saw U2 on the tour that supported this CD.  Horrible seats in a horrible (for sound) venue but would go again if I had the chance.
• Various Artists “Jump In Soundtrack”: And the YES streak ends here at 60 in a row.  The previous streak was 41.  This CD came in the 54 CD auction that I won a few weeks ago (I think).
• Jennifer Knapp “Kansas”: Think of a Christian Melissa Etheridge only softer.  Good stuff.
• Delirious? “King Of Fools”: I remember buying this used from the local Karma Records.  This is their first studio release (they had 4 live EPs before this – which I own as a 2 CD set).  Very U2-ish / Coldplay-ish (though they predate Coldplay).  Good stuff.
• Charlie Peacock “In The Kingdom”: Probably my least favorite CP CD.  This is his last studio album of all new material (though he has since then released a jazz CD).
• Resurrection Band “Lament”: I had a hard time finding this CD as I only discovered it after it was out of print.  Rez Band has been around since the 70’s and have a ton of releases.  This is their darkest (and my favorite).

I am up to 44.6% complete in the project.  My work is forcing us to take the last week of the year off so I think I will be behind my 20 per week pace when the new year begins.  There might be CDs under the Christmas tree too!

Jon

Ten Thousand Gallons

I am probably slightly off in my count but I think this is my 600th blog.  I have a few older blog posts that don’t really count in my total for reasons that I won’t go into at this time).  It all began in July 2006 with this post.  The first 400 blogs or so were on Xanga. A little over a year ago I switched over to Blogspot full time (I was double posting on both sites for a short time) but the Xanga blogs are still out there.  I began copying them over to this blog site but it was very time consuming and now (due to some changes at the Xanga site) it is even harder to do.  I imagine it would take something like being laid off at work to allow me enough time to migrate them all.  In the end, it is probably the case that only I care.  OK, enough of this, on to blog #600 (ish).

Let me first start with a summary of my water bill for the last 12 months that I lived in Indiana.  I have assembled the data in this easy to follow table for your convenience.

Month	Billed Amount
October 2010	$0.00
November 2010	$0.00
December 2010	$0.00
January 2011	$0.00
February 2011	$0.00
March 2011	$0.00
April 2011	$0.00
May 2011	$0.00
June 2011	$0.00
July 2011	$0.00
August 2011	$0.00
September 2011	$0.00*

(* denotes partial month)

As you many have surmised, I did not pay for water at my home in Indiana.  We were out in the country and we used well water.  Now, there was some expense in paying for the electricity for the pump that brought us water out of the well and into our house but basically the water was free.  This is not the case here in Texas.

For the city of McKinney, the water bill is combined with the sewer and trash / recycle pickup service.  There are a few misc. surcharges thrown in and all in all my first to month’s bills were around $100 each.  This month’s bill is actually higher than my electric and gas bill (they are combined too)!  This sounded odd to me so I studied my water / sewage / trash / recycle bill for a clue.  I was hoping that there would be some indicator as to why the bill was (in my opinion) so very high.

I grabbed my reading glasses (yes, I bought a pair of cheap reading glasses a while back) and looked for a clue.  The only thing that I saw that was intriguing was my meter reading.  For the time span of the bill, our house had used 10 units.  I had no idea what that meant so I called the number on the bill for help.

I was met with the usual “press 1 for this, press 2 for that” prompts but there was not a “press X for help with what a unit is” so I opted for 0 and hoped for the best.  The lady that answered was pleasant enough and explained to me that each unit represented 1,000 gallons of water.  I did the math quickly in my head (I majored in math in college) and came to the conclusion that this meant we had used 10,000 gallons of water in the past month.  To put this amount in perspective, a normal size swimming pool has roughly 20,000 gallons.  This would mean that we would fill 6 swimming pools with our annual water use.  Anyway, 10,000 seemed like a high number so I asked her if that was a normal amount for a family of four.  She indicated that it was on the high end but within the normal range.  Before we concluded our call she gave me a little advice.  She noted that the sewage portion of the bill uses the months of December, January and February as a gauge of sorts.  They figure that part of the water used in the summer months would be for watering the lawn but not so in the winter months.  She indicated that if we conserved water in these coming months, it would help us out going forward with that portion of our bill.  I thanked her for the advice but noted that we were likely going to move in February.

10,000 gallons!  Even now that I have thought about it for a while, it still seems high.  That is 330 gallons per day.  That is about 14 gallons per hour.  This almost a quart of water used every minute!  I started to think about what we do that uses water.  I did find this site that seemed interesting.  After you punch in your daily water use it does a calculation for you.  My inputs returned just over 200 gallons of water so something is not adding up here.  Here is there estimates used when doing the calculations…

• Bath: 50 gallons
• Shower: 2.5 gallons per minute
• Teeth brushing: 1 gallon
• Hands/face washing: 1 gallon
• Face/leg shaving: 1 gallon
• Dishwasher: 20 gallons/load
• Dishwashing by hand: 5 gallons/load
• Clothes washing (machine): : 10 gallons/load
• Toilet flush: 3 gallons
• Glasses of water drunk: 8 oz. per glass (1/16th of a gallon)

The last one seems a little obvious and is a little overkill really.  Does anyone drink so much water that it matters in the overall summation of their water use?  Other than the kids taking longer showers that is necessary, I don’t think we overdo it really in any of the above areas.  I suppose that the sprinklers could add a bit (they are set to go off in the middle of the night twice a week).  At any rate, I think I will have to live with the 10 units that we use.

I did remove the trash / recycle part of the bill and calculated that each gallon of water costs us $0.009 (just less than a penny) so even saving a gallon here or there is not going to give me much of a monetary savings.

Looking back at my first blog, its subject only came up due to water issues at a house we had at the time.  It seems I have not made much progress in 6 years of blogging.

Jon

This Listening Project-Week 20

Well another week has passed by and I was able to get through a few more CDs in my listening project.  I worked a 1/2 day this week on Thursday and lost almost all of my listening time on Wednesday due to tons of meetings at work but I was still able to get through 20 CDs and managed to stay on pace for my 20 per week goal.  You can reference this blog entry for details about this project.  Here are the CDs I knocked off of my list this week.

#	Artist	Album	Date	Again?
382	Pat Benatar	Greatest Hits	12/5/2011	Yes
383	Santana	Greatest Hits	12/5/2011	Yes
384	The Doors	Greatest Hits	12/5/2011	Yes
385	James Taylor	Greatest Hits Volume 2	12/5/2011	Yes
386	Various Artists	Heart & Soul Hallmark	12/5/2011	Yes
387	Various Artists	The History of Jazz Disc 1 - The Early Days	12/6/2011	Yes
388	Various Artists	The History of Jazz Disc 2 - The Big Band Years	12/6/2011	Yes
389	Various Artists	The History of Jazz Disc 3 - The Swing Era	12/6/2011	Yes
390	Various Artists	The History of Jazz Disc 4 - The Be-Bop Revolution	12/6/2011	Yes
391	James Taylor	Hourglass	12/7/2011	Yes
392	Idle Cure	Inside Out	12/7/2011	Yes
393	Nate Sallie	Inside Out	12/7/2011	Yes
394	White Heart	Inside	12/8/2011	Yes
395	All-Star United	International Anthems For The Human Race	12/8/2011	Yes
396	Gloria Estefen	Into the Light	12/8/2011	Yes
397	Dakota Motor Co.	Into the Son	12/8/2011	Yes
398	The Call	Into the Woods	12/9/2011	Yes
399	Various Artists	Isaiah 53:5 (A Tribute To Stryper)	12/9/2011	Yes
400	The Who	It's Hard	12/9/2011	Yes
401	Reba McEntire	It's Your Call	12/9/2011	Yes

Here are my thoughts on a few of these CDs that I have listened to over the past week…

• Pat Benatar “Greatest Hits”: The week began with 4 straight Greatest Hits CDs.  I think I could have done with less than 20 songs on this one.
• Santana “Greatest Hits”: I had never heard of any of these songs on this early best of from Santana.
• Various Artists “The History of Jazz (4 Disc set)”: These almost caused The Listening Project to stop.  This 100 song set is over 4 hours in length and came in the 54 CD eBay auction that I won a while back.  At one point during this marathon session on Tuesday I remember thinking that Louie Armstrong probably died at the hands of a concert goer that was fed up with his scat singing.
• Idle Cure “Inside Out”: Idle Cure was one of the first artists on a Christian record label to attempt arena rock.  Their later releases relied heavily on Bob Carlisle (of Butterfly Kisses fame) to sing the chorus.  I imagine they were not that great to see in concert.
• The Call “Into the Woods”: I was pumped when this was finally released on CD.  One of the few CDs I paid (near) full price for as I recall.
• Various Artists “Isaiah 53:5 (A Tribute To Stryper)”: I gave this a YES only due to Blood N Fire’s cover of Loving You.  The rest of the songs are truly forgettable.

So I kept pace this week getting in my 20 CDs.  I also did not purchase any CDs.  I am up to 42.3% complete in the project.

Jon

The Dad’s Table

Sunday was a busy day.  Normally I like to keep things simple on Sundays.  We get up and get ready for church, go to church, then return home and pretty much just relax for the rest of the day.  Getting in a nap is a bonus.

This past Sunday though was a bit different.  Our (former) neighbors invited us to pose for some photos that we might be able to use for a Christmas card photo.  The husband works for a company that sells, well, OK, I cannot really describe what exactly he or his company does but there is a showroom of the things that they sell and they are perfect for posing in front of for pictures.  I snapped a few pics with my new cell phone…

There were tons of Christmas trees.  Short ones, tall ones, skinny ones, pink ones, blue ones, etc.

There were tons of decorations as well.  I could have taken 100 photos probably and still not got them all I think.

Did I mention there were a lot of decorations?  Anyway, we posed for a few photos and then waited on the other families that had joined us there to finish there pictures as well and then we headed back home.

Actually no, we did not head home, we headed toward home but stopped for a very late lunch with the families that joined us for the photos.  There were 3 families and 13 of us all in total (plus one 8 month old infant).

Let me stop here for a moment and let you know that I really hate eating out with a big party.  I always feel like we are inconveniencing the restaurant, the wait staff and probably the other patrons.  I usually let all this ruin it for me and cannot really think of a time that I enjoyed a time out with a large group of people at a restaurant.  My wife just laughs at me but it really is stressful to me.

The largest table this restaurant had only seated 12 and so we had a problem.  There were suggestions of a kid’s table and there were enough older kids to pull this off.  This is one of the reasons I do not like eating with a large group, it takes too long to make a decision.  Then to my surprise a dad (not me) piped up with a suggestion of a dad’s table.  There were 3 dads and if we got our own table then the table of 12 would work just fine for the balance of our party.

I laughed at first at this suggestion.  I mean, come on!  There is no way my wife would go for this (and probably why the thought never entered my mind).  But, the other wives did not balk at the idea immediately and I began to get my hopes up a little.  I was in uncharted territory here but if this thing actually happened I could see it becoming a tradition.  There was a lot at stake here and I waited nervously for it all to play out.

The weak link here was the 3rd dad (not me and not the one who suggested this idea).  This 3rd dad had 3 kids (including the previously mentioned infant).  He was truly the weakest link here and all our dad hopes were riding on his wife’s reaction.  To our joy she conceded and allowed us to find a nearby table for 3.

We had a great time.  We talked about our work, fatherhood, sports (a little) and really had a good time.  The kids did well enough at the big table to allow us to enjoy our appetizer and meals in peace.  I kept a wary eye on the infant and (more importantly) the face of the mother of the infant but she was a trooper.  An hour later we were paying the bill and saying our goodbyes.  I actually enjoyed myself though technically I was not with a large crowd but rather just 2 other guys.

I will leave you with one more photo.  The oldest child of the dad of the infant had these really cute shoes on for her Christmas pictures.

Jon

A Resurrected Blog Type

A while back I used to blog on occasion under the topic “Random Low Quality Pictures”.  The premise would be that I would find something amusing when I was out and about but then forget about it.  Eventually, I would take all the photos off my phone (if the memory card was filling up) and then cherry pick the best ones (or the ones that I remember the reason of why I took the picture.  Through in a pithy comment or two and WHAM, you had a blog.

Eventually I gave up my cell phone but continued on the tradition by using the wife’s phone.  I changed the blog topic to “Random Low Quality Pictures From the Wife’s Cell Phone” but it was essentially the same concept.  After a while (and a van crash that took with it the wife’s cell phone) we were demoted down to a phone that did not have a very easy method for getting the pictures from it to a blog and so I abandoned this type of blog.

As of last week, I now have a cell phone again.  I found my old memory card and it worked with my new phone so I have been snapping random pictures again.  I hesitate to call them low quality since technology has come so far since I first began so I am just going to call this…

Random Pictures From My Phone

Recently my mother and mother-in-law came for a 5 day visit.  I think it was technically 4 days since they arrived Monday afternoon and left Friday afternoon.  One great thing they did was drive down my beloved Buick that I left back in Indiana when we moved down here.  The dogs did not adjust well to them staying with us as their normal routine was interrupted.  Oreo was effected less than McKinney and Nina.  As you can see in these pics, Oreo was happy as long as there was a lap to lay on (from left to right above is my mother, my mother-in-law, and my wife).

Speaking of dogs, our friends from the Austin area were up our way to pick up a new puppy (actually 2 puppies).  I only snapped a pic of one of them (above).  It was a good visit and Oreo seemed happy that he actually was not the smallest dog in the house for a short time.  The puppy above is either Dixie or Blossom (I think it is Dixie).

FUYU for a product name just seems wrong.  We recently bought a Costco membership and I saw this while wandering around.  That is all I got to say about that.

The daughter turned 10 today.  The big 1-0!  We went out for a birthday dinner to her favorite restaurant, Macaroni Grill.  I like that we can draw on the table and some time between the appetizer (some bruschetta for the wife and I) and the main course (fettuccine alfredo for my 10 year old [that does not feel right to say that]) I took the time to draw her a birthday cake.  She is heading down the street to a friend’s house to spend the night and she was thankful for the gift we gave her (Punky Brewster Season 3).

Well that about does it for this entry of Random Photos From My Phone.

Jon

The Listening Project-Week 19

Well another week has passed by and I was able to get through a few more CDs in my listening project.  I worked a 1/2 day this week on Thursday and lost almost all of Tuesday due to circumstances beyond my control but I was still able to get through 16 CDs and managed to stay ahead of my 20 per week goal.  You can reference this blog entry for details about this project.  Here are the CDs I knocked off of my list this week.

#	Artist	Album	Date	Again?
366	Dave Matthews Band	Before These Crowded Streets	11/28/2011	Yes
367	Amy Grant	Behind the Eyes	11/28/2011	Yes
368	Blondie	The Best Of Blondie	11/28/2011	Yes
369	KC And The Sunshine Band	The Best Of KC And The Sunshine Band	11/28/2011	Yes
370	Third Eye Blind	Blue	11/28/2011	Yes
371	Bon Jovi	Bounce	11/29/2011	Yes
372	The Kinks	Come Dancing- The Best Of The Kinks 1977-1986	11/30/2011	Yes
373	Men At Work	Contraband- The Best Of Men At Work	11/30/2011	Yes
374	Teddy Pendergrass	The Essential Disc 1	11/30/2011	Yes
375	Teddy Pendergrass	The Essential Disc 2	12/1/2011	Yes
376	Sting	Fields Of Gold (The Best Of Sting 1984-1994)	12/1/2011	Yes
377	Various Artists	Girls Night Out Disk 1	12/1/2011	Yes
378	Various Artists	Girls Night Out Disk 2	12/2/2011	Yes
379	Duran Duran	Greatest	12/2/2011	Yes
380	James Taylor	Greatest Hits	12/2/2011	Yes
381	Journey	Greatest Hits	12/2/2011	Yes

Here are my thoughts on a few of these CDs that I have listened to over the past week…

• Dave Matthews Band “Before These Crowded Streets”: After receiving the 54 CD eBay auction, I suddenly find myself the owner of a lot of Dave Matthews stuff.  I think I like it.
• Blondie “The Best of Blondie”: And so begins a 2 week journey into a lot of Best Of CDs.  10 of the 16 this week were Best Of’s in fact and I will start next week out with 4 in a row.
• KC And The Sunshine Band “The Best Of KC And The Sunshine Band”: The wife and I are shocked at how many KC and the Sunshine Band songs we know.  I cranked up this CD and the wife and I (kind of) danced to it while our kids looked at us and asked questions like “What is a booty and why would you want to shake it?” and “Why is the word ‘boogie’ in almost every song?”
• The Kinks “Come Dancing- The Best Of The Kinks 1977-1986”: I think I want to be a fan of this band more than I actually am.
• Men At Work “Contraband- The Best Of Men At Work”: How does this album contain more than just 2 songs?  OK, maybe they were much bigger in their native land than on American radio in the 80s.  I do recall hearing that they lost a lawsuit that claimed they stole the flute part from the song “Down Under”.
• Teddy Pendergrass “The Essential”: I have never heard of this artist but if your best of takes 2 discs you have to be good, right?  I do not think I would play this just to listen to it but it would be good background music for a party.
• Various Artists “Girls Night Out”: Finally, I own “Girls Just Want To Have Fun” and “It’s Raining Men”!
• Duran Duran “Greatest”: This is the 2nd Best Of CD that I own from this band.  The first one (Decade, that I reviewed in Week 10) focused on their first 10 years and this one has some of their newer stuff.  Still a lot of repeats though.
• James Taylor “Greatest Hits”: I also have Greatest Hits Volume 2 that will be in next week’s list.

I am a scant 1 CD ahead of my 20 / week schedule having had back to back bad weeks.  The good news is that I did not buy any new (to me) CDs to add to this collection.  I stand at 40.1% complete and am still on pace for a June 2012 completion.

Jon