Yard Work, Rock Speakers, Dogs, Blabbing

It's been a busy week.

We have been steadily working on the backyard, planting shrubs, veggies, flowers, seeding the lawn, watering, sweeping the patio(s), and tending to Tica's hurt back. She is progressively getting better, but we still have to keep a cushion barracade on the couch, feed her tranquilizers to keep her bubbliness to a minimum, and crate her during the day.

Since we put the new patio in the back 40, we ( ok, really just me) have been wanting music there. I toyed with the idea of just using the iPod donut from JBLbut that required hauling an extension chord from the house or garage. I also thought about running electricity out from the garage but that required digging up sod, tunneling under a sidewalk, so instead, I went to Best Buy to look into outdoor speakers. I found a salesman to give me his pitch on what speakers would best suit my situation. Here is our conversation:

ME:"Hey man, I am looking for some outdoor speakers, maybe those speakers that look like rocks, to put on our patio that is about 50 feet from our house. What would you suggest?" Salesdude:"What type of entertaining do you plan on doing out there? When you listen to music, do you want it to be background music or in-your-face jamming?" I said, "Well, a little of both." He said "Well, I am 22 and when I have a party I want to rage and rock. Some people might just want background music and not really need to hear the music in it's pristine state. It depends on what your entertainment needs require."

He showed me a set of Yamahas which were wall or stand mount, explaining their quality and hardiness compared to the rock speakers. After a few more bits of advice, I told him that I might want to still try the rock speakers instead of some JBL outdoor speakers. He said they didn't have any on display but that we could go take a look. When we found the box on the shelf, he exclaimed:

"WOW, these are much better rock speakers than the model we carried before. KLH. They are one of the nicest brands we carry. I think you might get exactly what you want with these, and if not, you have 30 days to return them."

So I have been telling this story all morning to coworkers. But I had to run 100 ft. of speaker cable which I thought we be sufficient length for both speakers, but it turned out I was way short. Story of my life. I need to go get another 50 feet to be able to bury the cable and not have the wire running through the lawn.

Once the speaker cables were attached to the stereo receiver by the house patio, I hooked up Christy's iPod. I hit play on one of her playlists, which happened to be "Man in the Box" by Alice in Chains ( ok, yes, I wanted to ROCK!) but nothing was coming out of the speakers. I thought, "Well maybe they ARE just background music speakers," so I turned it up a bit more to see if I could hear anything. Nothing. Upon troubleshooting I noticed the speaker selector on the receiver was not on the correct "A" setting. I turned down the volume just bit to be safe, and then clicked the speaker selector to "A". BOOM!... IIIIII'M THE MAAAAAAAN IN THE BOX DUHN DUHN DUHN.... WOW! It sounded like Alice was on our patio jamming with Les Pauls and Marshall stacks! Unbelievable sound. Christy runs out of the house smiling. I was too. We both thought some Jazz would be in order just to test the gamut, so out came some John Coltrane. Chris thought the sound was good, yet a bit distorted, but when I reminded her that these are ROCK speakers with a waterproof cone with polypropylene woofer and a coaxial-mounted 1" polycarbonate tweeter, she said, "I'm going to make cocktails."