Class ends tomorrow and grades are due late Tuesday. I have everything that I can evaluated, pending the assignments that are due tomorrow. I think it was a hard class for some students. That's always true, especially in the intensive summer online class, but the upgrade in blackboard made it more so.

So my thoughts are turning to the weekend. Bob is taking his vacation in several long weekends, either Monday or Friday or both. That works for us, since we want to go to the weekend house, but neither of us likes long breaks in our jobs, and we also don't like to leave our garden and flowers without tending for too long. This is one of those four "dayers," split between both houses and regions. Tomorrow we'll be swimming and Sunday we'll be seeing BNL at SPAC.

We both like to go to concerts and theater prepared - being familiar with the music. Once I had the course details (mostly) taken care of (there is always a loose end in teaching, it seems; students are sometimes unpredictable even to a veteran like me) I decided to download some MP3 songs. I very rarely download music, I find it easier to buy CDs.

The concert is kind of strange, there are four bands. I suppose it is because some would say BNL, Goo Goo Dolls and Michelle Branch never really achieved the pinnacle for very long, and now are past their prime. (The other band, Parachute, is new and not that well-known.) So a bunch of bands are needed to sell a lot of tickets.

I am a major BNL fan, one who came somewhat late to the party (about 10 years ago). They were popular in the '90s with folks a few years younger than me. I don't need to buy anything of theirs, I own every album (in some cases more than one copy), know every lyric for every variant of every song. Of course I was aware of Goo Goo Dolls and Michelle Branch, but I can't say I could identify anything specific. Parachute I'd never heard of.

We'd casually discussed listening to some of their music, but didn't make much effort beyond paying attention on the radio and maybe catching one song. So today I searched Amazon for their latest albums, figuring that would be better than greatest hits for being ready for the concert. (Die hard fans are debating the merits of the new stuff in the reviews; some are overjoyed to have new work, others are mourning the days gone by.) I don't listen to music on my cell or an ipod (and honestly, I often prefer silence so that is why this is such an ordeal), so I found three old writable CDs and managed to get it all to work!

This is one area where I am definitely not an early adopter of technology. I am way behind the curve, with no interest in catching up. I mean, I want to be able to do it, but I don't care to do it often, or to listen to music with ear buds while I work, etc. I'd say it is my age showing, except that I know a lot of people who are not young who are very interested and adept. I think it must be that silence preference, it makes me not interested - or else it is that I am enough of a jack of all trades, I can't fit in one more activity.

It did make me more excited about the concert, though. I played a bit of all three downloaded albums to test them, and they all sound right up my alley. (Yet still I am sitting here in silence.)