Implements and apparati.

As a result of my new swimming mania, I have reacquainted myself with goggles, which have the virtue of allowing you to swim with your eyes open, which has the practical effect of allowing you to swim in a straight line and not bump into people who are swimming in the lanes to the right and the left of you. This assumes that you put your face in the water, which allows you to swim faster, generally speaking (though I'm currently coming to terms with what "faster" means at this point in my life, as opposed to fifteen years or so ago).

As I was reminded this morning, getting the suction just right is a bit tricky. Too much suction and when you get out of the pool, your eyes look like someone has applied a cruel form of torture to them. Too little, and you have water leaking in to each lens, which is somehow a little worse than just swimming without goggles--it's like each eye has its own little pool of water, with independent sloshing action. It can interfere with the whole project, which is after all, to move through the water--i.e., to swim. I will say nothing of the swimming cap project, which in general is a pain in the ass, but which I'm still trying to work with because I'm still holding on to the vain hope that swimming in chlorinated water won't wreck my hair.

In a related development, when I was picking up a printer on sale at Target for college daughter, who will be returning to Logan before very long, I bought a pair of headphones on a whim. I don't have an iPod, but I do have loads of tunes on iTunes that I have heretofore been listening to through the crappy "speakers" on my laptop or through an almost equally crappy pair of plug-in speakers (also bought at Target, but I was definitely in a cheaper mood when I bought them). These were $20, but as a result of this rather modest purchase, today I am having a throwback experience to my youth. I remember listening to tapes I had made on my dad's old reel-to-reel tape recorder--Cat Stevens and Emerson Lake and Palmer, if you must know--laying on my back in front of the gigantic stereo cabinet, looking at the backs of the LP covers, my head ensconced in huge headphones. It was pretty much a religious experience
--engulfing, making one feel set apart in a self-contained aural environment. Today I'm listening to the oeuvre of Ben Folds, which sounds pretty damn great on headphones.

I have to get yet another headset for a technology project--putting sound files with PowerPoint presentations for my online class(es)--and I really didn't need these headphones which are purely for pleasure, but they seem like a genius purchase at the moment.