I just discovered this website, called LibriVox, which may interest some of y’all. It is audio recordings of various books in public domain.

People volunteer to read portions of books, and submit their recordings, and they are then made available to the public. Some of the books have just one reader, most use multiple readers. They have a pretty big catalog, including Austen, Chesterton, Dickens… Darwin. They have classics, philosophy, historical speeches, plays, and so on. They also have…. Wodehouse.

You can download the recordings chapter by chapter, or the whole book in a zip file. You can also subscribe to a RSS feed, and download it as a series of podcasts.

I just downloaded Chesterton’s The Man Who Knew Too Little. It is read by just one reader, and the audio quality of the recording is great. I wouldn’t complain at all about it. I also wouldn’t complain about the quality of the reader. He reads very well, and has an interesting accent that makes for good listening. It isn’t quite as peppy as professional recordings of books i’ve listened to, but that’s not a complaint.

So check it out.

Ron shares some helpful thoughts on dating.

When we moved into our house almost four years ago, the sidewalk in the front was uneven. A tree next to the road had roots that were pushing up one section. Over time, it got to be about four inches, and so I broke down and called the city about it. This was about two months ago or so.

A couple Fridays back some men came and started working on the sidewalk. They broke up and removed most of the sidewalk in front of our house, and across the street, and various other pieces on the street that need replacing. They put new sidewalk in everywhere except right in front of our house. The tree roots were too overgrown to lay down the sidewalk.

So today they’re cutting down our tree. It’s a big maple that provides almost our entire front yard with shade. And it provides leaves for leaf jumping in the fall. And today, probably right now, it is being cut down. I took some photos of it, so we can remember just what it was like to have that tree. I’ll post the Before and After photos later.

I think I’ll have to plant new grass once it’s cut down… not where it was, but where all the shade was. mostly shady grasses have grown there, and I think they’re going to get burnt up once the sun starts beating down on them. So that’ll be fun.

I’m also starting a garden in the back this year. I’ll post some pictures of that at some point also.