Headphone rudeness

The choice this morning was between the standard issue Apple white ear phones, a much better replacement by Etymotic Research and a nice pair of Sennheisers that haven't seen any piano practice action since my early-to-rise experiment failed. The Apple headphones are fine for cycling even though the sound quality is dreadful because they're disposable after getting ruined in the rain, they're easy to remove (although they also tend to fall out) and there's no need to concern yourself with the noise leakage though that last piece of normal social-centredness plainly escapes many sociopaths who think that everyone wants to listen to their bass drum and hi-hat patterns.

The Etymotics won today on the grounds of being small, lightweight, low leakage and with excellent sound quality. Also because I found them again during yesterday's cleaning. But they do require you to push the buds deep into your ear canal, and having been brought up with the idea that you should put nothing smaller than your elbow in your ear, it just feels wrong to shove something that far into your ear, especially when it needs to be lubricated with spit and you need to pull your earlobe to the side to leave a hole for air to escape. The great thing is that it feels and sounds like the music is being played directly into your brain.

Anyway, the point is that once you've got the things in and resigned yourself to the slight discomfort of having the wee rubber flanges pressing against the inside of your ear, you're very reluctant to remove them even though you're now deaf to outside noise even if you pause the music. It can't just be me but it seems incredibly rude to keep both ears in when engaged in minor social interactions like thanking the bus driver, having your ticket endorsed by Mary or Linda at the footbridge of Inverkeithing Station or having your ticket checked by the man on the train. The rudeness of this is underlined by your inability to hear the ticket man when he's pleasantly trying to tell you that you've (once again) put yourself on the Glasgow train and that you should change at Dalmeny.

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Photo swap - just as I was coming down the stairs from reading Ewan's story this wee frog, maybe about 3cm long, was hopping around the hallway. He'd obviously hopped in from the garden. Grabbed him, put in the sink and raced for the macro lens. The doctors' surgery will be there tomorrow.