I just spent 15 minutes answering a telephone survey on my media consumption habits. Why? Because I felt sorry for the girl doing the survey. She sounded really young, it's probably her summer job. She wasn't very good at it, in a likeable way (for instance when I gave my profession as "web designer" she said "Really? Cool!"). And I would imagine her job performance and maybe even her pay depend on the number of completed surveys. What the heck, it was only 15 minutes of my life.
I don't think she should have done the survey on me, because the first question was if anyone in the household works for a radio station, tv station or newspaper. I told her that everyone in the household works as an unpaid volunteer for a community radio station. She stammered a bit and then said it didn't count because we aren't paid employees. My guess is that the question is supposed to weed out people who are either biased towards the media outlet they work for, or better informed about the medium than the typical listener. Both of which are probably true in this case, regardless of my pay or lack thereof. But again, what the heck. I'm happy to throw off their results.
The only thing that annoyed me about the survey was that internet radio stations didn't count. Because she asked about my radio listening yesterday. Yesterday I listened to WXDU for 2 hours, WUNC for 1 hour, and somafm.com for about 7 hours. And it kind of annoyed me that I couldn't mention the station I listened to all day. But I guess if her company is going to sell this data to local radio stations, it won't help them to know that I listened to music on the internets all day.
Just in case I started feeling like we have to go to a fancy-shmancy restaurant to have excellent food, tonight Georg made roasted tomato-basil soup, with tomatoes and basil from our garden. YUM. We roasted the Early Girl tomatoes because their skins are thicker, so they aren't as nice for eating fresh as the Better Boy. I burned the tips of my fingers a little, peeling the tomatoes. The skins popped right off, but they were still pretty hot. Should have used the tongs I guess.
The tomatoes are coming in so fast now that the cages are starting to collapse under the weight. Georg put 3 pounds of them in the soup and there are still plenty more. Maybe tomorrow we can make spaghetti and meatballs.
In other garden news, we have a watermelon! One little watermelon. And a canteloupe. They're still way too small to eat, but they look healthy.
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