Bill & Ted’s Excellent Soundtrack

I was in my second year of architecture school when the movie Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure hit theaters. It was (and still is) a significantly absurd movie, but it was absurd in all the right places and had a most excellent soundtrack. Something that would appeal to a kid in his early 20s pulling all-nighters making drawings and architectural models.

At some point I discovered the soundtrack to the movie on cassette tape and I listened to it religiously until I knew the songs by heart and the order in which they played – the way that anybody raised during Continue reading Bill & Ted’s Excellent Soundtrack

Getting Smart About Smoke Detectors

When is the last time you thought about your home’s smoke detectors? I typically change the batteries in our home’s smoke detectors around this time every year, usually on the same weekend when we “spring” our clocks forward an hour for Daylight Saving Time. Last March we lost my dad and all of my normal routines fell away for quite a long time, and so it came as no surprise a week ago when I discovered that my smoke detectors were a year past due for having their batteries replaced.

Like me, a lot of people lose track of their normal routines and some are unfortunate enough to experience a fire in their homes.  According to the National Fire Protection Agency: “In fires in which the smoke alarms were present but did not operate, almost half (46%) of the smoke alarms had missing or disconnected batteries.”

Keeping the batteries in your smoke detectors up to date cannot be stressed enough, but there’s one additional detail about these devices that I only Continue reading Getting Smart About Smoke Detectors