MetaChat - Five things you can hear outside wherever you are right now.

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18 December 2007

Five things you can hear outside wherever you are right now. →[More:]
- squawking crows
- traffic
- kids playing outside at the kindergarten next door
- the neighbor's television
- a weird high-pitched electronic hum, probably from the neighbor's television

post by: mdonley at: 05:01 | 34 comments

crows
small birds
distantly a car

and that's it!
I live at the edge of a small woodland and the houses around are mostly empty. It's very peaceful.

posted by Wilder 18 December | 05:38

Wilder that sounds wonderful.

- sparrows
- chirping wrens
- flapping bird wings when they suddenly decide to take cover, then come back
- plane
- music from the plant nursery across the railroad tracks from us

posted by chewatadistance 18 December | 07:42

- at the business next door someone is pressure washing windows. (1. it's 25F (-4C) degrees out, and 2. we have a water shortage) No?
- keyboard clicking as I type this.
- vehicle traffic on the busy street out front. Everyone has frost on the windows for the first time this year, so they are a bit more cautious.
- took a bite of breakfast, so the chewing sounds from my conspicuous consumption.
- nobody else is in at this hour, so I'm luxuriating on a nice noisy slurp of my coffee.

posted by mightshould 18 December | 07:52

1. The fans on our office's eco-friendly and entirely useless recycled wood pellet burning stoves.
2. A girl on the phone speaking perfect French in a Yorkshire accent.
3. Various excitable hippy chicks plotting to take over the world (or thereabouts).

posted by cillit bang 18 December | 07:55

- a bird chirping

And now... nothing. At all. At nearly 3 p.m. It's so quiet here that my refrigerator humming sounds loud. And I live in the center of Athens; it's freaking amazing.

posted by taz 18 December | 07:56

1. The occasional car
2. A bird chirping.
3. That's it! It is another glorious, sunny, quiet day here in the burbs of west London.

posted by goo 18 December | 08:14

The freeway.

posted by birdherder 18 December | 08:16

1. A cat howling
2. The water pump on the furnace
3. Cars
4. A dog
5. Wife is playing a dancepop MP3 from her handheld

For a house in the inner city that is built right up to the sidewalk, this place is not that noisy. There is very little traffic on the street since its two blocks are one-way in different directions and the neighbors are pretty sedate. One thing that we do hear at night is the trains running along the old Pennsylvania Broadway that runs through the park a block away.

posted by octothorpe 18 December | 08:21

-rain

The end. It's still dark out, so I can't see anything, either. (Catching the very very early ferry to help uncle with xmas grocery shopping. Finally found something I can do to help!)

posted by elizard 18 December | 08:30

- the twenty-to-three train is early.
- traffic, trucks mainly they're going home.
- wind in the trees.
- a barking puppy.
- someone who clearly has trouble parking keeps squeking the tires against the sidewalk right underneath my window. They've been at it for like five minutes now, it's either a tight spot or a new car.

posted by dabitch 18 December | 08:40

I walk the rainpooch in the morning, and even I can do active listening as a meditation - thanks mdonley.

Traffic
Plane
Leaves crunching underfoot
huffing and snarfling and sniffing of pooch
"Hi" from the kinda scary, at least mysterious old lady from the big old house who walks in the morning.

I feel positively typical American. I have roads and cars and a dog and neighbors.

posted by rainbaby 18 December | 08:41

Traffic
Sirens
Jackhammers.

I need to put in triple glazed windows.

posted by brujita 18 December | 08:46

Nothing. I work in a sound-proofed edit bay, so while I can see outside, I can't hear a thing except some monitors humming, and my keyboard clicking as I type this.

posted by BoringPostcards 18 December | 08:55

As BP said, almost exactly. I work in a modern office building where we're sealed in from the outside world. I can hear my keyboard, a colleague on the phone and other people typing away across the office.

On my work from home day I can usually hear:

- birds
- cat snores
- the latest neighbour/hooker fight upstairs
- the ice cream van that calls in the next street every single day for a 92-year-old man who has a 99 (a soft whip cone with a Cadbury's flake in it) every day. The van plays "Just One Cornetto", otherwise known as "O Sole Mio".

posted by essexjan 18 December | 09:11

I like this thread. A lot.

posted by chewatadistance 18 December | 09:31

1.Chainsaws and chippers. Everyone seems to be cleaning up after the storms this weekend. (Why does it seem that my neighbors have endless amounts of time to spend on their yards? They can't all be retired.)

2. Geese. Millions and millions of them. Hitchcockian levels of geese.They seem to have given up on migrating and instead just feed on fallen corn in the cornfields. It's an unbelievable din.

3. If it were night time, I could hear the barking foxes. It's a really weird, eerie noise. Though not as disturbing as a hooker fight.

posted by jrossi4r 18 December | 09:33

Car wheels on the tarmac of a nearby road.

In the distance, the horn of the train that carries passengers into the Link.

Sometimes, a very low-flying jet fighter (they run patterns here).

posted by chuckdarwin 18 December | 09:38

I can't hear anything outside. I have the radio on pretty loud so that I can hear it in the computer room.

In a minute I'll be taking the dogs outside and I assume I'll both hear and see things there.

posted by fluffy battle kitten 18 December | 09:40

Oh, FIVE...

Pounding from the construction upstairs
Sometimes a sax being played off key outside Carnegie Hall.

posted by brujita 18 December | 09:57

Your job sounds nice, cillit bang!

I can hear the humming of a printer on standby, radiators banging, Olivia Newton-John (on Last.fm), my keyboard, and a little paper rustling and sniffling from my coworkers.

posted by halonine 18 December | 10:30

Traffic
The neighbour's TV
Fireworks (an occasional fireworks rocket goes off every now and then)
An airplane

What I can't hear: pigeons. The cat's not happy with this at all (she loves "hunting" them).

posted by Daniel Charms 18 December | 11:01

1. A firetruck with Santa on it is driving slowly by. The siren is really low, but audible.

2. Cars are honking at Santa.

3. That very low drone of a very far away airplane, which always makes me unbearably sad, but I don't know why.

4. A dog, left in a car while its person runs to the post office, is barking, but it's a muffled bark because the windows are all the way up. It's reaaaaally cold here.

5. The dog's person is shifting cardboard boxes in her arms and I can hear the papery slidey noise they make.

posted by iconomy 18 December | 11:35

Boots crunching on snow
Boots sloshing in slush
Cars driving by in slush
Students discussing exams
Faculty & staff discussing the holidays

posted by theora55 18 December | 13:38

1. Keyboard of the person to the right.
2. Keyboard of the person to the left.
3. Eating of gummi bears by the person on the right.
4. Office a/c.
5. Desperation. The quite kind.

posted by safetyfork 18 December | 13:40

Quiet.

They don't let me out much anymore. Probably for slip ups like these.

posted by safetyfork 18 December | 13:41

1. Fanty meowing
2. Fanty trying to get into a closet
3. My computer fan
4. Wind in the trees
5. A car going by

posted by deborah 18 December | 14:33

1. This computer's fan is starting to go bad.
2. The heating fans in this building are working overtime, because it's mostly glass, and it's chilly and windy today, and our geothermal HVAC system isn't quite up to the task.
3. Janie just laser-printed something.
4. And put some change in the cash register.
5. Truck just went by.

posted by box 18 December | 14:51

Absolutely nothing from the real outside; the glass is too thick. Absolutely nothing from outside my office. Within the office, we've got loud blowing from both the building air conditioner as well as my personal space heater. I work in a womb, apparently.

posted by unknowncommand 18 December | 16:35

The El.
A siren - too distant to tell if it belongs to an fire truck or a police car.
The wind sluicing between the buildings of the southern Loop.
The occasional honks of cars. (A really angry honk just now. And - man, they're still honking. Really angry.)
A car alarm. Nobody seems in any hurry to turn it off.

posted by Iridic 18 December | 17:07

The only sounds I can hear from outside are the train wheels on the tracks and the hum of the train motors. Everything else is blocked out by double glazing, insulation and the Finn Brothers coming from my headphones.

posted by dg 18 December | 17:51

I got rain and the cars on Highway 101 (which are always a little louder when they rush into the rain and the tires slap the wet pavement). But it's kind of nice to have some kind of actual WEATHER here where the near-perfect climate gets boring. However, NO, I don't want any of your extra snow.

posted by wendell 18 December | 18:28

--frequent car and truck or bus tires on wet pavement (funny how I don't really hear them anymore, unless I listen for them)
--high pitched voices talking, laughing, passing by on the sidewalk (sounds like kids)
--the double beep of someone's keyless carkey (our apartment on the third and top floor of a three-floor, corner brick rowhouse is a weird kind of sound vortex... we can hear people opening the mailbox on the corner)
--a helicopter, circling for the second time since I started typing this
--occasional car horns

(from the other end of the apartment, near the kitchen -- I'm in the bedroom -- you can hear the elevated LIRR, or Long Island Railroad, and one of our neighbors who likes to practice opera in the shower)

posted by Pips 18 December | 18:58

1. Trucks barreling down the main road a short distance away.
2. Fire engine sirens - Santa's coming to the neighborhood!
3. Dogs howling, apparantely not liking the sirens.
4. My neighbors' teens blasting their music as they arrive home.
5. Occasionally, sweet silence.

posted by redvixen 18 December | 19:23

The thud and chunk of snow sliding of roofs.
The occasional rev of an engine.
The occasional misguided bird.
The slamming of doors.
Stupid stupid people.

posted by ethylene 19 December | 19:35

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