When we were in the midst of moving out of our old place one thing we did was to get rid of all of our old CD cases, which were taking up a lot of space and move to a different system.  At the time, I really did not want to just throw away 3 whole trash bags full of plastic jewel cases, but doing an Internet search on where to take the old cases came up with almost nothing.  I finally did find a place in Denver that reuses old jewel cases, and for a great cause.

RAFT or Resource Area For Teaching, takes old wanted items and makes them into new teaching materials for teachers around the area.  My CD jewel cases were going to be turned into several different activity kits for teachers to use in their classrooms.  The activity kits teach all sorts of things, from how we forecast weather to geometry.

RAFT receives most of it’s unwanted materials from businesses wanting to get rid of packaging, medical supplies, old inventory, old office supplies, etc.  They were also happy to take my personal donation of three sacks of jewel cases, and in fact were out of jewel cases at the time.  I contacted them and they set up a time for me to come drop of my materials, were nice enough to show me around the facility and we even got to see how our jewel cases would be used.

RAFT accepts a variety of different items.  For more information, please see their website at http://www.raftcolorado.org/

Has anyone else discovered the website lala.com?  We used lala.com several years ago when it was a music trading site.  Jeremy and I had probably 100 duplicate CDs or music we no longer wanted and found lala.com where you could trade CDs with other people, and get something you wanted.  Well, there are similar sites out there like this now, but lala no longer provides this service.

Lala.com is now a music streaming site, but it’s different than others I’ve seen.  You can use it several different ways, once you have an account set up, you can listen to most songs one time for free, some songs they only let you listen to a 30 second sample.  After that, you can purchase the right to stream that song from lala.com anytime you want, usually for 10 cents.  That means if you’re interested in an album but not sure if  you want it or want the whole thing or not sure if it’s something you’re really going to like, you can listen to that entire album for about $1.00 depending on how many songs are on it.  And, you can listen to it as many times as you want online from any computer.

You can also use their Music Mover to detect what MP3s you already own on your computer. This allows you to stream these songs that you already own from any computer as well. Now, I can listen to the songs I’ve loaded on lala, on my laptop, or if I’m in the basement where we have another computer I can listen to it down there, Jeremy can also log in and listen to the music at work.

I will admit, we don’t buy too many albums lately, but I really like having a physical CD in my hand, I like looking at the music liner with pictures, and the words for the music. I am still trying to get used to owning music that I don’t have a physical CD for, but this site is helping convince me.

Apple just bought lala.com and I’m hoping they don’t change it too much, or if they do change it they allow me to stream my music through our Apple Airport Express, which is hooked up to the speakers in our living room!

Here’s what Jake and I have been listening to today – She & Him – Zooey Deschanel and M. Ward’s band.   Enjoy!  (I think you can listen to this without registering for 5 days, and then you are required to register – which is free).