shuffling through the quietude

Last week, I had to sit through a two-day conference to get continuing education credits before the June 30 deadline, and the only thing I got out of the conference was a prize I won by throwing my business card into a booth vendor's drawing. What I won was a speaker system for an iPod. Pretty cool, right?.. Except that I didn't own an iPod.

Well, I couldn't just sit there looking at that unopened speaker box, and I do have my consumerist tendencies at times, so I headed to Best Buy to buy an iPod.... and, of course, I couldn't get the cheapest iPod, I let myself be talked into a cool one, capable of holding 1800 songs. So far, four days later, I've put 180 songs on it from my CD collection, and I'm thinking, how am I going to come up with another 1620 songs that I want to listen to repeatedly? I'm anguishing about what to load and what to not load.

The good news is that I've only had the iPod in my ears once so far, but I must say I do love having the songs loaded onto my computer (on iTunes). This computer has great sound, and I have it blaring, sub-woofers and all, while I write to you good folks. I'm a "shuffle" addict, so it's shuffling through my crazy assortment of 180 (so far) songs. Right now, a Leon Russell song is playing -- Chopin might be next!

(So far, I haven't used the speakers that I won!).

*****

Jerry and the note-in-the-bottle girls are on Day Two of their trip through the Southwest. For three days, they are on a "working dude ranch" 9000 feet above sea level somewhere in a remote part of Colorado (The nearest town is 26 miles away -- by gravel road!). They spent much of the day today riding horses. Jana and Saskia own a horse, so they are used to such things. Jerry has a sore butt tonight.

It's quiet here without him and our visitors.... well, except for the tunes blasting.