:: verbal connections ::

I love to listen to music, and so does everyone else in my family.  Everyone has an MP3 player of some kind or other, mostly because they turn out to be lifesavers on long trips.  When we travel with the kids to the States, we spend at least five hours on the road in each direction.  With the kids cocooned in their musical sanctuaries, my wife and I enjoy a much less troublesome ride.  My wife’s car (and the new car that I plan to buy) has an auxiliary input, which means that we’re also able to use our MP3 players to provide ourselves with a decent variety of audio entertainment on long trips without either renewing an expensive satellite radio subscription or burning dozens of cds.  The only sticking point is this: how do I find an easy, consistent way to manage everyone’s music collection?

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I have started once again to listen to the radio when I’m in transit from home to work.  These days, I turn the channel to Toronto’s classic rock station – Q107.  “Classic rock” used to be “album rock.”  Today’s classic rock stations are the guys who never updated their record collections and decided instead to continue to inflict  their increasingly less contemporary tastes on anyone who would listen.  Here’s the thing, though. The Mighty Q has updated their playlists.  They’ve updated them just enough to make me realize that I am getting  old.

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This happens all the time, and I cannot understand why it does.  From my door to my place of work is, from rest to rest, almost exactly sixty kilometres’ worth of travel.  To make the trip home this afternoon cost me just about two and one half hours.  This trip usually takes anywhere from sixty to ninety minutes.  The only difference between today and any other day was that it was raining.  There was no storm.  There was nothing particularly excessive about the amount of rain that fell.  There were no accidents.  There were no traffic stops by the side of the road.  There were just lots and lots of people in the road making my drive miserable.  Here’s my statement to everyone who was on the road today: don’t do that again tomorrow.  I have places to be and I have things to do.  Don’t screw that up for me, OK?  Thanks.

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