August 9, 2000
Dear Everyone:
Well, vacation’s over.
The suitcase is still sitting in the middle of the living room
floor, of course. But the
new T-shirts have all been washed and dried and are ready to be worn.
I finally got the travel mugs into the dishwasher last night,
after inadvertently leaving them sitting on the hood of my car
overnight. Luckily, no one
in my neighborhood felt a burning desire to acquire used travel mugs.
“Jeannie” and I have been driving up to Oregon (pronounced ORYGUN) for over 20 years. We know Interstate 5 like the backs of our hands (although, come to think of it, how well does anyone really know the back of their own hand?). We know that once you get into the mountains, there are few radio stations that aren’t either Country-Western or religious formats. Even with a scanning radio, you can’t find much in the way of entertainment.
So this year, I decided to get a
CD
player installed in my car before the trip.
I had looked at the auto players in the big electronics
warehouses, which gave me an idea of how much one would cost.
The expense seemed reasonable, although there was no one in the
electronics warehouse to advise me as to quality.
And even if someone had been there, I wouldn’t have been able to
hear them over the blaring speakers all around.
So, instead, I went to the Car Toy Store (not to be
confused with the Toy Car Store).
The Car Toy Store was conveniently located across the street from
where I work, so I dropped in on my lunch break one day to take a look.
Not only did they have a nice model at a medium price, but they
could install it that afternoon.
A few hours later, I walked over and retrieved my car with a new
CD player.
Unfortunately, I discovered on the way back to work
that the turn signals suddenly didn’t work.
So I turned around in our parking lot and went straight back to
their parking lot. It only
took another 15 minutes to reconnect the turn signals that had been
disconnected during the installation procedure.
So now I have a really nice radio that can store up
24 stations in FM and AM.
Too bad I’ve never been able to find more than 5 stations in the Bay
Area that I like. But the CD
player would certainly pay off during the long drive up to Canby.
I made sure to mention to “Jeannie” numerous times
that we would have a CD player for the trip up.
But when I arrived to pick her up that Friday morning, she had
tidied all of her CD’s away and didn’t want to take the time to hunt for
them. So we only had my
CD’s, which were in a small cardboard box; low tech, but effective.
I generally only listen to CD’s when I’m working on
the computer, either at work or at home.
(Actually, at home, the only CD player I have at the moment
is the computer.)
And since vocals tend to distract me from what I’m working on, I
usually listen to instrumentals.
Hence, lots of classics and movie soundtracks.
A few musicals and a couple of
Neil Diamond
CD’s that I got with a gift card that hadn’t run out of credit yet.
“Jeannie” wasn’t impressed with my meager
collection of about 30 CD’s.
She put up with Neil for a while, and half of
Evita (the
Madonna version) and that was it.
A few soundtracks made it through the gate, including one that
she had given to me a few years ago.
This was a collection of themes from movies that had won
Academy Awards
for one reason or another.
For instance, Casablanca
won
Best Picture, but not necessarily
Best Score. The theme from
Airport
was included because
Helen Hayes won
Best Supporting Actress.
It became a game to see which of us could guess the
movie from the theme first.
“Jeannie” had the advantage of being able to look on the back of the
case, since I was driving at the time.
But then I had heard the CD more than once in the past, as it was
one that I frequently used while writing The Weekly Letter.
It pretty much came out a tie.
On the drive from
Canby down to
Ashland, we
had “Alice” in the back seat, so she got to choose what music we would
listen to. She picked the
soundtrack from
Much Ado
About Nothing (Patrick
Doyle, composer) for no better reason than the fact the
Keanu Reeves was
in the movie. No matter; I
like all the music on my CD’s, or I wouldn’t have them to begin with.
As for the CD’s themselves, the box is still
sitting on the chair in my cubicle at work because I haven’t had time,
since getting back, to go through and separate work CD’s from home CD’s.
I expect I’ll probably get that done long before I get the
suitcase out of the middle of the living room.
Everything has its priorities.
Love, as always,
Pete
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