Summertime laziness, I presume.

Since I've come out of the dark ages and use an RSS feed reader to follow the various blogs I like, I've found it easier to include more and more and more blogs and newsfeeds. The reader tracks two of Sweden's biggest newspapers for me, the Svenska Dagbladet (The Swedish Daily Blade) and Sydsvenskan (The Southern Swede). Both big newspapers, both on the newsy beat 24/7. So every time I open the feed reader, the count is over 100. 50 or 60 or more of the new, unread items are from the newspapers. And I can't deal. I end up clicking the "mark all as read" button rather than slogging my way through the headlines.

I read Swedish OK. I speak it far better than I write it, but I'd judge myself at about a 4th or 5th grade reading level, whereas my writing looks like a 2nd grader. I'm overly proud, even smug sometimes about my ability to speak it, I haven't had to say, "I don't understand" in a very long time. Conversation is noooo problem. The only way I've managed to retain the Swedish all these years (and the 18th anniversary of the day I left for Sweden was this week, damn, when did that happen?) is because I've worked hard at it. Often. The rise of teh interwebs really helped that, because even back in those dark, early days of the technology, all of the major media jumped right on board and I could look at the newspapers. Sometimes it made me sad to even see Swedish written, because I missed it a lot. And the Swedish newspapers, even the reputable ones, tend toward the tabloid end of things, much like the British press. Three inch tall screaming headlines, sensationalism at its finest. Sometimes amusing, sometimes annoying, always attention-getting.

Anyway. I'm off track. Again.

When I'm speaking Swedish, I understand it with no problem. When I'm reading it, sometimes I have to read it out loud, sounding it out, reading the same sentence 3-4 times before I get a grasp on it. For an avid reader, it is frustrating, to say the least. But this dis-inclination to read the headlines is an odd thing. I changed the language setting on both Facebook and GMail to Swedish, and I'm dealing fine with that. Of course, you're seeing the same thing all the time on both of those, your in-box for e-mail and the list of who has commented on what for Facebook. Whereas the headlines change frequently, so I'd actually have to work at that. Mmm-hmm, I'm calling that. Summer laziness.

Unintended consequences.

I attended a mandatory session on password security the other day. (Yes, for work, but we don't talk about that here, remember?)

Long story short, I left that session completely paranoid about my one-size-fits-all password that I have been using, oh, EVERYWHERE, for about the last, um, TEN YEARS. Duuuh. Wait, let me say that again. DUUUUUHHHH

The session leader gave us all copies of this article, which suggests some cute ways to make up memorable and un-guessable passwords. Dutifully, I set about doing just that.

Except that my first couple of mnemonics weren't so mnemonic. And I promptly forgot which numbers I'd used. Because, of course, you don't ever ever write passwords down, because then they can be stolen.

I ended up needing to request a password reset from Gmail, Facebook, Yahoo Mail, Amazon & eBay. I think that I have it all straightened 'round now. I think.

But I forgot that the password to G-Mail is also used by my Blackberry to sync both my calendar and e-mail. The calendar sync app asked straight out for the new password when it tried to sync (something it does behind-the-scenes most of the time) and wasn't able to, it popped right up on the screen and said, hey, dumbass, I can't get into your calendar.

I'm still trying to figure out the mess with the Blackberry. Argh.

Acquisitional Desires.

I Want:

Aldera
by Nine West

Zappos is a dangerous, dangerous thing.

Have I mentioned before that I have a problem with shoes? {Considering that you have a label for posts about shoes, yeah, Luce, I think you've mentioned that. Once. Or twice. A DAY. ~ed.}

I like shoes. I like frivolous, silly, can't-walk-a-mile-in-'em shoes. Shoes that match outfits, shoes that don't match outfits, shoes purchased just for a particular dress, shoes bought for everyday wear. In many colors, and the taller the heel the better. Standing at just 5'6", shorter than most of the rest of my family, I've worn heels since the parents allowed me to do so. I own maybe 3 or 4 pairs of shoes that are flat; my runners, of course, a pair of hiking boots, a pair of ballet flats, and a pair of construction boots. The rest of my shoes are tall shoes.

Zappos allows you to search for women's shoes based on heel height. Or color. Or size, or style, or brand.....

Oh, the myriad possibilities.

Must. Stop. Looking. At. Shoes.

Freak/Geek

Gabbing online to some friends the other night, I mentioned how I was having trouble finding the specific yarn my sister wants me to use to make this, a lovely shrug. She wants a silvery grey bamboo, and I've had no luck on Ravelry or on any one of the (count them) fifteen knitting supply sites I have bookmarked.

"Have you tried Etsy?" asks Stef.

"No, never heard of it," says Lucy.

"Linkage: www.etsy.com" says Stef.

Eeep. Not that I needed another online knitting community to look at/participate in/spend money on. But I've seldom had bad recommendations for websites from my online peeps, so I trundled over to check it out.

Bad move.

Immediately, I found 3 suppliers of hand-spun bamboo yarns that have silvery-grey hand-dyed hanks of goodness.

Expensive, because the process is labor-intensive. Pretty, too. Only trouble, as I saw it....well, there were two. One, the lack of funds? We remember this part, yeah? Where I was job-hunting because I wasn't making ANY money? Two, most of the yarn-makers I found on Etsy specialize in sock yarn, much too small of a gauge for what I want to make. 8-9 stitches to the inch on size 2.5mm needles? I'd take me the rest of my life to make a shrug on needles that small.

The patience, Lucy has not so much.

But as I paged through 22 pages of bamboo yarn, I found this lovely-ness.


The freak part comes here: the yarn-maker has called this Battlestar Gallactica yarn, and in the description of the properties of the yarn is a paragraph about why the hell she named it thusly: she's a fan of BSG, and the colors correspond to things in the show. She's not the freak, though, you must understand that. I am, because not only did I read and understand the explanation, I agree with it. Dude, I don't even watch that show. There is no Jensen, therefore there is no point.

Here's the geek part: it isn't even close to enough yarn to make the shrug, being about 120 yards less than what I would need. Doesn't really matter, I wanted it. Even if she hadn't made the pop culture reference, I would have thought the colors were uber-cool anyway. And I'm fascinated by the blend of materials, bamboo, alpaca, and wool. I'm full of questions about how'd they do that? Did it take a long time? Was it a plan, or did the design just end up working this way?

Total dork. Or, y'know, just enthusiastic. Take your pick.

Delete, delete, de-lete

Good luck movin' up, 'cause I'm movin' out!
~Billy Joel, Movin Out, The Stranger

My G-Mail account had 596 contacts. 'Had' is the operative word there, but still. Do I even know 596 people? Sweet Goddess, how did that happen?

G-Mail has a bunch of features that are amazing; it was the first searchable e-mail, it stores e-mail as 'conversations' so that when you exchange 33 e-mails with your boss, there are not 33 new e-mails in your in-box, and it saves every single e-mail address you ever enter, every e-mail address that is on a distribution list when you receive a mass e-mail from one of your friends.

That last one is something I love to hate, because that, my friends, is how I ended up with 596 contacts.

Looking at that contacts list gave me a headache, because except for the folks that I imported originally from Hotmail when I switched, the names weren't entered properly, some e-mail addresses didn't have names attached to them at all, it wasn't in alphabetical order. (Gasp!)

It needed cleaned up, but I really didn't want to spend precious online time doing that. But I couldn't stand looking at it.

I use Evites for event invitations when and where I can, and I was cleaning up my e-vite address book after doing an import contacts, and that's when I noticed that the contacts list was so out of control that something needed done about it.

Who were these people? I didn't even recognize a handful of names. For a while at the non-profit job, HQ sent out mass e-mails to every director of a chapter in the United States. Oy. The directors loved it so much that they often had 3-5 e-mail exchanges going on, asking each other how to handle issues from unruly board members to PITA staff. While it made for fascinating reading most of the time, it got out of control, and eventually it calmed down as the novelty wore off, and as HQ set up a blog/message board where these conversations could take place.

That was the first batch of people that had to go. Except for the ones in this region, those whom I still exchange the occasional e-mail, delete, delete, delete. You, you, you, and you, gone! I selected about 80 addresses right off the bat but when I hit delete, G-Mail says, "Sorry. We can only delete 20 contacts at a time. Please select fewer contacts and try again." Grrrr! That's annoying.

Little by little, though, I got it cleaned up. After the initial mass deletions, there were 175 people left. Still, I'm not sure I know and more importantly, like 175 people. Cleaning up the list means it has to be done right and proper, names entered as lastname, firstname and if that person has multiple e-mail addresses, they need stored under ONE contact listing.

Which, of course, took hours to fix.

Hours as in it was ONE AM when I shut off the computer and went to bed.

When I went to bed, though, I had the list down to 139.

Perfect for a clean slate, a new start.

Why?

Well, I start a new job on Monday. Movin' up indeed.

Clutter

My sis in New York introduced me to Pandora, well named indeed for its addictive properties. Once opened, you can't put it back in the box and ignore it. Pandora is Internet Radio, done finally the way that all of this technology we have at our fingertips should have long allowed us to do.

You create your own radio stations on Pandora. Like an artist or genre? Tell Pandora, and she will find like-minded (or -sounded) things. If the song she pulls up wasn't what you were seeking, give her a thumbs-down, and she moves on to the next thing.

My sister has also been nagging me to find my old cassette tapes, where I had such diverse things as Janet Jackson's Rhythm Nation 1814 to Poison's big 80s album, whatever that was called. They're around somewhere, and sis wants me to get the assorted Janet Jackson stuff I have on to a digital format and share it with her.

Of course, this nagging has reminded me that I loved Miss Jackson back in the day, and as I have no desire to spend a fortune on iTunes buying back her catalogue when I've got it somewhere 'round here, just not in a digital format, to Pandora I went to give a listen to some of that old stuff.

Is it any surprise that I can still sing every single song that Pandora plays? No, I suppose it isn't. Music was a fundamental part of my teen years, and as I ran around in both high school and college with a bunch of music geeks, it is no surprise, really, that each bit of music evokes a time, a place, a memory.

As much fun as that is, wouldn't be nice if we could do a memory purge and get rid of some of the clutter running around in our heads? I don't need the lyrics to every single top 40 song from 1986 until the mid-90s running around in my head. At some point, I stopped paying attention to top 40 radio, and expanded my already schizophrenic music collection to the "eclectic" level where it currently resides, adding music from small indie labels, stuff I heard on reviewed on NPR, (which tended to be world beats) opera, jazz, (for which I can thank my ex, a die-hard jazz-lover) and then along came the sugar-pop revolution with Britney et al, and I stopped paying any attention to popular music, instead seeking stuff outside of the mainstream.

I think it would be better, for example, if I could remember more html coding and less En Vogue. Or maybe the ability to remember my other sister's phone number, she who is first in my alphabetical phone book listing on the phone. Since she changed her phone number in 1999, I've never bothered to remember it, because clicking the phone book button on any phone I've had since then brings up her name. I'm just sayin. There's got to be room up there for stuff other than "Every Rose Has Its Thorn."

On the other hand, if you're playing 80s/90s music trivia, you want me on your team.

And let's not even talk about the clutter in the house that I'd have to dig through to find those old tapes.....

Listening to: my Janet Jackson Pandora station

*ahem*

It has come to my attention recently that more and more people that I really and truly do know in the world outside the computer read this blog.

I'm a little startled by that. I suppose that I shouldn't be, because I do talk about the blog in day-to-day conversations, but only with a trusted few. I don't pass out the URL, and I think that I can count on one hand the number of people that know who Lucy really is. OK, maybe two.

There are some folks out there in the real world that I wouldn't want to read the blog, no matter how proud I am of my writing ability and how amused I am at the daily hit counter...on average, about 50 people a day visit this blog, and while 80% of those are people searching for Laurel Thatcher Ulrich's quote (hint: that's the blog's title) a few of those 80% stick around, read some, and then even come back from time to time.

Yes, if you spend more than 5 seconds on this page, my IP tracker "catches" you and I can see where you are, or at least where the IP tracker thinks you are. Not always the same thing, not always 100% accurate, but it does at least show me a few rudimentary statistics.

I write what's true, what's in my heart and my head, things that I don't always feel that I can say out loud, or that I don't do so well in saying out loud. When you have the time to put thoughts and feelings into the written word, I at least, find that I can better express myself.

Teh interweb gives us this false sense of security, that we're anonymous behind the computer screen as we sit at our keyboards and surf. When I'm doing stream-of-consciousness writing, like in the Tuesday posts, I never stop to think about my audience, about who exactly, might read what I've got to say. I imagine the posts disappearing into cyberspace, and not that people that I know well will be sitting in front of their computers and reading them.

If I wanted true anonymity, though, I'd keep a diary instead of a blog.


And I'm glad to know too, that the posts don't just disappear out into the world. Hi Everyone!

I declare this de-lurking day. If you read, but don't comment, or don't comment often, leave a note to say hi. Comments are always welcome. ^_^

AT&T sucks.

I got a Blackberry earlier this year. I used to have both a PDA and a mobile phone, but when the PDA (which stored my calendar, contacts, friend's birthdays, oh, only my whole life) died last year, I decided that carrying around 2 bits of electronic gadgetry was silly, and when I replaced the phone, I'd get something that was capable of doing both tasks.

The first few days with the Crackberry were frustrating, but I got the hang of it eventually. Set the phone up so that it could receive e-mails from 2 accounts. Figured out how to sync it with my computer. And then, I was totally hooked. Hilariously, the gadget even eased some of my anxiety, because I wasn't missing e-mails when I was away from the computer. I was reassured by that. No, no, I'm not addicted, why do you ask?

Yesterday, I got home from yet another frustrating day of no new sales (have I mentioned before that this job I don't like is outside sales? I think I have. If not, now ya know.) and found DH wrapped up in blankets in front of the teevee. He's fighting off a second round of the creeping crud. I turn the phone off sometimes when I get home from work. If I don't turn it off when I get home, it shuts itself off automatically at 8 PM. Something I learned was necessary after it woke me up once at 2 AM for a listserv e-mail. I hate when anything interrupts my sleep. That's grounds for justifiable homicide, right there.

Anyway. Home from work, phone shut off. I was exhausted, and we chatted about what to do for dinner, deciding finally to order pizza. I reached for the phone, turned it back on, and instead of making the call right away, I was scrolling through the pre-loaded pictures on the device's hard drive, wanting to show DH a pic that I hadn't noticed before. Suddenly, the screen went white, and the following message appeared.

JVM 454 error.
Device must be reset.
Scroll trackball for options.

*RESET*

So, like an obedient drone, I hit the reset button, and the same message appeared. When I scrolled the trackball, dozens of other options, including a 'sanity test' (WTF?) appeared. I tried most of them, and nothing worked. So I took out the battery, which is how you do a 'hard reset' on this particular phone.

Unfortunately, that didn't fix it. I got the white screen back, and then an hourglass appeared, then the screen went black, and the indicator light, on the upper right corner of the phone, started flashing red. Uh-oh.

So we took the phone to the closest AT&T store.

The heavily made-up chickee that waited on us did the same thing we'd done. Twice. Then she went to the computer and looked up our account information. Slowly. Then she grabbed a pad of sticky notes and scribbled down an 800 number, telling us, "We don't have any replacement phones here. You'll have to call the Warranty department."

I purchased this phone on January 17th. It isn't two months old. I can't be without a phone; besides being the only one I've got, my entire ability to make a living is based on this mobile phone. Outside sales=being in the car, on the road, all day, every day.

Nope, I'm not dependent. Not at allllll.

I think it perfectly understandable that my next action was to bitch at this 22 year old snot. I ranted and raved about the phone being brand new. I hollered and fussed about needing it for work. I pointed out that they DO have plenty of phones in the store, and that she could give me a new one out of the box. No replacement phones, my ass.

Perhaps not surprisingly, she was unmoved. She wasn't rude, but she was very firm that there was nothing further she could do. Also not surprisingly, we left. Without a new phone. Fuck!!

I dutifully called the 800 number from DH's phone, and spent the next ten minutes on hold. The young man who finally came on the line informed me that they'd send me a refurbished phone, and that they'd send it express shipping at no cost to me, but no, they weren't able to do anything other than that.

Here's why this pisses me the hell off. I've been with AT&T since 2004. My whole family, and DH's whole family, plus most of my friends, use AT&T as their wireless provider, meaning that it is free to call all of those folks, because they're within the network. So switching carriers is out. Additionally, I pay my bills on time; my wireless bill is anywhere from $110 to $170. A month. Every month. The phone has been in my possession for almost 2 months; what happened to it is that the hard drive died. DH, trying to amuse me, said, "The crackberry OD-ed."

I called customer service when we got home; I was on the phone for another half hour, explaining to 2 people what had happened, and why I was upset about it. Being nasty to them serves no purpose, so I was calm and polite, but I made it understood that I was less than impressed. How is this good customer service?

I'm without a phone for at least 2 days, even with express shipping, it is unlikely that I will have the new phone before Monday. When, incidentally, I'm supposed to leave to go for that job interview in a state far, far away. Goddam it! I need that effing phone.

*sulks*

Anyone care to lend me an uzi so I can shoot the one that died? I think that'd make me feel better.

Being thoughtful about Pres Idiot's War On Terror

I heard several speeches today from military veterans in advance of Monday’s observance of Veteran’s Day. Listening to people who have actually served in the country’s military was a humbling experience, especially for someone who is adamantly opposed to the war in Iraq and the war in Afghanistan, as well as W’s idiot war on terrorism. (what the hell does that mean anyway?)

There were veterans of nearly every major conflict over the last 50 years, including an adorable old fella who stormed the beaches at Normandy, in attendance. Two Vietnam veterans and a 59-year-old veteran of operation Iraqi Freedom gave speeches. All of them were excellent speakers, and most of them refrained from political commentary.

I have said many times before that I support the people who are in uniform, even while being opposed to where they are stationed and their missions. I know full well that all of the current military personnel have volunteered to be where they are. Some of them may have been forced by circumstances, lack of opportunities, to join the military, however many of them voluntarily stay in the military long after their original enlistment is up. They are extraordinarily proud of the work that they do. Rightfully so, because what they’re doing is damn difficult.

I don’t think that we should be in Iraq. Period. It is my belief that if there were no oil in Iraq, we would not be there. It is also my belief that we are creating a bigger mess the longer that we’re there, and it is not belief but simple fact that we are creating an entire generation of people who despise the United States.

But the speeches today made me see things from another point of view. I was astonished to learn that more than half of the country’s homeless people are veterans. That statistic is disgusting. Deeply. Whether or not you agree with any conflict (and I disagree with most of them) the country has a responsibility to care for those who have put their lives on the line to protect it.

I was also astonished to learn that funding for the veterans administration is not an automatic thing. Congress must allocate funds to pay for health care for veterans, physical or mental, annually. We all know how well Congress does its work.

The gentleman who just returned from Iraq talked about the media’s coverage of the conflict. According to him, the media is 110% on when it comes to the coverage in Iraq, however they are only reporting 10 to 15% of the story. Apparently, there are plenty of good things happening there that no one talks about. I find that difficult to believe. Every day, there are reports of more very young soldiers dying. The government does not keep statistics on the deaths of Iraqi civilians who die needlessly either in the crossfire or from mistakes made on bombing runs. Yes, the insurgents kill innocent civilians too, but the insurgent’s cause is not my concern. I think that the military should be held to a higher standard of accountability, especially when the claims of being the most technologically advanced military force in the world are constant.

The fact is that we can’t leave Iraq now. But as I whispered to a friend during these speeches when someone asked when we’ll be out of there…I think everyone will come home when my friend’s kids are grandparents. What a quagmire. It is a weirdling line that I’m walking here…admire the selfless service of all of the military branches, despise the conflicts, opposed to the policy.

I know my own mind, anyway.

On a completely unrelated note, the voice recognition software IS learning. I dictated this up until a few paragraphs ago, and the errors were very few. Teh technology is teh cool.

A blatant plug that I'm not even getting paid for.

DH's company works with a French Company. This has been fact of life for us for more than 10 years. The French people speak good English, mostly. Of the languages that are not English that I speak, French is not one of them. Recently, however, it has become necessary for DH to learn French. I am such a geek that I am voluntarily studying it alongside him.

To that end, he purchased software called Rosetta Stone. I can't tell you how cool this stuff is. The marketing and advertising BS for Rosetta stone claims to be able to teach any foreign language to anyone using methods that are deeply intuitive. Having learned more than one foreign language, I did not believe a word of it. That was before I turned it on.

It is deeply intuitive. I do not understand at all how it works, but it does. I have not learned much more than simple sentences, a few verbs, a few nouns, however I know them letter-perfect.

I am hopeful that we are both able to be conversant in French soon. Rosetta stone is frightfully expensive. For the two units that DH purchased, it was $600. I don't have a stray $600 lying around, do you? If I did, I would be purchasing Spanish and every other language I'd like to learn.

Then there is the voice recognition software. Sigh. You have to activate it to get Rosetta stone to work. And you have to talk to the fucking computer so that it begins to recognize you and your speech patterns. I have dictated this blog post using the voice recognition software and when it works it is cool. Otherwise, it is a consummate pain in the ass. I have never thought that I am difficult to understand, nor do I have particularly strong Midwest burr to my voice. But the computer sure seems to think so. If I could remember all of the mistakes that it has made thus far, you would be howling.


So buy the Rosetta Stone software. The jury's still out on the voice recognition software.

Ancient Music

Well, OK, not ancient in the strictest sense. But in the world of pop music, positively ancient; from the early 90s or earlier.

I wrote a post a while back about an old mix tape that I have held on to for a long, long time. I've spent some time listening to it and trying to figure out just who the various bands are. This is a listing as best as I can discover of all of the songs on the tape.

Unfortunately, there are a few that are NOT available from iTunes or any other source I can discover. DH tells me that yes, it is possible to get music from analog tapes to mp3 format, but the gadget guru does not have the needed hardware. Yet.

Without further ado, here's the listing. This has taken forever to dig up all the links and to track down the names of the bands...and I'm not done. There are still two that I can't track down. Which in the age of everything in the whole world available on Google is as irritating as heck. The song title links to the lyrics (usually) and the band title links to the band's website, if they have one, and a fan site if they don't.

1. Hello~The Beloved
2. Come Together~Primal Scream
3. Candleland~Echo & The Bunnymen
4. All Together Now~The Beatles
5. Only Tongue Can Tell~Trash Can Sinatras
6. Scarborough Fair~Simon & Garfunkel
7. I'm Free~The Soup Dragons
8. Unknown
9. That's a lie (remix)~Too Much Joy
10. Theme from Twin Peaks(no lyrics)~Angelo Badalamenti
    
11. Laura Palmer's Theme (no lyrics)~Angelo Badalmenti
12. Right Here, Right Now~Jesus Jones
    
13. Hippychick~Soho
14. Wicked Game~Chris Isaak
15. Peek-a-Boo~Siouxsie & The Banshees
16. Give Peace A Chance~The Peace Choir
    
17. Deeper Shade of Soul~Urban Dance Squad
18. I Saw Red (Acoustic)~Warrant
19. Put It There~Paul McCartney
20. Imagine~John Lennon
21. Waterfall~The Stone Roses
22. Then~The Charlatans UK
    
23. Here Comes The Sun~The Beatles
24. Elizabeth My Dear~The Stone Roses

As I've said before, just about my favorite song of the bunch is Waterfall by the Stone Roses, but there isn't much I don't like. Track #8, the unknown one, is one that I've spent about 3 hours trying to find the name of the band and the song title. I'm pretty sure it is Britpop, but I've had no luck at all finding any information. The chorus of the song is as follows:

every beat of the heart
brings me closer to the start
takes me further away from you
brings me closer to the truth


If you know who sings this, what the title of the song is, please let me know. It is going to drive me crazy.


If I was super tech-savvy, I'd post a playlist with an MP3 player so you could hear all this ancient music, but I'm not that cool. Plus can you imagine the bandwith that would eat up?

Mix Tape

Back in the dark ages, before music was on computers and long before I was aware of the Internet, we made and traded mix tapes. Mix tapes were compilations of music, usually along a particular theme or just songs that you were fond of.

Over the years, from probably the age of 10 until 19, I probably made a hundred or so. I traded them with friends, shared them with school-mates, listened to them for hours at a time. These were the precursors to playlists.

I made them with a dual tape deck, or later, when CDs came along, taped from a CD. In the late 80s, though, I didn't have any CDs or a CD player. A good friend of mine, V, had several players and hundreds of CDs. She made great tapes.

Before I left for Sweden, she made me one that was full of Brit-pop and alternative music. I listened to it on the train, traveling around Sweden, on the bus back and forth on the way to school, at home, while riding my bike.

One of my favorite songs on the tape was by The Stone Roses, a song that I almost felt had been written for me. I identified strongly with the lyrics. But there were many other songs on the tape that I loved.

I liked the tape so much that when I tossed all of the rest of my analog tapes, having either replaced them with CDs or no longer caring about the music on the tapes, I kept that one. When DH and I moved house, the tape came along to our new domicile too. For at least the last 3 years, it has sat on a shelf with about 4 other tapes that survived the purge of old technology.

I'm not sure why, but just the other day a bit of the lyric from that old Stone Roses song popped into my head, and while I could remember that the song had been on the tape V gave me, I could remember neither the name of the song nor the band. I spent some time Googling the lyrics as I recalled them, but couldn't find it. I even looked for the mix tape, but didn't find it.

After a while, I remembered more of the lyric and eventually located the name of the song and the band, and I was satisfied with that, especially when iTunes provided me with the song for $0.99. (It is "Waterfall," from The Stone Roses self-titled album, should your own curiosity overwhelm you.)

Then DH and I watched a few movies last night and I changed the the DVD when one ended. While standing in front of the DVD player, I noticed the shelf of tapes, and sure enough, there was the mix tape from V.

We no longer have a tape player, except in my car, which is a 1999 and has a factory-installed tape player instead of a CD player for some reason. So when we went out today, I slipped the tape into my back pocket and popped it into the player.

The resulting stroll down memory lane made me very happy. As each song came on, I remembered long-forgotten things, including the lyrics to almost every song on the tape. While it is predominantly Brit-pop that I promise you've never heard of, there's also some Simon & Garfunkel, and a few things that were wildly popular at the time. Strangely, although V and I were both into a bit of heavy metal, there's only one song from a metal band, and it is a ballad.

I don't generally write posts of lists, even though I'm a compulsive list-maker, but as I eventually rediscover the names of the bands and the songs on the tape, I will make a list with links to the various band's websites and post it in the interest of fun and archaic music.

I haven't talked to V in more than 7 years. I'm not sure where she is these days. But listening to all that music again has prompted me to try to track her down and see how she's doing.