MP3 Challenged

I think God doesn't want me to have an MP3 player. Well, I'm actually pretty sure God doesn't care. But he's sure not waving any magic dust that allows me to overcome MP3 obstacles.

It all began with Napster. Have I mentioned that I love Napster? Oh yeah! Here (ignore the menopause drivel), and here and here...it goes on and on.

So Napster? I'm happy with. The $50 MP3 player I bought when I joined? Not so much. I've actually burned through 2 of them now. After a month or so of enjoying them, they tend to freeze up or go blank. Napster has cheerfully replaced the first one and they say they are cheerfully replacing the second one, although it hasn't shown up since my conversation with the Napster person on January 9.

But it gets worse. I appear to have burned out my son Taylor's IAudio player, too. It's certainly not a big deal to him...it was not compatible with Napster and so we'd bought him a new player for Christmas.

I was planning my trip to Minnesota and thought I should carry along some tunes. For the plane, you know. Or those middle-of-the-night stints of wakefulness. It took the better part of a day to go through our CD collection, load the music onto the guy's computer and convert them to MP3 files, meticulously naming all the songs (for some reason the track names would not convert). I had this little 1 MB player completely full of great music. Everything from Trace Adkins to R. Carlos Nakai, Go Fish to Adie. I was excited.

I used it for the flight to Minnesota. Put it away. The battery was low. I plugged it into my friend Julie's computer to charge it back up and it froze.

On.

The screen was lit, a song was listed (K T Tunstall: "Another Place to Fall"), and it just stopped. No navigating, no nothing.

Just a few minutes ago, as I started to write this missive, I decided to try plugging it back into the guy's computer, now that I'm back home. The software for it is on there. Maybe it will just come back. I doubt it.

But usually I'm not the technologically challenged. I can't figure it out.

Somewhat Clueless at Times

I'm ashamed to admit how long it sometimes takes for me to notice things.

Today for the first time I noticed that the Harris Teeter grocery carts have these cool wire rings soldered on them for coffee cups. I noticed it today because I considered buying a cup of coffee at Target and decided not to because it would be too hard to navigate my grocery cart with one hand.

Duh.

But there are times when I realize others can be as goofy as I. Like when I send a text message to multiple recipients about mormons and later realize they thought I said "morons!" I'm still chuckling over that one.

Today I'm making Mardi Gras King Cake and a pressure cooker Chicken Gumbo for a food story I'm writing this weekend. I'm going to encourage people to have a Mardi Gras, or Fat Tuesday party. I'll post photos and recipes later.

Just How Cold Was It?

So. I'm back home now and it's much more reasonable here, temperature-wise. My smarty-pants friend Julie said to me today in an email:

"It is still flippin’ cold here. Below zero again. Do you want to know how much below? Ha."

This got to be a bit of a joke with us. I basically froze my toes from the time I landed there until I landed in Atlanta on the way home. I tried not to complain too much, but these things have a tendency to just slip out! So of course Julie was concerned the entire time. She wanted me to be comfortable. Offered me a robe. Offered me socks. Built nice fires in the fireplace for me to roast my feet.

And yet, for all that concern, she somehow felt compelled to ANNOUNCE THE TEMPERATURE every time it occurred to her!

"It's -4."

"really?"

[time goes by]

"It's -9."

"hmm..."

When someone is so cold that it's pretty much more than 50% of what they think about, it's not really that wise to keep reminding them exactly how cold it is.

I'm Baaaack! (maybe)

Well, my other blog is pretty much dead. I poured a cup of coffee into my laptop (of course it was by accident, silly!) and now I am unable to update my "Gone to Carolina" blog.

I thought about giving up blogging altogether, but I seem to be missing the writing exercise.

I'm still not sure that this is where I'll land, but at least it's somewhere for me to write my thoughts and adventures until I decide what to do.

This blog, "No Food Left Behind," is titled after my food column that I do perodically for our weekly newspaper. My intention with this blog originally was that it would just be photos and recipes. But I'd gotten hopelessly behind on that since July, too, so it's been just lying dormant for half a year.

Today I am writing from Rochester, Minnesota, where I am visiting my friend Julie. We have been hanging out in the subzero temps since Friday morning, mostly consuming wine and sitting in front of the fireplace. But also we've eaten out a couple of times, cooked together at home, and done some yoga and pilates. Right now I'm waiting for my friend Lis to hit town. She's coming down from the Twin Cities to spend the day and night with us before taking me back up with her to drop me at my sister's.

It's -10 here. The first email of the day was from my friend Don, who informed me that highs at home on Wednesday will be in the 60s. My response?

"Shaddup!"