I’m syncing my iPhone. Every now and then—about once a week—I plug the iPhone into the laptop and something in it shoots everything over there to iTunes and everything syncs. This means that things from the iPhone (the calendar, the contacts, the photographs, etc) are uploaded to the computer (for backup), and things from iTunes that I want (podcasts, new music…if I were to have any music on my iPhone, which I do not) are uploaded to the iPhone.
I’m now 27 podcasts behind. This means that 27 radio shows that I like and have chosen have been saved for me somewhere in the universe, and I can now listen to them at my leisure. And I do occasionally listen to them (I just spent about 45 seconds trying to figure out how to spell “occasionally.” It’s one of those words that I will misspell for the rest of my life). I love some of these radio shows—especially “Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me” which makes me laugh right out loud. And “The News from Lake Woebegone.” And now I also love “Story Corps;” “Story Corps” makes me cry every time I hear it. Just cry like a baby right there on the lawn mower.
But more and more often, I choose not to listen to my podcasts. Or the car radio. Or the music stored on my iPod. Or the anythings. After about 16 hours of driving last week, Deb flipped on the car radio for the news and I looked at her as if she’d lost her mind. I don’t know. It all seems sort of insulting to my ears anymore. So now the podcasts are piling up like all those homegrown tomatoes my neighbor keeps bringing me.
Not Alice 