iOVERWHELMED

i Did it.

I got my iPod in the mail right before Thanksgiving. So, I spent the five days between when I ordered it and when it arrived from Hong Kong (personally engraved and all) loading compact disks into iTunes. I will still be loading compact disks into iTunes when we move the clocks forward again.

Holy cats, does this ever take some time.

I bought the iPod because, although I love music, I would have the same six cds in our changer until my husband pleaded with me to change them. Because I knew they would stay there for quite awhile forever, I always had something mild in there (jazz, Norah Jones, classical... elevator music) and my other bazillion cds would be in one of the drawers of our cabinet, in one of two or three cd envelopes, or in one of two or three cd cases either downstairs, in J's office, at my office, or stuck under a seat in the car. When I had them out and about, they would get kids' fingerprints, jelly, they would lose their cases, or cases would lose disks, or they would get scratched, or my head would just explode and there would be blood and grey matter everywhere (at least, it seemed that way).

Now, I am about half through loading my music disks onto the iPod, then I will start in on our audiobooks (which are a pain in the ass to load, because apparently, apple didn't realize that anyone still liked books). The audiobooks, by default when loaded from cd, comingle with your music so if you did random play ("SHUFFLE") all of your music, bits of Harry Potter would mix in with Led Zeppelin, Sublime, and Duke Ellington.

Now, I am in a completely different quandary. I've only a fraction of my music loaded and I am dealing with the equivalent of musical attention deficit disorder. There are so many disks that I haven't heard forever that when I start one song, I think... no, I'll play that one... no, no, that one... ooh, look, what's over there.

I also have a real need for developing playlists. My musical tastes are so varied that (even if I could exclude J.K. Rowling's work) a random shuffle might induce epilepsy. I can just see the shuffle from Grateful Dead to Etta James to Pink Floyd to Vivaldi to Led Zeppelin to Paris Washboard to George Winston to the Clash to some of the New Age drumming stuff that I have.

Someday, maybe I'll do my job again... in the mean time, I'll be switching disks and tinkering with old songs like they are long-lost friends.