Snow Week 2022

 It's been a winter wonderland this week in the Dallas area.

No, wait, it's been a nasty, dreary, sleet-lashed week in the Dallas area.

Right on schedule, after a relatively mild season with just a few cold snaps and a handful of flurries, the hellscape that is Texas winter arrived just as January slid into February. For the last three days, we've had wave after wave of icy sleet and temperatures that refuse to climb out of the 20s. And not so much a break in the clouds to provide a glimpse of the sun.

This means that the roads around here have been nigh impassable. Schools have been closed, and the local police are all over social media begging us to stay off the roads if we don't have to drive so they can come to the aid of those who do.

Sidebar: As always, a huge thanks to the medical personnel, first responders, and sand-truck drivers who show up, no matter what.

I cannot express the degree to which you rock.

Fortunately, this has not been like Snowmageddon 2021, when Texas experienced a week of record cold, record snowfall, and record power outages that tragically cost the lives of more than 200 people. While there have been casualties and outages, which are unfortunately common in a state as chronically unprepared for winter as Texas, for the most part this week's icefall has been just...annoying. 

Every day this week it's sleeted, a lot. Sleet is very different from freezing rain. This is what the weather people tell me, but damned if I can figure out how. It's all frozen water falling from the sky and onto the surfaces I need to drive upon to get to work. Every day it's stopped briefly and teased us by beginning to melt, just enough to turn everything into slush, which then promptly hardens into a slippery sheet cake overnight.

Because it's frosted. Get it? Huh?

Anyway, it's the 21st century, so I can work from home at times like these. To be sure, there are parts of my job that require me to be in the office 90% of the time. But nobody has been there all week to ask me to do those things, so I've felt no guilt about not being glued to my desk, holding down the fort while everyone else does WFH. That part has been pretty cool.

Also very cool: My company, or at least my branch of it, doesn't have those bullshit rules that say you have to have your webcam on all day while you work. The dudes who run this company (and yeah, it's an engineering firm, it's def run by dudes) actually put some fairly strict rules in place when they instituted WFH during the pandemic, but a) they didn't stoop to voyeurism, and b) most people ignore them anyway.

Rules are how you end up with the potato filter, people.

So this week I've been rolling out of bed and logging in to work in my jammies. My "professional work space" has consisted of me laying on my side on the couch, with the Siamese Kitten snuggled between me and my laptop while I type away. It's possible that at least one breakfast consisted of finishing the drink I'd poured myself the night before. It's a blur, sir.

But I've been really productive, surprisingly. On the other hand, I've been kind of lonely, despite the presence of Cat 1 and Cat 2. I don't mind having to go into the office all the time because, my generally curmudgeonly personality notwithstanding, I like having people around. You know, in small, controlled groups whom I already know and over whom I have a degree of authority. But still. It's been just me and emails for three days, and I'm ready for my limited, awkward brand of camaraderie again.

Hey look, it's just started to sleet again. Or maybe it's frozen rain. Whichever. The temperature is supposed to creep above freezing at some point tomorrow. But there's an excellent chance that this will all be ice again when I wake up in the morning. So I may be in for one final day of working from home. I'm not going to risk my crappy nine-year-old hatchback on the possibility that the roads will be OK.

Wherever you're working from this week (or not), stay warm, stay safe, and stay away from the webcam.

Gratitudinal

Here in America,Thanksgiving is a week from today. You might not know that from all the freaking Christmas commercials on TV, but it's true.

Ugh.

As far as I'm concerned, Christmas can fuck off until at least December 1. So let's talk about giving thanks.

I'm thankful for:

Technology that lets me access both the internet and my favorite TV channels even though my laptop has a busted screen.

Wonderful people who have offered to buy me a new laptop (thanks, but see above).

An amazing daughter who is determined to be a self-sufficient, fiscally responsible college student.

Clients who actually pay for my freelance writing services.

A cat who keeps me warm on chilly nights and purrs loudly when I offer chin scratches.

Friends who stick with me when I don't necessarily give them reason to want to.

Twitter, for making me laugh every damn day.

What are you guys grateful for? Share with me, please.

LOL, 2017 Cell Phone Edition

A little over four years ago, I wrote this post about getting my first smartphone.

You guys, that post I linked to is so 2013
you may start humming One Direction tunes.
SO. SORRY.

Yesterday I got a new smartphone. For the first time since 2013. Because apparently middle-aged white suburban single-mom dirtbag bloggers hold on to their phones for more than four years at a time, yeah?

My beloved phone was in pretty dire straits, you guys. It was slow. It no longer downloaded or updated apps. It greatly disliked the task of playing videos. It was beginning to resent the existence of Facebook. Precocious Daughter's iPhone 6 openly mocked it.

So yeah...it was time for an upgrade.

After ruling out anything made by Apple, and anything that cost more than $600, I landed on the LG V20. It has the latest Android OS, a crap-ton of storage, amaaaaaazing dual cameras, and reportedly incredible audio (I haven't played with it yet). It's a big goddamn piece of hardware compared to what I had, but I can deal, you know?

Honestly, it's like six feet long.
But I'm willing to cope with that.

ADORE this new phone.

It has a removable battery, which has basically disappeared from today's phones.

It has a 3.5mm jack, which...yeah, ditto.

It has 64GB of storage, which I will soon expand with a nano-SD card (I did not even know that was a thing...NANO. Well, OK then.)

It doesn't freaking WHINE when I attempt to upgrade an app or download a new one.

Def not too proud to display this.

Anyway, I have a brand-new phone. It's so shiny, you guys.

Probably two in three of you have an even better phone.

For the record: I don't GAF.

This is about me, and feeling I've made the best choice.

Which I do.

Also, SHINY I HAVE A NEW PHONE.

Hee.

If I ever get too old to geek out over a bigger screen, a faster processor, or a sweet-arse interface, Drunkards, just put me out of my misery.

I'll be back here in another four years crowing about the latest (way overdue) advance in phone technology, I promise.

Hee.

Shit My Job Says: Social Anxiety

If you don't have the kind of job that has you sitting at a desk all day and communicating with other humans almost exclusively via e-mail...

...then la-di-da, you're probably a surgeon or a supermodel or a professional oboe player. Your job is meaningful and glamorous. You know what? I'm sorry I even mentioned it. Go back to your thrilling life. Don't worry about me.

Asshole.

Just go.

OK, now that those people are gone...the rest of you are with me, right? You understand that e-mail is an amazing thing that is also profoundly annoying. The reason for this, as with so many annoyances, can be summed up in four words: You're doing it wrong.

As well as email can do stuff like transmit documents, instructions, and racist memes about President Obama, it was never meant to replace human conversation, dammit. I'll prove it. Does your workplace still have telephones? Do you yourself carry around an electronic device that, in addition to streaming cat videos and posting selfies to social media, actually contains a telephone?

Technology. LOL. (And yes, that is Dr. Martin Cooper,
who invented the cell phone and surely never imagined
that Tinder would be a thing one day.)

Talking remains the very best way for two people to communicate when the topic is anything more nuanced than "Thank you for your Pizza Hut order." Talking is immediate, collaborative, dynamic. When we converse, we can convey emotions and correct misunderstandings as they occur.

But people - even smart, educated people who should know better - are seduced by the idea that everything happens faster and better electronically. Thus a phone call that sounds like this:

"Hi, I just sent you a timesheet, can you approve it?"

"Sure. It looks like there's an expense report, too. Can I see the receipts?"

"Oh, sorry, those are old expenses that should have been deleted. No expenses this week, just the timesheet."

"Got it. Thanks."

(elapsed time 17 seconds)

becomes this e-mail exchange:

8:04 - Please approve attached timesheet.

8:12 - Can you send me the receipts for the expense report?

8:17 - No expenses, just time.

8:24 - It looks like there are expenses here.

8:28 - Sorry, those were previously submitted and should have been deleted from the attachment. No expenses.

8:39 - OK, thanks.

(elapsed time, 35 minutes, plus 20 blood-pressure points)

This shit is why I drink, people.

As an introvert who is somewhat phone-phobic, I get that e-mail is an easy alternative to speaking to people. But as a busy professional who doesn't have time for your shit, I am totally down with the clear advantage conversations have over e-mail exchanges.

Still, if you're not convinced, let me lay this anecdote on you. This for-real happened at my IRL job yesterday.

My company has an on-line "portal" where employees can update their personal information, download pay stubs and W-2 forms, etc. Pretty cool, really. Apparently this portal was recently updated, which required a migration of employee data. Our head of HR...

...and I should stop here and point out that our head of HR is an awesome woman who basically runs the department by herself even though the company has doubled in size and who works her buns off yet always has a sunny disposition and I love her...

...she sent a message to the "All Employees" e-mail group, asking us to log in to the portal and make sure our personal data had populated correctly following the update. No problem, right? That's a great feature of e-mail: the ability to send a message simultaneously to multiple people in multiple locations.

But one employee - a new, young, and inexperienced employee - asked a question.

She said: "The portal only shows the last four digits of my Social Security number. How can I verify that it's correct?"

She asked this by hitting "reply all."

People, we are 16 years into the 21st century. There are grown-ass adults walking the Earth who literally have never known a world without e-mail. How does anyone not know the difference between "reply" and "reply all"?

As I (and 300 other people) were reading this message, I thought, "OMG, how freaking tragic would it be if [HR lady] also hit 'reply all' and ended up transmitting this employee's SS number to everybody?" And then I laughed and hit "delete," because of course, that was a ridiculous scenario. No one would hit "repay all" to such a message, especially not an experienced human resources professional who knows how critical privacy is in this day and age.

Shows you what I know.

Because the HR lady proceeded to respond to the employee with this: "Here's what I have on file for you, let me know if it's right." FOLLOWED BY THE EMPLOYEE'S FULL NAME, BIRTH DATE, AND SOCIAL SECURITY NUMBER.

After hitting "reply all."

I'm not saying that an identity thief might be lurking in the ranks of my company's employees. But holy shit, given what you can do with an individual's name, birth date, and SS number, I'm totally willing to bet there are a few incipient criminals working here.

I would have been SO. PISSED. if that had been my identifying information released to the masses. So I took a few deep breaths, then gently and tactfully informed the HR lady of what she had done. And she responded that she had recalled the message via Microsoft Outlook.

The thing is, 45 minutes after her response, I personally was still able to retrieve the message.

Conversations, people. Have them. They're important.

Make It So, Mr. Data

First of all: You guys are so nice.

The comments you leave on my posts and my Facebook page make me smile. And please know that because only, like, 12 people read this blog, every single click and like and comment means a million times more to me than blogs that get a million times more traffic.

So thanks.

Totally.

On to today's blather.

I did warn you that this week would be all about the house and the move. I wasn't lying.

This afternoon I worked at home because the contractor came out to fix our foundation. Which is funny, because if our foundation weren't jacked up, they wouldn't have to come out to jack it up.

That's North Texas clay soil humor. Thank you to those nodding your head in perfect understanding.

J.R. knows. J.R. gets me.

Praise the Lord and pass the cyanide capsule, this should be the last contractor that comes out before we close on the house next week. Otherwise...well, my new, unlived-in apartment is on the fourth floor and has a balcony ripe for swan-diving.

Let's just assume it won't come to that.

Anyway, for the last week I've been working on data management for a big project at work. Specifically, I've been downloading hundreds of files and sorting them into dozens of subfolders in a bunch of folders located on a server halfway across the country.

It's been a long, slow, tedious process. And I was a little trepidatious (which I'm declaring totally a word, despite spellcheck and my online dictionary calling bullshit on it, because I'm not a woman to be trifled with, dammit) about continuing the process at home, because it meant accessing the remote server even more remotely, via my home network. I did not have high hopes for my productivity. And I wasn't too excited by the prospect of spending a lovely afternoon at home yelling at my stupid computer, either.

So imagine my surprise when I got on my wifi, accessed the remote server, and proceeded to fucking blaze through files like a cyber-knife through cyber-butter, if you get my cyber-drift.

I was taken aback by the efficacy of my connectivity,
as it were.

In four hours I was able to get done what most likely would have taken two full workdays to accomplish at the office. Granted, my kitchen wasn't populated with twentysomethings who apparently can't think unless they have an earbud jammed in their head and are eating bandwidth via Pandora. But still, I was impressed by what my little home wifi connection was able to handle.

I mention this mostly because, due to getting so much shit done, I was also able to arrange internet and TV service at the new apartment this afternoon. I got a good deal and a free equipment upgrade, so at the new place, I'll have internet that's twice as fast as what I experienced today.

With that kind of speed, I will literally be able to digitize myself and live in the goddamn cloud.

That's right. Just like this.

OK, maybe not literally. But I'm definitely going to have a great big bucket of data sitting in my living room, ladling out squirrel gifs and "Conan" sketches as if they were free soup at a homeless shelter.

Possibly an insensitive simile. I apologize to the homeless and squirrels.

I like the internet, basically.

Next up: Ordering checks with my new address on them. Checks, LOL.

I'm just old school that way.

Live-Blogging These Four Random CDs I Just Found

So my almost-ex has begun the process of clearing out stuff so he can pack up and move on.

The same process I began months ago, but I applaud him for not waiting until literally the last moment.

One of the things I look forward to unlearning.

As we've each been rooting through our fondest, most cherished memories and dumping 90% of them into the trash, we've also been doing each other the favor of returning items that mean more to one of us but happened to end up in the possession of the other. For instance, I recently found his Bachelor's and Master's diplomas among my things, and I gave them to him. I helped him earn both those degrees, but that's not something I want to dwell on, so yeah...you take those pieces of paper in pretty vinyl covers, yeah.

He lost his class ring at an Ultimate Frisbee tournament in Tennessee
in 1990, so it's the least I can do.

In turn, he's turned some things over to me. Among them are a number of CDs with ambiguous labels like "Personal Stuff 1-29-06." Dafuq did I burn to a CD in January of 2006? I have no idea.

But I have four CDs here that contain files that were important enough to save at some point in my past. And I guess I'm going to make a blog post out of discovering what those files are.

Yep, just like Geraldo opening Al Capone's vault.
Google it if you must; I'll wait.

So here I go with CD #1: This one is unlabeled; I have no idea what it might contain.

OK, it's time-stamped January 23, 2009. That date means nothing to me, but let's go on.

There's a zip file that contains a ton of emails between me and Bestest Friend from the year her daughter and Precocious Daughter were born. SCORE! Those emails will someday become a book. Count on it.

Also, fragments of a short story that I have no recollection of creating, and assorted pictures of PDaughter as a toddler.

Not bad.

And now, here's CD #2. Also unlabeled.

It contains only a group of photos from PDaughter and her best male not-boyfriend, who was celebrating maybe his fifth birthday? Anyway, they and their friends are all tiny. They're, like, little grownups now. How does that even happen?

Just a touch less creepy. Please.

Moving on to the third disc. This one is actually labeled "Personal Stuff 1-19-06." That would have been my 16th wedding anniversary. (EDIT: Lol, not my wedding anniversary. First-date anniversary. Whatever.) So this ought to be interesting.

Oh.

Oh.

This one has so many pictures of PDaughter from when she was about five years old.

And so many pictures of Darling Dog when we first adopted him.

His face is almost entirely white now.

We taught him to never, ever hurt PDaughter, no matter
what she did. And he never, ever has.

We were so happy then.

PDaughter had a real thing for bologna in those days.

Good memories on that disc. The kind that...you know, shouldn't ever...

Goddamn memories, anyway.

And here's the fourth and final disc. It's labeled "Photos & Stuff." I was all about specificity in those days wasn't I?

So, this one is time-stamped September 2003. Let's see what we've got.

It's got...lots and lots of random stuff, from pictures of me and PDaughter to pictures I took while shopping for office furniture at a previous job to bits and pieces of an old website I used to maintain.

Wow.

So much stuff. So little stuff.

CDs are easy to keep. Small, and whatnot. I'll keep these.

Nothing groundbreaking here, I'm afraid, Drunkards. Capone-wise.

Life is made up of the small things.

And that's OK. In the end, the small things are what we wish we held on to. Like, on CD or something.

Just like that.

I Can Give You a View of the World in Haiku

So some of you liked my angry little haiku?

And even wanted more.

Well, when it comes to anger and highly structured verse forms, I've always got more, children.

And lo, there was a shitstorm of
fair verses, bitches.

But wait. I wanted to tell you all about the craptacular beginning to my work week, otherwise known as "The Ballad of It Was Almost Lunchtime Before IT Got Its Head out of Its Ass and Fixed the Network."

Then I thought, ¿Por qué no los todos?

I watch a lot of taco commercials, yo.

So without further ado, I present My Monday Computer Fail, in Haiku.

Meanwhile, they won't even give me business cards because my position isn't important enough.

On to Tuesday.

Tale of the Tape

Nearly four years ago, I wrote a post about cleaning out my sewing room.

(You might want to read it. It's helpful for what follows.)

(Or not. Whatever. No pressure here.)

(But really, yeah.)

At the time (September 2011), I had no idea that this little spare room would eventually become my bedroom once my spouse and I separated-but-still-lived-together. At the time I just wanted to de-clutter a space that had become too messy and overstuffed for its intended purpose.

And damned if I haven't had to throw away even more stuff as I prepare to leave this room forever.

Not a picture of my actual room, but you know,
close enough.

In that earlier post (that you really should read), I included a picture of a box of cassette tapes that in the end, I couldn't part with. With which in the end I could not part. Whatever.

Well, guess what? I'm now faced with the same decision to keep or discard those old tapes. They're mostly mixtapes made by dear friends. Although I haven't listened to them in years, I still remember most of the song sequences by heart. Because music is that way.

It hath charms, people. Breast-soothing charms.

They've been sitting under a table for several weeks now. I've been told - and have told myself - over and over that these tapes are probably unplayable. They're muted and muddy and likely will break the first time they're played. Not that I have anything to play them on. On which to...WHATEVER.

Except I do. I have one device that will play a cassette tape: My nostalgia-designed turntable/radio/tape player thingy. My cars won't play cassettes, I don't own a standalone player or a Walkman. But I have this.

I've been promising myself that I would try to play my beloved, scruffy old mixtapes on this thing before deciding to chuck them. I've also been putting it off. I mean, come on, what are the odds that they won't sound like shit - so distorted and echoey that I can barely tell what the songs were supposed to be. And so I've avoided actually plugging in my turntable/cassette player thingy on the pretense that I have 500 other things to do.

Which is sort of true, anyway.

But tonight is Friday night. My Precocious Daughter is away. My spouse is working. I have the house to myself. I'm treating myself to a dinner of pizza and vodka to celebrate the end of another challenging week.

This is it.

So I plugged in the thingy. And I pulled out an old, dusty cassette to potentially sacrifice to the hungry gods of chewed-up magnetic tape.

I chose one my dear friend Trips sent me in the '80s. One side was labeled (in her unforgettable, spiky handwriting) "Driving Music" and the other "The Cut-Off Side." I love Trips, and I owe her a tremendous debt for introducing me to many of the musical artists I still love today. Talking Heads. The Jam. Tom Waits. XTC. She fostered my obsession with Bob Dylan and understood my love of '50s rock and roll. And she made the most amazing mixtapes.

With very low expectations of success, I pushed it into the cassette slot on the side of the thingy. I nudged up the volume, anticipating that whatever sound the tape made would be mostly inaudible.

And I heard the unmistakable voice of Chuck Berry singing "Brown Eyed Handsome Man." Loudly, proudly, and every bit as clearly as the day it was recorded from a vinyl record onto a cheap cassette. Which is to say, not with digital clarity, but amazingly damn good for a 30-year-old tape that had been sitting in a closet and hadn't been played since the first Bush administration.

I may have cried a little.

And then I tried one that Bestest Friend made for me in (maybe) the early 1990s. Again, a surprisingly well-preserved time capsule of music, made with loving care, one track at a time.

You kids with your shared playlists have no idea what an important and intimate thing it is to create a mixtape.

I can't believe these tapes still play, and still sound perfectly serviceable.

I apologize to the Maxell and BSF companies for all the smack I've talked about their audio products since advent of digital music.

If I get ambitious (and really bored in the absence of PDaughter), I may record a few of these tapes for my long-neglected YouTube channel. I don't even remember some of these songs any more, and it would be amazing if you guys could help me compile a track list.

If you've ever made me a mixtape, thank you from the bottom of my heart.

I'm keeping them all. Forever. Not like marriage-forever, but like friends-forever.

That's really forever.

Update on Birthday Monkeys

Yesterday I got bogged down trying to launch a Kickstarter campaign.

I'm 47 now. I'm obviously past the threshold of being able to manage modern thingdoodles.

Not there yet. But I don't quite understand emojis, either.

The idea is to raise money to hire an artist to illustrate a cute little poem/story I wrote about monkeys.

Have I ever mentioned how I like monkeys?

Can't remember. But I do.

I think there's potentially a sweet storybook in this. But I can't draw for poo. Hence the Kickstarter.

But then loyal Drunkard (and admitted terrorist) Bill the Butcher volunteered to take a stab at illustrating my project. Because he is a rather fabulous artist who works in a variety of media and is a dentist in real life. I find that hilarious for some reason.

This is how I picture his practice.

The thing is, for some reason I'm reluctant to share my monkey-story with him. I value his opinion an awful lot. What if he thinks it's silly? Trivial? Not radicalized enough to merit his attention?

This is why I hate respecting people. It ruins everything.

Sometimes I find an image that I just have to include,
even if it has nothing to do with the topic at hand.

So I think what I'm going to do is I'm going to post my monkey-story here tomorrow for everyone to see. And you can let me know if you think it's cute/sweet/fucking idiotic. And maybe if you're an artist, or know an artist, you can opine on its illustratability. I don't know if that's a word. But whatever.

Also, if Bill really wants to draw monkeys for me, I fully expect to compensate him for his time and effort. In which case I'll still need to raise those funds. Maybe you guys can help with that.

For now, I'm just going to brood. Tomorrow I'll share my monkey-story.

If anyone is good at Kickstartering, feel free to volunteer your consulting services.

Listening to Music (Not Facing It)

I'm listening to Led Zeppelin's first album.

The imaginatively named one. Later they got pretty
lazy with the names.

I love me some Led Zeppelin. My history with this band is lengthy and complicated and will in fact be featured in my book, because it says a lot about my evolution as a person.

But forget all of that right now.

We'll cover that in another session.

I'm listening to the first Led Zeppelin album on headphones, which is my favorite way to listen to music. Radios suck at reproducing music, and even the best speakers can't give you the intimate experience of hearing all the nuances of a song. Headphones are solitary and immediate, which is how I prefer to absorb life as a whole. You know, like some kind of emo sponge.

Google image search never ever lets me down.

I didn't grow up listening to Led Zep on headphones, as I did the Beatles and David Bowie and Bob Dylan. I know every note and echo of those artists, but I'm a virgin when it comes to Zeppelin. It's a pretty overwhelming experience, and I'm digging the hell out of it.

Listening to music on headphones also has the ancillary effect of shutting out everything happening around me. I think I was subconsciously aware of that as a teenager, and right now I'm deliberately taking advantage of it. There are toxic elements in my environment that are soothed, if not eliminated, by being immersed in the privacy of headphones.

I never realized that "You Shook Me" had such an awesome Hammond organ solo in it.

I never realized how much overdubbing occurred in Led Zeppelin's music (after all, even Jimmy Page can play only one guitar at a time), yet it sounds utterly raw and live.

It makes me think there are many things in my life that I've overlooked, taken for granted, dismissed without knowing what I was missing.

I should prick up my ears and listen to what my life is trying to tell me.

It's a little more dissonant than "Your Time Is Gonna Come," but no less heavy.

Honestly, I'd rather just listen to Led Zeppelin on headphones and ignore everything else.

But I've got to face the other music sometime, right?

Right.

Mann-Handled

Precocious Daughter and I love to listen to music together.

I may have written about that before.

I'm a bit like a broken record. See what I did there?

We share a Rhapsody account, and between us we have a pretty large - and quite diverse - music library. Often we listen to music separately, but we also like to plug her phone into a speaker dock in the family room and listen together while we're eating or cleaning or just hanging out.

Just your typical 21st-century family.

Each of us has our own playlists and whole albums that we've added, but when we listen together we like to just hit the shuffle button and play songs from across our communal library. And that gets us a mix of music that ranges from the Velvet Underground to songs from Les Miz to Daft Punk. Occasionally one of us will roll our eyes at the other's musical taste (although PDaughter is remarkably tolerant of the occasional Dylan track, bless her heart), but for the most part we enjoy the hell out of ourselves.

But about a week ago, we were listening in shuffle-all mode, and a song came on that neither of us recognized. I checked her phone, and it was an old Manfred Mann song. OK, I dig me some Manfred Mann - "Do Wah Diddy Diddy" and that - but the thing was, neither of us could claim to have added this particular track. I have a couple of 70s songs from Manfred Mann's Earth Band in my playlists, but not any of the older stuff, and Katie barely even knows who Manfred Mann is. We laughed off  the mystery track.

And then there was another one. This one was from a 2004 album. And while we both liked the song ("Down in Mexico"), neither of us knew how it had gotten into our library.

It was a tad bit creepy.

Credit: Grace Weston.

Today we were listening again. And, like, three goddamn Manfred Mann songs came on. OK, what. We were laughing our butts off by this time, but we couldn't for the life of us explain what the hell all these Manfred Mann tracks were doing in our freaking Rhapsody library.

Upon further examination, we found we had 164 Manfred Mann songs. Of which I could honestly claim to have added two.

Honestly, nothing against Manfred Mann, Manfred Mann's
Earth Band, et al. 

So I went through and deleted most of them. I did keep a few more tracks than we originally had, but hey, what is Rhapsody for if not for discovering songs you didn't know you loved?

But the mystery remains: How did Manfred Mann invade our music library? Were we hacked? Was it a technical glitch? Did I at some point get extremely drunk and try to download just one Manfred Mann song and end up downloading like 15 albums' worth of music?

Seems highly unlikely.

If you have any idea how half a day's music by one band that neither of us really is into ended up on our Rhapsody account, let me know. If you're an incredibly sexy hacker who is responsible for this, definitely let me know.