Moving and an Unexpected Time Capsule

I just finished moving. Just now. Mere moments ago. It has been a crazy adventure. I would've liked to have stayed in Wicker Park until I could buy a place but, well, shit happens. My landlord wanted to move the rest of his kids into the building and normally I would've protested but Jay's been a really great landlord. He's been really tolerant when I've been late on my rent, and he and his family have always helped me out when I've needed a hand with something. So, honestly, who was I to protest? At the time I had been meaning to buy a place anyway but we all know what happened there. It's alright though. I got myself a nice new apartment with new stuff and an adequately sized office (!!!). It's the kind of place that probably would house two people, but it's just me and Villainous Industries over here.

To do the final push of my move I borrowed a Honda Element from iGo Cars. If you're a Chicagoan and you don't own a car for whatever reason, it's a pretty decent option for quick trips to and from the grocery store or, in this case, moving a desk and some random crap. The iGo cars actually come with CDs of music from local Chicago bands on them, which is awesome, but I've already heard all those bands so I browsed through my old CDs. I found this old mix that I used to run to. Really wild. My first thought was, Wait... I used to run with CDs?, but after that initial reaction I popped it in and was immediately taken back through time to when I used to run a couple of miles every night and listened to a bizarre mixture of punk rock and electronica.

It's so weird how you change through life, and how you always listen to the same music but the particulars change. I've been into these same genres of music nearly as far back as I can remember. I remember the first time I heard hip hop: my father was really into it when it was a new thing. De La Soul's Three Feet High and Rising was the first hip hop album I listened to. That was in my CD case too.

Mix CDs are such an interesting thing and it's so easy to discard them as ancient technology. If you want to burn a CD of music now (a CD? How very quaint!) you can fit hours of music on it. If you're into burning DVDs and have a car that can read them, you can fit days of music on one. I have a music library that would take months to listen to all the way through, yet on a day to day basis I listen to what I'm listening to around that time. It's whatever's new or whatever I haven't heard in a while. My iPod is never on shuffle, and maybe it should be more often. Sometimes I'm surprised by terrible music that someone else has uploaded to my server, sometimes I'm surprised by some little nugget of awesome that I've accidentally overlooked or haven't heard in years. It's kind of wild. So, I don't think it's a trick I'd pull at a party unless it was a pre-approved playlist, but it's something I'd try walking around. I think I'd have to skip if it landed on John Cage or Frank Zappa's seminal piece, "Lumpy Gravy". Actually no. I'd wait 'til the end of the main theme then skip "Lumpy Gravy".