Of satellites, long weekends and night drives...

Oh, where to begin...

* The kid's back in the hospital again. Another UTI. I've been spending the weekend calling family, going out to see her, checking up on her...

It's draining sometimes, but at least they've got her in the hospital, giving her antibiotics and liquids (dehydration accompnies UTIs with her, it seems) and have her under observation. Apparently she's been, unintentionally, making the nurses laugh. She's a tough cookie, that one. She's been asking the nurses if she's going to die and I told them what I told her (when she asked me the same thing): She's too stubborn to die.

Please don't be offended by that statement. The Kid and I have talked, and joked, about death many times. We've both accepted it as an inevitability, and we'd reached a point where we can joke about it. I have to keep joking. If I don't...well..

* Of course, it did make my nice, long, intent-on-relaxing weekend a little more stressful. Didn't do much by way of house cleaning, but I did get the grass cut out back. It needed it...was getting too high.

And for those who also check out my Storm Artists' page and wondered about the tulips in my back yard, yes, they survived and are in full-bloom right now. I've taken a few photos, and when I get a chance, I'll share them, either here or there.

* Finally, since I did mention satellites in the title, you figured I geeked out again. You'd be correct.

I bought a satellite radio. Pioneer has a portable satellite radio called the Inno that not only plays live XM satellite radio, it can also record the songs you're listening to, and play them back later. It's also an MP3 player to play your own MP3s.

Yes, I've been geeking. I'm also hooked on satellite radio.

When Freddy Mercury sang You had your time, you had the power/You've yet to have your finest hour , it was true. Radio still has a long, long way to go...and thankfully, this just goes to prove it.

Video is nice. Video is all well and good, but when it comes to music, when you're watching a video, you're seeing someone else's vision of the music...which might not be what you see. It limits you. It gives you a preconceived notion of what the music should be about instead of what it could be.

I should know. I spent far too many hours, days, months and years watching MTV (back in the day when they actually showed videos), and there are some songs, to this day, when I hear them play, mentally, all I see is the video. Nothing else. It's limited to just that video instead of what it could be.

The variety that satellite radio offers is a beautiful thing. Whether it be songs from a various era (they've stations dedicated to specific decades) to genres (you name it: jazz, "urban", country, reggae, and of course, the ten thousand forms of Rock and Roll), to specialty station (they've got Starbucks' HEAR music station), to talk to...well, you get the picture.

I can take the unit with me. Saturday night, after making sure The Kid was safely tucked in at the hospital, I stopped at a local Starbucks (one of several in the area...what a surprise), and since it was so nice out, sat outside under the stars, sipping my Vanilla Creme and listening to David Gray's The One I Love. Very cool indeed.

Give me my music. I'll let (most) everything else go...there are some things I cannot live without.