Hmmm...my iPod has been posessed

So, since I got my iPod for Christmas, I have been intending to sit and put together some playlists becuase I get some bizarre combos when I just put it on shuffle during the day at work and, well, I can only rarely decide that I feel like listening to such-and-such artist, so picking and choosing albums doesn't work so well for me. But see, then you hit the next problem (related to that self-same indecision), I never can figure out what to put on a playlist.

This goes back for ages. In the 7th grade (and well into high school) mix tapes were all the rage. People would make mixes for boyfriends, girlfriends, girl friends, boy friends (subtle distinctions but you get the idea) - everyone was making mix tapes. And friendship bracelets. But we're not talking about friendship bracelets just now (though I could make some AWESOME friendship bracelets. I think it was partially due to the fact that my mom had scads of embroidery floss and had, at one point in her crafty history, played with macramae, so she encouraged the friendship bracelet thing to a point.) Anyway, my friends would also ask for a mix tape. Exactly once. Because the one that I would pour blood, sweat, and tears into would, inevitably, suck. It got to the point that when it came time to make a mix tape for friend A I would try to figure out who I was friends with that they WEREN'T friends with and then copy a mix tape that that person had made me and try to pass it off as my own. Sometimes this worked, sometimes it didn't. But even if I got caught out for mix tape plagarism, they were usually grateful that I hadn't foisted off on them one of the pathetic "special needs" mix tapes for which I was known.

Fast forward to college where, serving as a computer lab assistant provided hours of minimum wage paid Internet surfing. Back before there really was much of the Internet to surf. So yeah, it pretty much consisted of newsgroup surfing and email, and then the occasional chat via the precursor to Instant Messaging, "talk". Oh, and helping other people, of course. (Fascinating bit of trivia - I actually put together the very first webpage my college had. It even had an image mapped campus map that you could click on the buildings and it would take you to a page about said building with a picture and everything. It was pretty cool for the day.) So anyway one day I'm sitting there reading newsgroups and keeping an eye on the lab and I get a talk request from someone at another Christian college. The one my parents went to and I almost went to but decided against because I really didn't see myself studying in Santa Barbara - way too pretty to study. Anyway, it came to be a fairly regular chat with this guy and after a while, he asked if he could send me a mix tape (because we enjoyed the same music.) So I said sure and he did and then came the dreaded ...why not send me one? Well, I procrastinated as long as I could but eventually had to pony up. And I did. And it was really pretty sucky. And I never heard from him again.

Fast foward now to today when I notice that my iPod menu now has a new option - Playlists. "Hmm," I think to myself, "I did not make any playlists yet." So, because it's a good thing I'm not a cat due to my curiosity, I look into that option and, wonder of wonders, there are playlists! I don't know if I owe Tim a big hug or if playlists are the one thing in the world that can spontaneously generate, I'll hug Tim just in case (that's a win-win no matter what ;) ) but regardless, today I am listening to the "90's Music" playlist. Though I kinda hope it picks up, because right now I'm almost convinced that I've started making playlists in my sleep.