I went to a conference in Denver over the weekend, by myself. This is a Big Deal because I have some irrational fears with traveling alone. I guess I feel like if I leave J for a weekend and go have fun and dump him with all of the Cat Responsibilities, I'm a Bad Wife and he'll find someone who won't do that to him. Obviously this is irrational. A) I'm actually working at these things, so it's not like I'm just hanging around at the spa, and B) he'd kinda like me to be me, which includes this travel thing. But nobody said that irrational fears have to make sense. Especially your first few years of marriage. Especially with someone who's Single Girl identity was as strong as mine was.
So anyway, I went to Denver and remembered how much fun I have traveling alone. I love my Airplane Time when I can just think and listen to my music and nobody is asking me to clean up cat poo or cat puke or do anything. It was always special to me, and now even moreso. I also loved having a ginormous king sized bed all to myself. The one thing I did to take advantage of being out without my hubby, was get ragingly drunk on Friday night. J doesn't drink, and I generally don't drink at home, so this was out of character. Add to that what altitude does to alcohol (I heard it makes every drink the equivalent of four) and I was toasty on my three glasses of wine (with no food). I woke up at 5am thinking I was dying of thirst and drank one of the overpriced bottles of water in the hotel room. I still don't think I've fully hydrated myself yet. It was a forceful reminder of why I don't drink much. But I did have fun riding the elevator at the Curtis Hotel (all the floors have music themes so that when you get off the elevator on the Elvis floor, a voice sounding like Elvis says "hey baby, don't be cruel, you're on the fifteenth floor." I had to check out each floor to see this kitchiness for myself. The people riding the elevator with me were none to happy).
The only time I was in Denver was in 2000 when I was chasing an Inappropriate Man. Actually, The Inappropriate Man who led me to London. It was a very bad time in which I lost every shred of dignity I had managed to create for myself, and it was weird being back there as a grown up, and not caring about said Inappropriate Man. I didn't wonder how he was, or visit the concert hall where I saw him perform, or anything like that. For three reasons. 1) I was too busy. 2) It was too cold. 3) I really didn't care. Being grown up and not caring about the Inappropriate Man who so dominated my life from age 23 until 29 was weird. It felt comfortable, but strange.
In keeping with being a non-irrational Grownup Girl, I asked J to go run some errands tonight so that I can be alone in the house with the cats. We have a bit of snow on the ground, a nice fire going, and the cats and I are all curling up listening to Locatelli. It's a good evening.
---
Speaking of Locatelli I have found a new way of getting music. Here are the three basic music services I use for discovery/ownership.
1) Rhapsody because I love the on-demand feature for my favorite songs.
2) Pandora to discover new music
3) eMusic to download the new music discovered via Pandora
I've found that Rhapsody, while thoroughly awesome and an amazing bang for the buck, doesn't really help me in discovering new music. I'm pretty certain this is down to my inability to pay attention to their recommendations for me, or the radio stations, but either way, there you go. Pandora is a wonderful way of discovering new music that I might like - I found Adele that way, and I'm totally digging her (her song Best for Last is sublime). But there's no on-demand beauty like with Rhapsody. eMusic is simply amazing in terms of download prices (they don't have the big names, so can sell stuff for as low as 20 cents per track) but there's no on-demand gorgeousness with eMusic. Sooo, all in all, it's becoming a complicated form of discovery and ownership, however I can't really complain because I am totally digging on my new music and my entertainment crisis, at least as far as music goes, seems to be abating. I should add that I have also subscribed to a bunch of music podcasts to discover good new music, which is very helpful.
No comments:
Post a Comment