I've always taken radio for granted. It's there, or not, depending on which way I've turned the knob, and really...it's never been a huge part of my life. Or has it?

When I was in Grade 8, I really started getting "into" music. In Victoria, the best stations at the time (and probably still? I have no idea...) were from either Seattle or Vancouver and my personal favorite, if I remember correctly, was KUBE 93.3 FM from Seattle. I loved it. I made approximately a million mix tapes from it, carefully pressing the PAUSE button after each song instead of STOP to keep my mixes from having those annoying button-pressing gaps. I wish I could listen to these tapes now...I'm sure they're full of winners...but unfortunately, I no longer own or even know of a cassette player which I could use. Does anyone?

A couple of years ago, Kurt's Dad came home from the States with an XM Satellite radio receiver for us. I had never even heard of it (it wouldn't come to Canada until a year later), and was a bit skeptical but quickly jumped on the satellite radio train when I realized that there are no (or very few) commercials and that I could very easily avoid all instances of Celine Dion with the flick of my finger. Genius! We (Kurt) mounted it in the car and off we went, enjoying uninterrupted music-listening bliss, up-to-date tunes, and nearly zero static...so long as we avoided very tall buildings. It was fantastic.

Unfortunately, we left it behind when we moved, thinking that it was unlikely that it would work on the Rock. As it turns out, it would have, and given the radio selection we currently have, we really should have brought it with us. Because the Rock's radio is, in a word, awful.

My alarm clock, a General Electric relic from my sixth birthday (no joke - it even has the fake wood look), has travelled with me through multiple moves in Victoria, to Ottawa, and now to the Rock. I just can't leave it behind. It has woken me up precisely on time every morning that it has needed to (I am knocking on real wood right now) and even without an antenna, has always had decent radio reception. When we arrived, I put Kurt in charge of establishing a radio station suitable to wake us each morning, which he did. Or so he thought. The first morning, we awoke to some casual easy listening, a la Celine Dion. One note from her is all it takes to start my day off on the wrong foot (or note), so that station was immediately replaced with another, which seemed promising when we were setting it the night before, but which turned out to be, quite possibly, the worst radio station of all time. The songs stopped halfway through, the announcer was clearly eating his breakfast while reading the news, and there are some pretty serious racist undertones which I'm not really into at 7:30 a.m. Or any time, for that matter. The only upside were the advertisements, which were all for skanky clothing stores, acrylic nail salons and hair salons advertising a huge selection of weaves. NEXT.

And so we've landed at our final destination, which also happens to be the only other choice. We now wake up to religious/inspirational music which, as it so happens, is the best we can do on the Rock. How lovely for me. The advertisements are all for churches, church groups, Jesus crusades, church luncheons, fundraisers for churches, and church meetings. The songs all include messages about Jesus and his various associates. I suppose there are worse ways to start your morning than with a little Jesus. On some subconscious level, this is probably doing me some good. At least I'm not listening to some dude chewing on his breakfast steak.

However, we've begun to notice the lack of new music in our lives. The stereo in our car (of course) doesn't work, so unless we get onto the internet radio scene, we're out of the loop. I was just informed by a friend that the New Kids on the Block have not only regrouped, but have released a single, a fact which I was completely unaware of until her email. When we were in Toronto, my four year old cousin did a song-and-dance routine to some song about jeans and boots with fur that is apparently really popular but which I've never heard of. We feel very out of the loop, music-wise. We had a rental car for the weekend, which happened to be equipped with satellite radio, so we spent the entire weekend trying to "catch up" but we were a bit of a lost cause...we didn't know any of the songs in the Top 20 except the ones that have been there since before we left Canada.

We also have no idea of what people are talking about when they mention new movies or new TV shows...we're like aliens. I don't know what's more sad...the fact that we are so out of the loop, or the fact that we get all wistful whenever we think of our little satellite radio receiver, sitting in a box back in Ottawa. I suppose there are worse things.