Playing Favorites 4/22

Do you remember Borders? Back in the early 2000s, it was one of the three largest bookstores in America. It featured not only books but music and specialty items. You may recall the store had a coffee shop and cafe as well as comfortable chairs and sofas sprinkled around among the books, inviting you to not just buy but to stay and read. They even had light entertain on weekends. Our local store in Anaheim Hills became a hangout for my wife Muri and I. Borders declared bankruptcy in 2011 and our beloved Borders is now a Sprouts grocery store (not a good place to hang out). My favorite feature of Borders were the listening stations that were set up along the top of the CD racks. Each station had its own set of headphones and featured a new release CD. You could skip through tracks or stand and listen to the whole album. Borders sold me quite a few CDs that way.

Old Friends, New Friends

In sixty-five years of life, I’ve listened to a lot of music, probably more than most.   There is so much music I love that I can’t possibly keep track of it all.  There are roughly five hundred CDs tucked away in the entertainment center downstairs and thousands of MP3s on the external drive of my office desktop.    Sometimes, I remember to stop on the way to my car and grab a couple of CDs that I’ve neglected.    I also occasionally rummage through my hard drive’s music folder looking for forgotten friends.