I feel I'm an official weblogger/online journal reader now; my behavior is being influenced by the journals I read. At lunch I bought a CD, Bob Dylan's Love and Theft, based solely on the recommendations of Laura Petix and Susie. My boss and a colleague sampled some of the tracks and declared they, too, wanted to buy copies, even though they generally don't like Dylan's voice.

I don't trust myself to buy pop music because I didn't listen to it much growing up. At boarding school, one of the teachers had an Abba tape, which was the only pop music I knew. (I remember my dad agreeing to buy a ridiculously expensive book of Abba music, with pictures of the group, for me. The movie Muriel's Wedding is a favorite movie because of the Abba soundtrack.) When I came back to the States in Grade 11, one of things I was afraid of was not knowing what music was "cool" and therefore feeling out of place. Somehow, it ended up not being that important.

One of my housemates when I lived in Seattle introduced me to some of the "classic" and more recent pop/rock musicians: Eric Clapton; Annie Lenox; Crosby Stills & Nash; Nanci Griffith; Bonnie Raitt; Lyle Lovett. I'm happy to have found another avenue to overcome my deficit in the popular culture arena.