I hooked up my record player this morning, finally, after two years of watching it gather a half-inch-thick layer of dust. You think I'm kidding. We rearranged the furniture before the Nut was born and it left the turntable miles away from the rest of the stereo equipment, so it was just sitting there mute until this morning. I didn't even knock the dust off before I had to put on a record, and I ended up choosing the last one I bought before making the commitment to CDs, which is how I know that this difficult changeover occurred in the winter of 1988, soon after Tower cleared out all their record bins and I knew I had to make a choice between becoming a crank who also refused to give up her typewriter or being a person who embraced new technology as soon as it became affordable.
So I sat and listened to a bit of Billy Bragg's 1988 album "Worker's Playtime," and I enjoyed my little dose of self-pitying romantic lefty British pop, even though the record skipped in one place and I had to pick up the needle and gently put it back down in what I hoped was the next groove over so as not to miss too much of the song, and the Nut napped and dreamed and woke up, and life went on in its life-y way. As it will do.