Trials and Tribulations of Audio CDs

As those who have read my blog for a while know, and now you know too, I like to listen to books on CD. This is a pre-emptive strategy on my part for when I am so old and feeble that I can't read anymore in any format - book, magazine, tablet etc. Not that I foresee this happening soon. I just like to be prepared. The main place that I listen to books used to be my car. I listened to them when commuting while living in NC. And for longer drives - especially the drive from NC to NY and back. 11 hours or so gets a lot of listening done. I had many issues with the various cd players or lack thereof in my cars. My first car had no CD player, so I had a device that allowed me to attach a "tape" to my CD player that I plugged into my car's tape player. That worked well, but was a pain in the butt when I had to change a CD. The next two cars I don't remember what their CD stories were. I only had each of them for a bout a year. Long, sad stories there. Moving on, I got my current car a few years (five or six) ago and haven't had too many issues with the CD player. Except when it is really cold. Then the CD player won't work for a while. Or when it is too hot. Sigh.

Now, I don't drive far often without mom in the car. And trying to listen to a CD book when mom is the car is a no-go. She has a tendency to start talking at any time. I for one, find it hard to listen to two different things at the same time. Usually one doesn't get enough attention and things are missed. When I do drive without mom in the car, I am usually toodling around Geneva, which means drives of about 5 minutes at a time. Kinda silly to listen to a book for five minutes at a time...

So, the place I listen now, mostly, is the kitchen. I find myself in the kitchen quite a lot. Not barefoot, thank you very much. Washing dishes, preparing meals, putting away groceries and sometime eating a meal there gives me quite a bit of time to listen. The first CD player in there died an unfortunate death. Maybe from over playing. There were others in the house which I tried. One didn't play audio CDs at all. Weird. Another didn't like playing audio CDs. Skipped and hemmed and hawed all the time. And if I paused a CD for more than five minutes, it turned off. Finding my place again wasn't easy, especially when a CD was not broken up to small tracks - because the CD player didn't have a scan feature, just a jump to track feature. Finally, I found a CD player that seems to work. Yay!

Why am I writing about this you may ask. Well, first because I thought it was mildly interesting. And second, because I realized that I left the latest book paused in the kitchen, while mom and I are on a trip to NYC. Eeeek! I hope it doesn't explode. Or worse, stops playing audio CDs.