random truths – Day 1,030 (Wednesday) – wicked good

The current preferred radio station in the car is WUML, the station at UMass Lowell. I like the Feature News with the newsreaders with the British accents at 8:00 am, and the huge variety of music is impressive. This morning, after the news and as I turned off Bridge Street onto French Street, the familiar notes of a long-ago song from a once beloved band came through the speakers.

Ahhh.... The 'Mats.

It took just a few notes to recognize it as The Replacements. By the first line of lyrics I knew it was their song "Answering Machine" from their 1984 album Let It Be. The song had already been around for several years before I knew about the song or even the band, but once aware of the The ‘Mats, I was hooked. I liked the song “Answering Machine” enough that part of it was recorded as my answering machine message back in the olden days of answering machines.

Much effort was expended starting and stopping the tape in the cassette player to try and record a spot in the song that included the line “I hate your answering machine” to be in my answering machine message. Damn, I thought I was clever.

This morning, I found a parking spot, and sat there listening to the rest of the song. Then, the day got even better. There were donuts at work to celebrate the birthdays of three colleagues in January and February. A colleague brought leftover pizza from an internal meeting. And to top it off, it was “snack and share” Wednesday, when we rotate turns bringing in our favorite snack. Today it was Goldfish. 

Talk about a wicked good day – a song from the 80s that hasn’t been heard in ages, then donuts, pizza, and goldfish. The only thing that could have possibly made it any better would be hearing the entire album. It's been ages since hearing "Tommy Gets His Tonsils Out" and "Gary's Got a Boner." Tonight's going to include another walk down memory lane with Paul Westerberg and the the rest of the band.