So, it’s been two years since I got my MP3 player–first a SanDisk, quickly followed by an 8MB Creative Zen Micro Photo, which I love and have been using ever since. And in that time I’ve primarily listened to it in the car.

As a rule, I hate wearing headphones and while I can deal with them if I have to, I detest the ear-bud style headsets. They never stay put in my ears and I find them uncomfortable, so I’m never tempted to  just bop around in my own little musical cloud, wearing my MP3 player. If I’m sitting in front of the computer, of course, I can just listen to the music ON the computer, and so my MP3 player primarily gets used in the car.

Of course, my 6.5-year old Volvo doesn’t have a built-in jack for MP3 players, but it does have a cassette player. So for the last two years, I’ve used a $10 cassette-player adapter to hook up the player, draped the player’s attached armband over the gearshift to keep it from flying to the floor, and off we’ve gone.

Right up until a week or so ago when I realized how much damage I’d caused to the earjack connector from two years’ worth of connecting and disconnecting the player. Suddenly, I could only hear music out of one speaker, which got rather disconcerting. So, I bought a replacement.

Yes, yes, it was extravagant of me–another ten dollars–but you know me! I bought the exact same brand, and when it arrived from Amazon, I cut it out of its packaging (always fun) which I threw away, and put the adapter in the car, waiting for the next morning’s drive to work.

And, it didn’t work.

Don’t ask me why, when the two adapters are identical in every way, but one plays perfectly well in my tape deck and the other is consistently kicked out. And, naturally, I didn’t notice the problem until the next day’s drive to work, by which time the garbage had been picked up so that I didn’t have the original packaging anymore. Which means I can’t return it to Amazon. Nor do I have the name or contact information of the manufacturer. So I’m left with one that has a body that works, but frayed wiring, and one that has perfect wiring but a faulty body–and no skills to try to perform surgery on them to bring the two good parts together.

I’m not feeling particularly inclined to try buying another one, again–I figure I’ve got a 50/50 chance of it NOT working either. Sure, it’s only $10, but I’ve already said money is kind of tight around here. It’s not a sum I’m torn up about, but still, I’d rather not be wasting any money at the moment!

In the meantime, my several-hundred-dollar player just sits on the corner of my desk with nothing to do, while I try to make do with the radio and the CD player.

After two years of being able to shuffle through 2000+ songs, I’ve got to tell you, a CD with 12 tracks or music interspersed with chatter and lots (and lots!) of commercials is simply NOT satisfying!

Now, the other alternative. I had–two years ago–bought one of the wireless FM adapters so that you can play your MP3s through the radio, but it had something like 12 pre-programmed stations to choose from and here, 35 miles from New York City, there was only one that wasn’t already being used by a real radio station, and even it had a near-neighbor causing interference. So I gave up on that idea pretty quickly. I’d try it again, on the off-chance it would work better now, but I can’t find it. I know I carefully stored it someplace “safe” (with its list of available radio stations, without which it would be completely useless), but I also tried lending it to my Dad at some point. If he was the last one to have it, it’s gone–no doubt thrown out along with the iPod Nano he had on his desk that he never used and so just discarded last time he cleaned his office. (I know!)

Which leaves me with a couple options–buy another cassette adapter, maybe from a different manufacturer this time. Try to find a FM adapter that has more open stations and will work, without being too expensive. Although I’ll just add that that’s problematic anyway, because right now, my cigarette lighter is being used by the charger for the Creative Zen–it only lasts about an hour and a half on its own. If I need to use that plug for an FM adapter, there won’t be anyway to keep the player charged.

Or, I can just suck it up and deal with CDs and radios for the next however-many-years before I can afford a new car that has a built-in MP3 connection. (Yeah, I’m not crazy about that option, either!)

As you can imagine, Chappy is just FULL of sympathy for my dilemma. Although, his grandparents told me that he threw up this afternoon while I was at work, so maybe he wasn’t feeling overly sympathetic to anything? He was chasing toys around the dining room at 4:30, though, so I don’t think he’s bothered any more. (I think he brought it on himself, too, by eating grass on our quick walk at lunch. You know how dogs are–they throw up what was bothering them, and are fine. They don’t seem to have the problem with lingering nausea that we do.)

He DOES, however, recommend you head over to his virtual-friend’s blog and watch the video of 10-week old Fenway playing with his first Greenie, trying to decide if it’s food or not. It’s really very sweet–especially if you’ve ever had a puppy.

Also, Technorati–the tech-site that tracks blogging trends, among other things–has a blogging survey to test what people are using their blogs for these days. If you’ve got 10-15 minutes to spare, why don’t you lend them a hand with their statistics.

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