Late Night Catch Up Ramblings

It's been days since I blogged, so I thought I'd sit down and ramble for a bit.

The big excitement here is that our younger son, who's in college in Missouri, has been through here twice this week, on his way to and from a wedding in Tampa. So he and his friends crashed here for the night, which has been cool. Another blessing of the new house -- we have room for everyone! So come on down, y'all!

Overdue Soapbox Moment -- One of the things people try to use in their argument against satellite radio is that FM radio is local. I'm here to tell you, when I was driving back from Illinois last week, I couldn't get a local weather forcast to save my life. It was New Year's Day, and everyone had syndicated year end specials on. Grr. Somehow I don't think I was the only one traveling that day. I wound up listening to XM's Traffic and Weather for St. Louis and guestimating from there.

The top 10 selling artists of the year do NOT include Garth Brooks, which I find a tad interesting. I would like to see the next 10. Even MORE interesting is that Garth remains the top selling artist of the Soundscan Era... with 67 million albums sold since 1991. 67 million Scanned. Even bumping that up a couple million to encompass the albums sold in 1989 and 1990 (and let's face it, the debut CD wasn't exactly breaking records), that's a HUGE difference from the RIAA certified 104+million. Remember -- the RIAA counts albums SHIPPED to stores, where as SoundScan counts albums actually SOLD. Which by my calculations, means there's 30 million Garth albums sitting somewhere. More info on the year end totals can be found in (newlywed) Beverly Keel's column.

Kenny Chesney's press release about his being the 2nd biggest tour of 2007 calls The Police a "punk rock" band. Is that true? Because if it is, I didn't know that. It's funny how his press releases where he DOESN'T come in first always have such a defensive tone.

Taylor Swift got a bubble gum pink pickup truck for her 18th birthday from her record label. It spent some time parked in front of the Country Music Hall of Fame. Because I'm sure she didn't want it parked in her driveway. It's the ugliest thing I've ever seen. Even Delaynie thought it was hideous. I'm sure it's a REALLY nice truck. However, it's the color of Pepto-Bismo. She's giving it away to a charity. Good move.

Speaking of the Hall of Fame, Friday I heard a knock on the studio door. I'd just ran into the cleaning lady in the back hall, and since she hadn't been in to get the garbage yet, I figured it was her, and just glanced up and waved her in. But it wasn't her at all. It's was one of my blog readers! Leelee was in town -- which of course meant Keith Anderson was too. :-) It was great to see her and her hubby. Somehow I didn't get that he was quite as big a Keith fan as she was... The days of dropping in on me at the Hall of Fame are almost over, we have 3 more work weeks there and then the process of moving to our new home in the Sommet Center begins. (Actually the packing will probably begin this week.)

Delaynie goes back to school tomorrow, which means an end to the sleeping in I've been able to do the past couple of weeks. *sigh* It was nice while it lasted.