"I'm trying to tell you somethin' about my life, maybe give me insight between black and white"

So Topher's done a fun, new thing. I think I can best describe its significance in terms of family history, because most people know we Mormons love to keep a record for our posterity, and this idea is more fun than scrapbooking. Are you intrigued?

Well, I'm telling you anyway: Topher has gone through our boxes of CDs (for you young folks reading, these are little disks we used to store our music on--after cassettes and before downloading onto ipods--for oh, about 15 years or so because technology changes so quickly and before you know it you have hundreds of dollars worth of technology that is outdated and takes up all this space and you think to yourself, "Well, that was a waste, I mean, it's nice to have this music, but now I've been introduced to a superior sound so I can't go back and it's doesn't have the same sentimental value as, say, keeping and playing vinyl records, so, was this a conspiracy created by record companies intended for me to buy the same music over and over again or is this the bitter pill I have to swallow for the price of exponentially advancing technology? I don't know. I just don't know.) and he has organized on our ipod in playlists according to year! So when we listen to them, we are immediately transported back in time (for you young folks, I'm not being literal now. We haven't reached this technology yet, and I'm not crazy or on drugs. I'm simply using a literary technique. Now, go read a book.) When it was Hugh's birthday, we listened to 2005. I was cleaning the kitchen and I listened to 1999. I went running, and I listened to the Indigo Girls. Now I feel that I should be putting on my flannel and going to class to flirt with Christopher Clark. Where's Erbecca? She and I are going to the Mighty Mighty Bozztones concert later. Wait, where am I?

So, do this with your CDs (if you have any. If you don't, then we can't be friends because you will be a constant reminder of how old I am). I went to a teaching conference once sometime after Crash Test Dummies but before Alanis Morrisette, and the instructor taught us, through music, that music has 100% retention (lecturing, a favorite among college professors, ironically, is the least effective method for retention). There are some years when the music is better than others, obviously, or the year is more memorable. There's a lot of Tori Amos that I still don't get (Topher loves her) and Annie Lennox, despite her artistic might to bring me feminist unrest, just brings me happy memories of building my first nest with Topher.

Doesn't that make you want to go back in time via music and say to your kids, "Keep your pretty paper and expensive die cuts! And stickers and sheet protectors and uv protected pages? What's that? We can't be bothered! We'll look at our photos online while Momma makes you listen to this music baby!" (Or, something like that.)