Dee has horrible taste in music

If you don't want to spend a ton of money buying brand-new things when moving to Costa Rica, do what I (and many other expats) do: check the classifieds for used stuff for sale. I recently bought a beautiful couch (ok, only partially bought it because my ex-maid stole $100 of the $200 I was going to pay for it with) from a friend, who'd bought it from someone else. It's from Altea Design, like new, and that store's stuff is ridiculously overpriced. But for $250, ain't a bad deal at all.

Lots of people come, buy stuff, then decide to go not long after and sell their crap when they leave. Such was the case with Dee, who was selling her iPod. I wanted to get one for esposo, because, as a chef, he can really get "in the zone" when working, especially to music. Hers was only a tad more than the ones you can get in the U.S., and it came with "lots of music from the itunes store." Now, I didn't figure that being much of a selling point for me, because I have odd, er, eclectic tastes when it comes to music. I like punk rock, ska, swing, some "rock en espanol," bossanova, and a lot of music from the Middle East (especially anything in Arabic; I just love listening to the language even though I only understand one word: "habibi"), Asia, and Africa, and I do adore the cheese factor of anything Bollywood. I can't abide most country, "soft rock," dance music, or hip hop (though I do like a few hip-hop bands, Black Eyed Peas being one of them). I really didn't figure Dee would have much to offer on the iPod in the way of music.

When I got it home, I downloaded all of the music to my computer, added it to iTunes, and discovered that I had to "deauthorize" my computer to even listen to at least 60-70% of it. So all of those went right in the trash can. Of the remaining, I think I kept some disco from the 70s, a couple of 80s tunes, and some John Denver songs (why is it that "Country Roads" always makes me cry?). Dee had a lot of what I will call "high energy dance music" (think the crap you listen to while doing aerobics) that I just could not abide, so those all went. I think I ended up with 20 songs total. Oh well, one could always just download whatever one wants illegally using LimeWire or some other such p2p software. No great loss, believe me!

Come to think of it, though, I bet Dee would think my taste in music is just as crappy as I think hers is. Or perhaps not. I used to have a radio show on KAZU in Monterey, California that at least a few people listened to, and in fact of which I was quite proud...damn, I sure do miss those days sometimes!

Anyway, I made a CD of Dee's leftover music ("In Memoriam: Dee," I call it) that I could, in fact, stomach, and have threatened to make esposo listen to it in the car. He, in retaliation, has threatened divorce.