To Pod and to Plod

Lauren and I were walking to work the other day. We walk together for about 10 minutes then we go our separate ways, so for the last 5 minutes of my walk, I walk alone. The other day, as we split, I noticed that I left my headphones behind. I seriously thought of walking back home to get them, but then remembered that I had ear buds at work. I rarely use my ear buds at work, but have them there for the occasional times I want to listen to something at work. I mainly have them there as a back-up, for just the situation that happened walking into work that day; so I can listen to podcasts at the end of the workday, since I couldn't before it started.

I listen to, at the very minimum, 15 hours of podcasts per week. I would actually guess that it's probably more in the neighbourhood of 20-25 hours most weeks.

I don't remember when I started listening to podcasts, but I feel like I can't live without them now. I'm like that teenage girl who can't get enough One Direction, except my One Direction is the podcasts I subscribe to. The few times I've walked around town by myself, without listening to podcasts, have felt like this other world, where I don't hear Dan Savage or Men in Blazers talking to me, telling me about their Movie Date, or tales of This American Life. I've reached the point where I am listening to podcasts while cooking, cleaning, and doing laundry. I even make a point of always using the self-checkout at stores that have them, mainly because I don't want a break in my podcast to interact with the cashier - I don't want to fall even further behind on my podcast listening than I already am. If that's not sad, I don't know what is.

A few years ago, on a day when I took the bus to work at De Anza, I was walking across campus on my way to work with my headphones on. A student mentioned in class that he had seen me walking but didn't say hi, because it looked like I was into my music. 'What kind of music were you listening to, Mr. Shirley?', he asked. I said I was listening to a podcast. He gave me a look that I've seen quite a few times since. One of 'Oh, OK' looks, where he wasn't really sure what I meant by that. I've found that there is a relatively big group of people out there, who know that podcasts exist, but don't really know what they are; like how I am with Pinterest and Instagram, which seemed to have passed me by without me being the least bit pinterested. Like many things, there are podcast people and non-podcast people.

The thing about podcasts is that there is enough variety out there, that when you tell someone who is also a podcast listener that you are one yourself, there is the 'what podcasts do you listen to?' question that is likely to come up. In the few times I've had this conversation, I found that I had very little interest in what types of podcasts the other person listened to, and the feeling was probably mutual.

Even Lauren, who I would say I have a great deal in common with, has very different tastes in podcasts. We overlap on a few, but I know that she doesn't care what Dan Patrick has to say about the Heisman Trophy race, and probably isn't too interested in the Cobra Effect. Likewise, I don't particularly care what stuff my mom should have told me.

My tastes in podcasts are primarily in sports and films. Those two categories make up about 1/2 of the podcasts I subscribe to (3 of my sports podcasts come in every weekday, so much of my work week is spent listening to sports podcasts). I also have some popular science type pocasts, story telling, advice giving, news, talk, and politics.

Sadly, only two of my podcasts have some UK connection (one is actually two British guys who live in the US, so I'm not sure that even counts). I wish I subscribed to more UK podcasts, but who has the time? As it is, I'm a month behind my non-sports and non-news pods. There is only so much time I can spend walking the streets of Edinburgh, as I plod and pod my way from place to place.

Thinking of Thanksgiving

I've never been a big fan of Thanksgiving. Being vegetarian and not much of food person, makes it a holiday that's easy to care about. Living in the UK makes that much easier to forget, because almost no one here knows when it is and, just the other day, someone asked me what people 'do' for Thanksgiving; do people exchange gifts at all?

In late October, I went to Jenners because I was told that they are one of the few stores that sells canned pumpkin (I found a cheaper place to get it, but that's another story). I was surprised to see the beginnings of Christmas decorations already. It's late October, I thought, how come we have Christmas stuff already, what about Thanksgiving? Ah....no one cares about Thanksgiving, it hit me half a second later.

That's a minor bit of cultural difference that I have noticed this year, but oddly, not the past two years of my living in Edinburgh. I wonder if this means, I actually am missing Thanksgiving - that can't possibly be.

The Christmas advertisements start up in early November, people starting talking about shopping for Christmas gifts (something I hate doing - I'm using the word 'hate' here), Christmas parties start to be discussed, and the John Lewis annual Christmas TV ad is put out there.

The US has it's three monthly holidays to end the year - Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas (or whatever holiday you want to insert for late December), we don't have that late November holiday, so the Christmas starts right after Halloween, or before, in the case of Jenners.

Because there is no Thanksgiving, there is no Black Friday, or anti-Black Friday (as a person who hates shopping for gifts, every day is anti-Black Friday for me). The same person who asked me about Thanksgiving traditions, also asked about Black Friday; didn't someone get killed last year? I feel like someone gets killed every year.

Because of this lack of a holiday, and crazy day of shopping, Christmas preparation is spread out over two months. I'm not sure if I like this or not. Do I like the intense Holiday Cheer for one month, or the slow build over two. The Grinch that I am, I don't really care for either. I do like the John Lewis Christmas ads though, so here is the one from last year (the one from this year is just 'meh', for me at least)....