I keep forgetting to mention that Canada Reads is now over, and the chosen book is King Leary by Paul Quarrington. It’s a great book — funny and sad and man, such amazing characters. Very Canadian, too. A good choice and a good read; I recommend it.

One of the best things about listening to Canada Reads, though, was that I discovered CBC podcasts. I know will totally laugh at me for this, but I always assumed that a “podcast” requred an iPod to play it, like it was in some sort of special format that only an iPod could read. Who knew it was just a fancy word for an MP3 file? I must say, being out of the high tech workforce for 6+ years has practically turned me into a luddite. Next thing you know I’ll be saying stuff like, “Have you heard of this thing called The Interweb? You can get a weather report any time you want one! You have to try it!”

Anyway, the CBC podcasts are great quality, utterly fascinating, commercial-free and completely free. I used to listen to the CBC all the time, mainly in the car, but now I’m a total pushover mom who caves in the minute the kids ask for High School Musical 2 (“Bet on it, bet on it, bet on it, bet on it!”). I’ve been missing my CBC, but the Canada Reads podcasts were so easy to use — up on the internet within an hour of the live discussion, downloaded within a minute, easy to play and crystal clear audio quality. And just about every show that is on CBC Radio One has a weekly, or even daily, podcast. You can listen to their programs whenever you want — pause them, rewind them, stop them and come back later. It’s like having a PVR for the radio, something I fantasize about all the time — I’m constantly trying to find the button on my radio that will jump back five seconds because I missed something someone said.

My only problem now is finding the time to explore all the great programs that are available. I think I could seriously listen to CBC podcasts for hours every evening and still find more interesting stuff on there. I once said that I’ve never turned on CBC Radio One without becoming quickly and completely engrossed in whatever it was they were talking about, and I stand by that statement, so you can see how having hours of podcasts available to me is possibly a very dangerous situation.

Damn those writers and their strike resolution! Don’t they know I have other hobbies to pursue?