I mentioned earlier this year (because I couldn't get it together last year) that Amanda gave me XM Satellite Radio for Christmas. She got me a receiver & antenna, an FM adapter, and a 30-day subscription. While I'm content to listen to WBSN or WODT whenever I'm around New Orleans, and can generally stomach KLove between Baton Rouge and home, the only thing I'd need XM for is baseball games.

See, I'm as big an MLB fan as Amanda is an NFL fan. (This is why she has Sirius, not for Howard Stern.)

Since the MLB season is starting in a couple of weeks, I decided it'd be about time I got the receiver installed in my car. I even thought I could get it done during lunch.

Oh, how wrong I was.

On Clearview Parkway, near I-10, there's a Mobile One (car audio) store. I left work at 11:45, in hopes of getting back to work at 1:00. (15 minutes isn't too much to write off in this business.) However, due to traffic, an 8 minute drive took 15, and I didn't actually get to Mobile One until noon. What's more, I was quoted a full hour of labor, meaning I wouldn't have any hope of getting back to the office at 1 PM.

Well, there was little I could do about it, so I contented myself to head to the mall across 7 lanes of Clearview Parkway, and did some shopping.

Got back to Mobile One at 12:50, in hopes they had been able to get done early. Nope: not only were they not done, but they had to pull a converter to convert the GM antenna to the universal antenna, then back to the GM audio system. Ended up being an extra hour of work.

The worst part was that I'd left my cell phone at the office, charging. I couldn't let my boss know where or why I wasn't back.

This radio had better come in better than WSLA on the north shore, or I'm going to be thoroughly upset with this whole rigmarole. I'm already not keen about shelling out $110 to install and dropping an hour of personal leave. And to top things off, the normal radio doesn't work while the XM receiver is plugged in!

-KIE