I have a confession to make. I can no longer hide in shame, nor can I continue to pretend this doesn’t eat me up inside. I’ve told a few friends, but I shortly lost them after revealing my true self. Yes, it is time for me to stand up and declare with pride: I OWN A DISCMAN!

It wasn’t always this way. There was a time when I did have a pink iPod mini. It went with me everywhere. Especially when traveling, I knew if I ever forgot a toothbrush or a pair of sneakers, at least I would have my music to get me through.

I truly dislike how an iPod can force one to completely disconnect from his surroundings, so I avoided taking it everywhere. But it was still a loyal friend of mine. Memories of a bad day can quickly dissipate during a brisk walk through the city with melodramatic melodies blasting into your brain.

Two summers ago I lived in Honduras for three months. I spent many pleasant afternoons napping in a hammock with my earphones in. One fine afternoon I was at a public pool, napping in a hammock. I must have fallen into a deep sleep because I woke up with my iPod underneath me. Without thinking, I got up to jump in the pool, quickly forgot about my pink friend basking in my hammock and left the pool to go home for dinner. It was during the walk home that I realized I had left something behind.

Scrambling back to the pool, I regurgitated some slaughtered Spanish, asking if the staff members had seen a pink iPod anywhere. They replied in Spanish that they hadn’t seen it, but there was a group of rambunctious teens running around the hammock area. Great.

Walking back to my house, I felt like I had lost a friend. One of the things I would resort to during times of despair was now gone forever. And what hurt the most was that someone ELSE had it. Someone was enjoying MY music and MY playlists. It was at this point that I remembered I had brought my discman to Honduras. I don’t know why I did that, but it was one of those last-minute packing decisions that we make just before a big trip that doesn’t seem to make sense at the time. I went home, popped a CD in the old portable CD player and felt my bad day drown in a puddle of overly sensitive music. Since then, my relationship with my discman has been history.

I’ve had friends criticize, ridicule, even YELL at me for owning a discman.

“How could you possibly own a discman?”

“iPods aren’t that expensive anymore; why are you holding out?”

“How do you carry that THING everywhere?”

This is just a taste of the verbal abuse I’ve succumbed to.

Now, I haven’t lost ALL of the advantages that come with an iPod. I can still clear my head with a brisk walk and some tunes . . . I just have to make sure I hold my discman flat on my hand so it doesn’t skip. I can make different playlists for different moods. I just have to give myself enough time to burn a CD before I leave the house. Is it really that bad to own a discman?

Regardless of what I may have “lost” during this significant transition in my life, one thing remains true. I don’t have to worry about my discman getting stolen!

Courtney Centeno, account executive

You may remember a blog I wrote - Blast from the Past. In that blog, I detailed my excitement over finding out New Kids on the Block, my favorite boy band from my youth, was reuniting, releasing a new album and going on tour. It was an exciting moment for me as it took me back 15 years to 1989 when, at the tender age of 5, I convinced my mom to take my cousin and I to the NKOTB concert. Maureen was three-years older than me and I wanted to like all the same things she did. We made posters proclaiming our love for Joey McIntyre (me - he was my first crush!) and Jordan Knight (Maureen). The audience was filled with young girls, my age through early teens, and their parents.

Well, this past Wednesday night, I went back to 1989 and went to the New Kids on the Block concert. My friend Melissa surprised me with tickets for my birthday and it was definitely a blast from the past! The guys sang old hits like The Right Stuff, Hangin’ Tough, Step by Step, Please Don’t Go Girl and more. They also sang some hits off their new album, The Block.

They are older, so it was a little funnier to watch them dancing, but they still have it. They were just as entertaining as they were in 1989. However, the wardrobes have much improved. They don’t seem to be taking themselves too seriously and you can tell from their faces that they are having fun, elements which translate into a very fun, energetic show.

Fans dug to the bottoms of their closets, resurrecting their old shirts and hats and gigantic pins from the 80s. And, for those who long ago trashed their NKOTB memorabilia - it was all on sale, including new and old gigantic pins!

The audience has definitely grown up. I watched a group of women being escorted out of the Wachovia Center because they were too intoxicated to stand up, other fans threw articles of clothing onto the stage and others flashed some body parts on the Fanovision. These women had different intentions this time around!

Now, I can only hope my other favorite boy band decides to reunite in a few years time!

-Kimberly Krol, circulation and public relations executive, eFlyer editor

Several months ago, in one of my blogs, I suggested that business people should adopt nicknames to enhance their marketability and likeability. In my continuing quest to improve business, I have another suggestion - entrance music.

In the 1950s, pro wrestler Gorgeous George often used “Pomp and Circumstance” as he entered the ring. He is generally considered the first live performer to use entrance music.

In the 1970s, Chicago White Sox organist Nancy Faust started to play specific music for various players. For instance, during Oscar Gamble’s stay with the Sox, whenever he came to bat, Faust would play “The Gambler” by Kenny Rogers.

Pro-wrestling brought entrance music to new levels by writing original tunes for each wrestler (thereby negating royalty payments). Then the songs would be packaged and sold as CDs. These songs were also periodically changed, thus creating new revenue streams from new sales.

Now, entrance music is commonplace in sports. In San Diego’s PETCO Park, the fans erupt when AC/DC’s “Hells Bells” signals the entrance of future Hall of Fame reliever Trevor Hoffman into the game.

If entrance music can be used in pro sports, why not use it in the business world? How cool would it be to have your own entrance music played when you entered the office each day? Or entered a big meeting?

I haven’t worked out all of the specifics yet, but I think offices with 15-50 people would be perfect. Much more and there would be music playing all day. Much less and it would be pretty pointless. There are other details, but we can work them out later.

I think it would do wonders for office morale. Imagine a bleary Monday morning. As you stumble through the office door, “Bad to the Bone” by George Thorogood starts to play. It has to put you in a mood to get stuff done.

I really am surprised that notable business people, like Donald Trump and Bill Gates, don’t have their own music. Maybe they are bigger than the music.

As for me, my music would have to be a Billy Joel tune. “Vienna” is my favorite, but perhaps a bit too melancholic for an office. I think I will go with “Big Man on Mulberry Street,” and I expect Fran Gallagher to cue it up the next time I enter one of his meetings.

-John Wroblewski, distribution specialist

Heading into the last official weekend of the summer, I recall one of my favorite summertime activities: attending an outdoor concert on a mellow evening with a great picnic, fine wine, close friends and of course, excellent tunes.

 One of my favorite memories is seeing Chicago in concert on the lawn at the Chateau Ste.-Michelle winery in Woodinville, Washington, a number of years ago. It had been cloudy and threatening rain earlier in the day, but as concert time approached, the sky cleared and we had a perfect view of Mt. Rainier glowing in the evening sun to the south, while hot air balloons drifted overhead and a full moon rose over the wooded foothills to the east. We brought our own home-cooked gourmet feast, purchased a bottle or two of the winery’s best, and laid back and basked in the ambience and the great music. I have to admit it was a little difficult to pull our blissed-out selves up to give the band its well-deserved ovation at the end of the night.

Another great spot in a breathtaking location is the Gorge Amphitheater in George, Washington, only about 45 minutes from my home in the north central part of the state. With a total capacity of around 20,000, it has the usual reserved seating in front of the stage, backed by an immense grassy bowl for general admission lawn seating. The stage backs up to the upper edge of immense basalt cliffs looming high over the Columbia River, so those seated have a magnificent view looking north upriver and west to the cliffs opposite and the sunset beyond. Last year my daughter and I took in a John Mayer concert there, and his comments about the immensity and timelessness of the landscape echoed our sentiments–and WE had the better view!

I know there must be scores of great outdoor concert venues all over the world (I’ve visited Red Rocks outside of Denver, for instance, but not gotten to attend a concert there), and I’d be willing to bet that most of you have your own great memories of summer evenings at some of them. I’d love to hear about them and start my list of not-to-be-missed venues in the summers to come.

 Patty Vanikiotis, proofreader 

It all started innocently enough about six years ago when I finally agreed to get a cell phone. I lagged well behind most of my peers in getting one because I stubbornly did NOT want to always be that accessible. I gave in when I realized it would be safer making my monthly drives over wintry mountain passes if I could call for help if the need arose (presuming I wasn’t in a dead zone to start with). Of course, it quickly became, if not indispensible, then certainly a huge convenience in all sorts of situations.

Over time, I have gradually acquired other devices that once seemed unnecessary or frivolous but which I now would be hard pressed to do without. It struck me the other day as I took possession of my daughter’s hand-me-down laptop that I have become gadgetized. This is the process whereby one starts accumulating these modern marvels at an exponentially increasing rate. It is as if the gadgets one already possesses create a force field which attracts others of their kind. I’m talking about anything that needs a charger, power cord, earphones, batteries and/or a service contract and an inch-thick owner’s manual or a three-hour online tutorial to teach you how to use it.

I refuse to be someone who won’t embrace new technologies because of the effort required to learn something new, but I do find it difficult to make the time to program/download/integrate whenever a new gizmo comes within my orbit. For instance, my daughter Jenny gifted me with the “free” MP3 player which came with her new laptop (which is how I got her old one), and now I am faced with putting my personal stamp in music, programs and files on both devices. Frankly, that is not how I want to spend several hours on a lovely summer day (and now that Jenny’s back at school, I can’t bribe her to do it for me).

Ah, well, at least when I’m done, I’ll have a killer “Roadtrip Songs” playlist and a good excuse to have looked at all the old picture files. (If you’d like to share your nominations for great road tunes, I’d love to hear them and add them in!)

 Patty Vanikiotis, proofreader