Finding Nanci

For Christmas, my wife got me a Creative Zen Vision-M. It's a 30 gig (welllll 27.3 gig, really) digital music playing wonderment. Thus far, I love it dearly. My only complaint is that it is incapable of playing files ripped in either of Windows Media Player's lossless digital formats, which is what I'd ripped nearly my entire CD collection into some three months back. I sulked about this for a day or so, figuring I'd have to either convert all those files to something different, or re-rip everything in a slightly less lossless format.

I opted to rerip.

I know, I know, I can already hear the cries of "Don't do it! There's an easier way!" ringing out. You're far too late to sway me, though, for as of the writing of this very sentence, I have now reripped everything in the highest possible quality otherwise that the player will play and soon 98 percent of my CD collection will be stored on this fabulous little device. (Even now, the CD drawer has popped out, having successfully ripped You Are Here #5, a compilation CD given to me as a bonus for spending so much money at Criminal Records in Atlanta, some eightornine years ago.)

The thing about CDs, though—actual CDs—is that every once in a while you lose one. Or you lose its case only. Or you lose the liner notes. Whatever. For a good while now, I have been missing the CD to Nanci Griffith's album Flyer. I had the case and the liner notes, but couldn't figure out what I could possibly have done with the CD that would cause it to become so lost. My only thought was that, some seven years ago, I'd somehow left it in my old car when I traded it in for the current one. But that didn't make sense, either, as I clearly remember listening to it since then. Perhaps not since I'd moved to WV, mind you, but certainly since the advent of the Malibu in early 2000. So, as you can see, years have passed with this empty case in my possession, hauled along with all 360 or so of my other CDS, from house to house and state to state, every time we've moved.

This morning, as I entered the home stretch of CD ripping, I found Nanci. The little minx had apparently been shacking up with the boys from The Why Store, for I found her snuggled up beside their album Two Beasts as I was about to rip that. I hadn't ripped Two Beasts during my original, ill-fated CD ripping project, three months ago. I had, however, finally tossed the case and liner notes to Flyer figuring 6 years was long enough for Nanci to have returned on her own. If you love something, set it free, and all that.

So now, Nanci Griffith is homeless.

Maybe I can get Toad the Wet Sprocket's Dulcinea to take her in.