#lovelansing *

It wasn't long ago that our favorite local public radio station - and by writing the phrase "favorite local public radio station" I've aged myself 15 years, easy - abandoned its all-jazz format for a mostly-junk format. It's not that the music they play now is bad, it's just not what you ever really want to listen to while in the kitchen, making dinner, feeding a toddler, having a cocktail or all of the above. It's just not a station you'd be drawn to listen to... and we don't.

But tonight... mark it down, Nov. 15... I put 2 and 2 together and got goodness.

My iPhone has an application that connects to hundreds of public radio stations from all over the country. You can listen to all of them just as if you're sitting in a living room in Albuquerque or Albany.

So, I am. Right now, I'm listening to the station from New Orleans. Plugged it right into our kitchen radio and it's like the station was a block away. And, no offense to my friends at Lansing Community College, but the jazz coming from the Big Easy is just a tad better.

Wanna live in a cool city? Don't worry, there's an app for that.

* An explanation for non-Twitterers. "#lovelansing" is known as a hashtag. The author of a tweet on Twitter can label it with a hashtag, i.e. #lovelansing, so that others can search for all the tweets with the #lovelansing hashtag and discover all the wonderful things about living in Michigan's capital city. Unfortunately for Lansing, however, the things to love about it are greatly outnumbered by the things to complain about. Hence, the sarcasm.

Oh, and for people who like pictures of O... here you go.