Nothing of consequence in this entry

I've been baking today for tonight's tractor club Christmas dinner.  An apple pie is done and there's a Buck Buchanan sweet potato pie in the oven now.  I'll probably take the crock pot with garden-raised sweet corn from the freezer.

Because Cliff has been out of the house a lot and I've kept my hands busy, I've been listening to my Pandora folk station as I work.  Out of the eight Pandora stations I've created, "folk" is the main one I listen to.  Since I started paying a monthly fee to Pandora, they have done a pretty good job of balancing my music so that I get just enough variety, and for the most part, I get what I like to hear.  

"Folk" encompasses a lot of kinds of music, and my tastes take in many of them:  The Negro blues from the 30's and 40's, groups like Peter, Paul, and Mary and others from the folk revival in the 60's, Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan, Ramblin' Jack Elliot, John Prine, and the like.  Once in awhile I don't mind a little bluegrass, but today Pandora decided I was going to hear nothing but bluegrass and negro blues.  I'm serious, that's all I was hearing.  Oh, and quite a bit of Doc Watson thrown in, but a lot of his music is close to bluegrass.

So I did a lot of "thumbs-downs" and skipping songs.  At the beginning I was listening to Pandora on the Amazon Echo, so I could do this hands-free by telling it what to do.  However, one is only allowed so many skips and thumbs-downs in a given length of time before Pandora puts a stop to it.  I reached my limit about the time Bill Monroe started singing "Blue Moon of Kentucky". 

No problem.  For some reason, even though I'm using the same Pandora account on all devices, I can go to the television in the bedroom which has a Roku hooked up to it, go to the Pandora app, and skip songs up to my limit again.  Only of course, it isn't hands-free in there.  I had to use my flour-coated hands to skip and give a thumbs-down when necessary.  In spite of the inconvenience involved, before you know it I had reached my limit again, because I was still getting negro blues and bluegrass!  

No problem.  I turned off that TV and headed for the living room.  Directv has Pandora on it, and my skips and thumbs-downs start all over.  Cliff showed up about that time, though, so I turned it off.  I do find it sort of a thrill to think I am fooling Pandora when I get to skip the full amount on every device.  

I believe my music lineup is back to normal now.  One can only hope.

It's rather nice to be pestered with such a minor problem when there are so many major ones going on in the world.  Perhaps Pandora was just doing me a favor, distracting me from the larger issues.