U-Pop describes itself as the “pop heard ’round the world”. It was no more foreign to me than the music on the most of the other Hits channels (I’m not sure why Cinemax and On Broadway are included in “Hits”) — I just don’t listen to much contemporary pop music. And I had the volume way down, so I couldn’t really tell whether the music was in English or another language.

There wasn’t anything offensive on the channel, but there wasn’t anything which would draw me back, either.

BPM is almost the polar opposite of yesterday’s channel, Audio Visions. BPM plays high-energy dance music, with strong beats and frequent vocals; Audio Visions is laid back in the extreme.

Neither of them is likely to be a preset in my office, but I could see myself tuning to BPM occasionally to wake up after an all-day early-morning conference call (which describes my current situation). Definitely something of a pleasant surprise.

Some people decide to make a Major Production out of turning 50. And that’s ok, as long as we get invited to the party. Which we were.

So we spent a beautiful weekend on the Monterey Peninsula, enjoying wonderful weather, good food, good scenery, and good company. Highly recommended.

We even got a bit of geocaching accomplished, though we were frustrated in our attempt to bag a mobile cache, because it had migrated before we got to the location.

The whale-watching was probably the highlight of the weekend — unfortunately, I didn’t do very well at photographing the whales (my camera is too slow), but I tried:

Dinner at Passionfish was a highlight, too — I would happily go back any time.

Thanks, Diane, for inviting us!

I wasn’t able to tune into Audio Visions until late afternoon — I was having enough trouble hearing what was happening on my all-day conference call without adding background music at this end. And that’s what Audio Visions is — background music. It might be good to use in the office to mask conversations in adjacent offices when I don’t want to listen to something which might distract me.

Recommended, but in small doses only to avoid drowsiness (or in larger doses to promote drowsiness, as required).

Family Talk is badly misnamed. XM’s channel summary does better, calling this channel “Christian Talk”. I suppose that, if you like talk radio and you agree with the beliefs espoused on this channel, you’d enjoy listening. But I don’t. One visit was more than enough, thanks.