As I often do in the evenings, I am poking through my collection of music files, adding the songs to various playlists, rating the songs, and filling in missing album art or other tagged information.  Yeah, I’m a little bit of a geek when it comes to my music files.  As a followup to last months post about The Soundtrack of Our Lives, I decided to add a few more selections to my own personal soundtrack.

The World I Know — Collective Soul

For me this will always be Chinese New Year’s of 1996.  I had gone out with some friends for dinner at the Silver Dragon Restaurant in Chinatown and I offered to give this girl a ride home to save her a long trip to the deep south parts of the city on the C-Train.  Her name was Kristin and at that time we traveled with the same group of friends a lot.  I wanted to go out with her so I really appreciated the chance to be alone with her and talk.  I remember how the snow was falling as we drove through downtown and when this song came on she asked me if I knew the name of it because she really liked it.  It was one of those really great nights.  In the end it never worked out.  Later that year I asked her out for dinner and, while she initally accepted, she later changed her mind.  She explained it was a misunderstanding and she thought it was a “just friends” thing.  As our group of friends all moved on to other things we saw each other less and less until eventually losing contact completely less than year later.  However, for that one snowy night, the possibilities seemed endless.

Carrying Your Love With Me — George Strait

May 1997.  Shirley and I had just made the decision to get married the night before I was scheduled to leave for Ontario to attend the wedding of my friends Bill and Michelle.  I drove all the way to Toronto and back with just six CDs in the changer of my ’94 Pontiac Sunbird.  This disc was one of them and I remember driving somewhere along the north shore of Lake Superior in the dark with the rain coming down singing along with this one:

“On a lonely highway, stuck out in the rain.
Darlin’ all I have to do is speak your name.
The clouds roll back and the waters part.
The sun starts shining in my heart for you.
You’re right there in everything I do”

It doesn’t get any more perfect than that.  In the end I drove the entire trip from Toronto to Calgary non-stop except for a 30 minute sleep break in Kenora.  In retrospect it was a dumb thing to do because I don’t remember almost anything from the Saskatchewan portion of the trip, but a man in love will do a lot of stupid things!