A few days in advance of last week's bus trip, I downloaded an hour of white noise. I saved it on both my MP3 player and the memory card on my cell phone. I got it so I could play it on the bus ride home and override the ambient noise in the bus. I couldn't sleep, an issue I often have on a moving vehicle, but I did get to rest in relative peace. As I discovered at the end of the ride, when I turned off the white noise and removed the noise-reducing earphones, I had successfully masked not only most of the DVD that was being played, but also most of the ambient conversation and ALL of the bus motor, the a/c, and the whooshing of the pneumatic windshield wipers.

I've discovered a new use for a white-noise device: drowning out the show on TV that you'd *really* rather not hear while you're trying to nap.

I still don't feel well. Resting on the sofa with one or two purring stripey critters for company is about all I'm fit to do. Mark, meanwhile, is channel surfing. No problem.

Until I overheard this emanating from the TV set: "She's seen here using her roommate's toothbrush to scrub the toilet bowl, then putting it back as though nothing happened."

OK, there went my drowsiness. Now I was wide awake, and queasy into the bargain. "EWWW! What in heck are you *watching*, anyway ?"

It's some program called "Caught on Tape". From where I sit, if you're setting up hidden cameras to catch your roommate pilfering your stuff (as in another scene from the same program) or playing revolting pranks, you're faced with two options. Either upgrade your roommates by moving in with SANE people, or fly solo and live alone.

But in any case, I didn't want to watch OR listen to this program. Hello, sound masking. Cell phone: on. Earphones: in. White noise file: looping. Goodbye, unwanted TV audio.

Eventually, Mark surfed to some other channel. But I didn't have to listen to any more disgusting stuff in the meantime.