Summer’s nuts. The boss on vacation, which doubles my load here, and there are so many different things going on that it gets hard to keep up with the blog.

Being so busy I spend a lot of time in the car this time of year, which without air conditioning isn’t fun, but what are you gonna do? I plan on driving this thing into the ground, so I have to suck it up for three months and deal with it.

But, being in the car without a good radio is not acceptable. A few years back I got Sirius for Christmas and have never turned back to regular radio. The satellite stuff is just so much better. I listen to Howard and Bubba, and several different music stations like Lithium, Channel 20 (alt rock) and Classic Vinyl. Every now and then I also check out the Bruce Springsteen channel and there’s ESPN and a couple of other sports channels. During NFL season I’ve got every game there is, and also NBA and some hockey and college sports too. If the merger with XM ever goes through I’ll have MLB too, which would be great.

So there’s a ton of good stuff to listen to. And, let’s say you get a phone call but you’re really into what you’re listening to. No worries, just like TiVo at home, you simply pause what you’re listening too and then pick it back up when you’re done. It’s awesome. The pause can hold up to 45-minutes worth of stuff, so you never have to miss anything. What’s great about that is that on the few channels that do have commercials, you can fast-forward through them if you’ve paused what you were listening to. The music stations, though, are completely commercial free.

So I love my Sirius, but about two weeks ago the antenna broke. You’d think that this would be an easy fix, but it wasn’t. I went to Radio Shack and they didn’t have any. I checked the store in Hyannis too, and they were out. I was told they had them in the Yarmouth store, so I headed out there after covering a game that way only to find out that they close at 7 PM (I got there at 7:30). Days were slipping by and all I had was WEEI, which is okay, but it gets very tedious listening to the same arguments over and over and over again. “Manny doesn’t try.” “Manny’s an icon.” blah blah blah … shut up.

Last Wednesday I stopped in at the Falmouth store and asked if they could order one for me. They said they’d do a store-to-store transfer (from Yarmouth, of course) for me and that they’d call when it came in. It took — ready for this — six days for the part to move 23 miles from Yarmouth to Falmouth.

But I finally got it back yesterday and I couldn’t be happier. I had no idea how much I missed my crystal clear radio until I plugged it back in. I hope I never have to go back to regular radio ever again.