So I was on the radio in Albany. Not Albany, CA, where I live, but Albany, NY, the more noteworthy of the municipalities, at least from a national perspective.

It was a conversation with Ian Pickus from WAMC, which was taped a couple weeks ago but only recently broadcast.

The fact that it wasn’t live actually proved quite beneficial, as a scheduling snafu had Ian calling just moments before I was supposed to drive my kids to school and daycare, respectively. Making them 15 minutes late wasn’t a problem; keeping them quietly occupied with something other than myself, however, was. The older one walked into my office in the middle of the conversation, and although I was able to quietly usher her out, my train of thought was destroyed. A couple minutes later, the younger one started screaming outside the door when he found that he couldn’t get it to open. (Door locks: underrated.)

Ian, ever tactful, offered me the chance to pause and take care of business, with the promise that the part with the two-year-old’s background bellows could be edited out.

(All in all, it was smoother than the time last August, when Scott Boras returned my call for a story I was writing. Unfortunately, it was long after business hours, and I was just getting the kids out of the tub. They ended up running through the house, naked, dripping and screaming, chasing me from room to room as I tried to escape for a moment of quiet concentration. It would have been impossible for Boras not to have heard them, but he continued on as if nothing was happening, determined to say his piece. Needless to say, my note-taking during that particular interview was something less than stellar.)

Had WAMC made the audio embeddable, I’d have done so. Instead, you’ll have to visit their site to hear it.

– Jason