So Greg and I were cooking last night, and between the oven, toaster oven, and microwave, there was a lot of beeping. The toaster oven, in its eagerness to give feedback, not only beeps when the set temperature is reached or the food is done, but at every touch of a button. With so much beeping, it became hard to distinguish meaningful beeps from superfluous ones. And then it's like online ads...you start tuning them out!

I wonder how many beeps we hear in one day? From an alarm clock (if you use one), to a cell phone waking up, to the blips of logging on, to some microwave action, to the car door or the iPhone/Blackberry to the elevator to the car door again to a truck backing up to the phone again to some more digital toaster action, to the beeping of any number of digital devices in the workplace, to the grocery store checkstand, and sometimes a simulateneous chorus of two or three of these. I'm sure I"m not the first one writing about this, but we live with a LOT of beeping. I'm either becoming assimilated or desensitized...