Ow. It hurts to type this right now, and I’m not talking about the endless afflictions of emotional pain. This is not something I’m especially proud of, no way, but to be entirely honest with you, because I like you: a little too much had been drunk last night (and I’m not talking about water), by me.

Yes, I have mighty big arms to give myself such a massive self-congratulatory bearhug, but, you know, I’m entitled, it’s my special day. And so, here are a couple of things I am considering for my next one hundred podcasts:

– podcast in Estonian
– serialise a novel (eh, a short one)

I began scheming for the one hundredth podcast several weeks ago, thinking that I’d gather all the voices that were most important to me, personally and podcastionally, share the wealth and spread the love, and, let’s be honest, go soak on a beach in a land where all the drinks are pink, while all my friends hang out in the trenches of pops and hisses.

Chances are, you’re going to listen to today’s podcast and think: “That’s it?” Or “maybe the audio file got cut off… I’m missing half the story!” Or “Miette’s such a lazy snot to pick such a short story.” But the truth is: I am lazy, it’s true, but that’s never stopped me in the past from reading much longer pieces, you know this! However, the next one, the very special one, is going to be among the longest ever podcasted, and I wanted to make sure you were ready and well-rested for it.

There’s this new higher-than-hightech device that’s now mine, intended to make my podcasts sound better for you, and while I’m not sure of its success rate at doing so, I do know that it’s got every kind of tech-sounding hypermegaphonics that should make it crisper than a blade of grass blowing in the wind in Surround Sound (do you know they really make those noises using cabbages!

So sport seems to be in the air these days. There’s something going on tonight involving hundreds of pounds of helmets and costumery, complete with grandiose spectacle and and pretend warriors, and I’m told this has nothing to do with Wagner. We’ll see. And the Internet tells me the Olympics are coming up soon, though I thought we just finished with one of them? And let us not forget a tiny little event called the World Cup…

There are a few things that leave you so exhilarated, enchanted with simultaneous possession and dispossession, blown away punch-in-the-belly style by battles of bliss and bewilderment. It is these moments, precious listeners, that are boiling the bean this eve.

Podcasters and/or storytellers among you might be familiar with the feeling from the discovery of a new story,