About a year and a half ago, I noticed that everyone else on the planet had an ipod. Except, of course, me. I wasn't sure what they did besides play songs, but I wanted one. So I began thinking of a way I could justfify spending $130 on something I didn't need and had no clue how to use. Having no job, I immediately started looking for something to sell.
Flashback to my early 20's:
If you live in Boulder, Colorado and you want to fit in, there are a few things you need; a pair of flip flops, a backpack full of granola, and a good sleeping bag. If you are a chick, it also doesn't hurt to have really hairy armpits, but I'm talking about the sleeping bag here. As a youngster, my family camped a lot but it was the kind of camping done from a really nice trailer. The rough part of "roughing it" was that the TV in the trailer was black and white. Now a 20-something, living in Boulder, I had some friends who convinced me that I would enjoy a slightly more rugged version of camping. But first, I would need some equipment - including a $225 sleeping bag that was rated to zero degrees. That means that if I were stupid enough to go camping on a night when the temp would get down to zero, theoretically, I would not freeze to death. The problem was that I don't think I ever camped on a night that got below a blustery 80 degrees. So the few times that I camped, I spent the night on top of my sleeping bag. In a pool of my own sweat.
Flash forward to a year and a half ago: I find myself scanning our home for something to sell and I'm drawn to the beloved sleeping bag which incidentally still has the tags on it. Yes, I used it THAT much. I decided to list it on Ebay (don't worry - I was honest and said it was used but in excellent condition. I didn't mention the pool of sweat part.) A few days later it sold for $137! I now had the money it would take to be cool.
Bryan used the money to buy my shiny new ipod for me. We spent an entire weekend going through all my CD's and Bryan put all the songs I wanted on it for me since I'm technology impaired.
I was finally as cool as everyone else - I, too, could drive around town rocking out to "Brass Monkey" with my tinted windows down. I was no longer bound by the cassette player in my trusty old Buick. It changed my life.
Now fast forward to a month ago. I plugged my ipod in to the car's outlet and...nothing happened. Blank screen. To my absolute horror all my songs had been somehow erased. You know how horses can smell fear? It was just like that - my ipod smelled my technology impairment and delete my songs just to be a bastard!
So this week I begged Bryan to show me how to put the songs back on. I took him one CD so he could show me, knowing that it was going to take me a while to get all the CD's put back on.
But every time he tried to show me, something went wrong. Bryan, being a little more tech-savvy than I, had to troubleshoot over and over again. Meanwhile, everyone in our house under the age of three was having meltdown - Wesley was jumping on the bed and taking papers out of the file cabinet and Wyatt was crying and wanted to be held and constantly jiggled. By someone in a chicken suit. It was as if every element in the process was against us. And I'm not sure if Bryan is a bad teacher (probably not since he has a teaching degree), I am a slow learner, or my ipod and computer are seriously messed up, but adding five songs should NOT be that hard. I wanted to Slam. My. Head. On. The. Computer. Keyboard.
After about an hour, Bryan announced, "There. That's how you add the songs." Wow, after only an hour and 17,000 steps, there were five whole songs on my ipod!
And so the next time I have about a year of free time and a deep desire to torture myself, I'll add more songs to my ipod. But until then, I might be stuck with the old Peter, Paul, and Mary cassette tape.
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