Idiscovered the Ipod

I was happily gifted with a 16gb (orange) Ipod Nano for Christmas. I can't say I have always wanted one, doing just fine with the 40-50 buck mp3 players. But, damn if I didn't keep losing the cord that plugged it into my computer (which of course, they don't sell replacements for). So I got me the real deal... and it is pretty awesome. I have not had a lot of free listening time yet, but I have certainly filled the memory to near breaking point. 16 GB almost all gone. Shit, the first computer I ever used had 4 MEGA bytes in its whole memory. Amazing.

The possibilities for this thing are endless. I like having most of my tunes with me at all times, and in a neat tiny package. As I may have mentioned in the past, music is kind of an important thing to me. When I am home (if the tele isn't on) I always have music going. It's relaxing; it's invigorating; it's a series of mini cross-sections of my life as I know and knew it. I have been trying to remember I have this convenient little device in my daily activities, trying to invent ways to use it. Just yesterday I went to clean all the dog crap out of the basement (don't ask), and thought, "hey, I should shovel dog crap into a bucket with music in my ears!" Now I get to roam around my world with a little soundtrack to everything.


Perhaps the most exciting aspect are the podcasts. What a great idea, producing little hors douvres of news and movies and indy music and radio shows and uploading them for everyone to listen to. I love having my favorite NPR programs automatically downloaded to my Ipod, so I can listen at my leisure (since I never get to listen to NPR live anymore). Hooray for This American Life. There are a number of government-type groups that have podcasts too, which is perfect since I am trying to understand and learn about some of these things. I have since downloaded Inside the FBI programs, podcasts from the Counter Intelligence Centre, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and other fascinating things. This is on top of some fun stuff like bluegrass songs of the day and neat little independent music programs. The potential for these are great, and the selections endless.

I am still afraid to carry this with me everywhere (especially the hospital) until I get a protective case. This thing feels sturdy, but I fear for it's little orange exoskeleton. For now I will play mother kangaroo to my little joey here and carry on with my adventures worthy of a soundtrack.

(And in case you were wondering... I was listening to music on my Ipod the entire time I was typing this post).

Apparently, it snows here

Soooo, H and I wanted to have dinner at this sweet little restaurant about 25 minutes away, a taqueria of sorts, but one that makes food from the Southwest. They even fly in fresh green chiles from New Mexico weekly. Anyhow, we walk out the door, and H says, "It's snowing." Yeah, it was snowing alright. No big deal to two kids straight from Oregon. But oh if the people on the road weren't freaking out. The bridge we normally go over - totally blocked with cars going nowhere, just all stopped. We had to make an illegal turn and head to another bridge and zig zag through down town to get around the idiots. The ride was smooth until we tried to get onto the regional East-West highway (22), which was backed up as far as I could see. A long story short, we had to abort our anticipated dinner with some yummy green chile burritos. Seriously, by that time, we had only gone about five minutes worth of normal driving distance, with the bulk of our trip ahead of us (in traffic).

I have certainly never lived anywhere that got snowed on during the winter. Sure, in Portland, we were very close to snow, and it snowed a couple rare weird times. But Bethlehem actually gets snow every year, in the valley (and I live on a hill). This should be interesting. Though people hint that it never snows too much, no crazy blizzards. There is the occasional ice storm that shuts down the city, which should make getting to work interesting. Well, I guess that's why one of our cars is four wheel drive and the other is all wheel drive. The question is: to buy snow tires or not to buy snow tires for Heidi? Either way, we need to get ourselves prepared for who knows what. This is definitely a different environment, and we have no idea what to expect. It's about time to put together that emergency box.

Anyhow, I babble. Here are a couple pictures from our first snow.