A Little Death: the Photo iPod Disaster of 2006
Let me start by exclaiming how much I love my iPod. One might not immediately know this, but for someone who’s in the gym six days a week and recently made the transition from a loud, lively, music-filled workplace to one you could hear a pin drop in, my iPod is certainly responsible for the maintenance of my sanity at times.

And being a PC user, I’ll even admit that I love Apple. I love their clean, white wrapper, icon, and their witty little TV ads, and while you won’t find one sitting on my desk anytime soon, I’m certainly willing to admit that they have their advantages over PCs at times.

But I must caution other iPod owners: no matter how sturdily you think your iPod is made, it is not, under any circumstances, meant to be dropped on the floor. Nor is it designed to take such an impact twice within 24 hours. It is not meant to withstand the force of hitting the pavement, while dropped from one’s gym bag sliding out of the back of an SUV, even if it is cuddled in an iPod sock. Nor is it designed to ward off the weight of one’s laptop dropped from a bench, even if the laptop is in its bag, surrounded by the squishy contents of the day’s snacks, magazines, a sweater and other assorted items.

Yes, these types of jolts – especially two in one day – will definitely render even the heartiest iPod useless, despite the valiant efforts of your husband, iTunes and the uber-hip associate at the Apple Store.

Such a disaster will require you to recycle your iPod – while receiving the 10 percent discount, of course – to purchase a newer, blacker, shinier, video iPod, with 80 GB of memory. You may shed a small tear during the transaction, but the kind associates at the Apple Store will assure you that "this sort of thing" is quite normal – most of them have one, if not three stories of friends or family members who have done the same. After which, you will return home, to spend your Saturday evening reloading the photos, charging the iPod, happy with your new acquisition, but lamenting your stupidity.

How I loved thee, my Photo iPod. RIP.

posted by paula 10:09 PM

Ryan 0, Leaves 1
This weekend we did what I like to call, Putting the Yard to Bed. My friends with townhomes most likely cringe when I say this and I usually get the odd stare of what-exactly-does-that-entail?

It’s not something that takes long, but somehow, it manages to eat up a whole Saturday afternoon that’s spent rolling up and draining hoses, shutting water off to the outside of the house, clipping back dead hostas and other perennials, and the task that can prove deadliest of all: mulching and disposing of leaves.

Our neighborhood is full of very mature trees, and our yard is no exception. We have large ones that seem to drop their leaves at the slightest hint of fall, the only blessing being that they typically do it in one day. Ryan believes that because our previous neighbor imagined some evildoing by the roots of a silver leaf maple that bordered our property, anything tree-related must irritate every neighbor. So he does the neighborly thing and promptly keeps our trees from the neighbor’s house and picks up their deposits as soon as they happen.

Saturday, he took on the leaves, in more than just a figurative manner. While I tended to the hoses on the east side of the house, he was mulching leaves and putting them in the yard waste container provided by our disposal company. The container looks exactly like any other rolling garbage dumpster, except labeled with Yard Waste Only. You can only imagine what I’ve considered yard waste just to get someone to take the material from our house.

Somewhere in the middle of my hose draining I hear someone faintly calling my name, along with scattered words, such as ‘towel’ and ‘help.’ On hearing it, I did what any good wife would do, knowing it was probably coming from her spouse: considered ignoring it. Instead, I walked around the side of the house to find Ryan, slumped over the landscaping rocks, blood running down his forehead and splashing onto the rocks. After retrieving a towel I returned, to examine him further, expecting an emergency room visit shortly after.

I’m not sure what transpired while I was on the other side of the house, but he not only managed to split his head open on the dumpster and lose both sandals, but also completely cover himself in mulched leaves in the process. He claims he was moving the dumpster while the cover was flipped back and ended up tripping on the cover – something that apparently happens so frequently, they’ve printed the warning “Do not move while cover is open” on the inside of the cover. Go figure.

When we realized the injury wouldn’t require an emergency room visit, I was tempted to have him stay on the ground so I could capture the moment on film. My better judgment told me that was inappropriate and Ryan also refused all requests to recreate in the incident. Instead, I returned to the scene of the accident today and captured the only thing left of it: his blood on the rocks:

posted by paula 9:02 PM