Making the Case

I'm very, ummmm, careful about my iPhone. Not only because I've been able to sell each of them for a (reasonably) tidy sum when the time came for a new model to be released, but because I just don't want it to have any scratches. At least, not any scratches I'd have to be confronted with on a regular basis.

I settled on a case I liked — a flip case, so the screen would covered when I wasn't using it — shortly after I bought my first iPhone. I'm a true creature of habit, and as such, I've somehow managed to keep using this case for almost three years, through three different iPhone models, despite slight changes in size. (The second and third iPhone designs were slightly thinner at the edge, but thicker in the body, as many of us become at this age.)

But with a completely new design (much more thin, slightly more narrow), now I have to find — and become accustomed to using — a completely new case. (If you're a true creature of habit, you'll know just how difficult that can be.) Flip cases for the iPhone don't seem to have ever really caught on, so rather than wait in hope, I've decided on a case made by hand, of bamboo. Most cases are made of silicone, or hard plastic, but I like the warmth, and the organic quality of the wood. (I'll even have an option to have it custom-engraved, too, though I haven't decided if I will.)

But it will be three or four weeks — possibly longer! — before I'll have the case. That's an eternity in opportunities-to-scratch-my-iPhone days. For the time being, I'm using a simple canvas slipcase that offers only minimal protection, but it seems to fit well. (I'll probably keep using it, even with the case, to protect the screen while it's in my pocket.) And I'm being very, very careful.

Spoilers!

My seven-year-old saw Toy Story 3 yesterday, as part of a classmate's birthday party. On the way home from the theatre, he completely gave away a surprise from the story. "Spoilers!" I said to him (too late). Then I had to explain what a Spoiler! is, and why someone might not want to know.

I've been keeping a secret from myself all week.

Tonight is the final episode for this series of Doctor Who, which aired earlier in the day (or the evening, if you were watching it), and I know almost nothing about it. I'd like to keep it that way for the next half-hour, before I have the chance to watch.

No previews were aired following last Saturday's episode (which ended with a thrilling cliffhanger, of course), and when one was made available a few days later, I almost watched it. But then I thought to myself, no, it'll be much more fun to be really, truly surprised.

Not too long after the series returned in 2005, word got out several weeks in that the lead, Christopher Eccleston, would not be back the following year. So we all knew what to expect at the end of thirteen weeks — The Doctor, near death, regenerates and takes on a new identity. That's a concept most everyone who watches the series would be familiar with, and anticipating it didn't make the rest of the series, or that final episode, any less exciting to watch — but it sure would have been such fun to have been surprised.

I'm not expecting anything quite so unexpected. But then again, you never know...

Recycling

I had planned to sit out this cycle of iPhone — no, really. I really did. But then, there came an opportunity that persuaded me otherwise.

My seven-year-old has an iPod Touch (his beloved iPod Touch) that he's been using for some time now. It doesn't have a built-in microphone, so I bought a little device (about the size of a push-pin) to serve that purpose. And it works, but it plugs into the earphone jack to do it, which means that the sound is switched off when he uses it, which means he can't use applications like, say, Talking Carl.

That, and he really doesn't have enough storage space. (He was six years old when I bought this — I thought 8 GB would be more than enough.)

So I came up with this brilliant, persuade-my-wife idea: we could wait for Christmas, and hope for a new iPod Touch with a built-in microphone (which seems just about inevitable, though there's no guarantee), or — here's the brilliant part — if I were to buy a new iPhone, I could give him my older model. He gets a built-in microphone, he even gets a built-in camera, and twice the storage space.

I could sell it (I've done that twice before), and make enough money to cover the costs of a new iPod Touch — and then some! — but then, there's still no guarantee that the kind of iPod we want will be coming. (And it's much easier this way.)

She agreed that this was a good idea (even better, it could be in time for my son's birthday, in August). So I'm getting a new iPhone, after all.

I was expecting to have to go stand in a long, long line, as I had the last two years. But June 24 (the date the new iPhone was to go on sale) would be the last day of school, with dismissal at 9:30 AM. So if I were to wait in line, I'd have a seven-year-old with me, with all the patience of, well, a seven-year-old. (It's just as well I didn't — the lines at most Apple retail stores this morning have been, according to many reports, completely ridiculous.)

Thankfully, it turned out Apple would be offering pre-orders again this time. (I actually complained politely about this last year, and I'm pleased that it might have had some effect.) So I'll preorder the week-or-so before, sit back, and just wait for FedEx to arrive.

That seemed like a perfectly reasonable option. But then, everyone else had the same idea. It took all day, off and on, to successfully place an order. And just in time, too. Not too long after that, advance orders were expected to ship in the beginning of July. (Not too long after that, they were shipping in mid-July.)

The new iPhone arrived yesterday, a day early.

Insomniac

This one, I think she has it all worked out. While the rest of her world is still sleeping, she gets up early, ahead of everyone else (usually in the late morning, often before Noon), and she has the world all to herself. There's nobody to quarrel with over food, or good hiding places.

Of course, that means she has to suffer through the heat of the afternoon — in fur, no less! — and that can't be much fun. But it's reasonably cool in the shade, beneath the deck, and there's a source of cool water close by.

And if she scratches at my back door long enough, she knows that sooner or later, I'll probably bring her food.

She's adapted her habits to best take advantage of the world around her. Either that, or she's an insomniac.

(It's a wonderful world of anthropomorphism: a nearsighted Northern Flicker flew into my office window this afternoon. And a deer was sneezing in my driveway.)

Nearsighted

I think, if my eyesight gets any worse, I could be content just to listen to the movies Melvyn Douglas was in.

The Lodger

There's a something that lives under my house.

I should start at the beginning: our house doesn't have a basement, it has a crawlspace. (It really isn't good for much of anything — too damp for storage, and not all that accessible, but there you are.) There's a small wooden door on the side of the house, but the most of the panel had rotted away by the end of last year, and I put off replacing it. This year, after all the recent raccoon activity, I decided the time had come to do something about that.

Now, I was just about certain that someone — or something — had taken up residence in the crawlspace while it was open (not for any particular reason, it just seemed more likely than not), and I certainly didn't want any harm to come to them. So I left a small plate of dry cat food and a container of water close to the entrance before putting the new door in place. Sure enough, within a day, some of the food had been eaten — but not all that much, not nearly as much as I expected.

I left the door open, just enough, with the hope that whatever it was might wander off.

I tried again, a few days later, this time with another small plate of cat food on a piece of cardboard, and — this was my brilliant idea! — surrounded it with baby powder. Whatever it was, at least it would leave footprints I might be able to identify. And it did — there was lots of traffic (at least, that what I think it was), and a few distinct prints. I think it's a mouse. Or mice. The prints seemed larger than I would have expected, but who knows, perhaps mice have big feet.

At least it isn't another raccoon.

Left Over

More of the same here.

Age

This might be remembered as the point in my life where I finally began to feel my age. Or the effects of aging. Or something. These days, when I get sick (though it doesn't happen that often), I feel as though it's hitting me just a bit harder than it used to. And I need to watch my sleeping habits more carefully — I'm much more susceptible to lack of sleep. Without enough, I'll wander through the following day without focus.

I was thinking perhaps this had just been a difficult week, between the vaccination, the cold, and the increasingly oppressive heat. But I watched Caddyshack for the first time, and I kept thinking that it would have been much, much more funny if I had seen it about thirty years ago.

I need new glasses, too.

Quicksilver