Most expensive cat toy ever

I finally caved into the 21st century and bought an ipod yesterday (which I refuse to capitalize even though my English major brain is freakin' out). I paid in cash that I had saved in my 'Ladies Nice Things Account', i.e. the battered envelope in the cash file where I save my extra spending money. I've been saving up for a while with no particular goal in mind. Statia mentioned the other day that I might enjoy exercise more if I had an ipod. Since I don't enjoy exercise AT ALL, any little nudge might help (mmm, nudge rhymes with fudge, mmmm). And I had two frosted brownies for breakfast this morning and half a tube of butter crackers for lunch. So any little bit might help.

This has been the most frustrating experience of my life. Not even filing for graduation has caused this much trauma. I decided Friday that I wanted to go get my ipod Saturday. Less time to back out of plans is best for me, because I will find any excuse not to do the thing I really wanted to do, if you give me 24 hours.

Saturday morning we head to Circuit City, hoping there will be a good going-out-of-business sale.

There must have been, because this location is already closed. Grr.

So we head to Best Buy. We find the ipod display and compare. I've already compared prices because my purchasing pleasure will be seriously impacted if I find a better price later. But Apple rules the world, so the prices are all the same everywhere. Should have bought it during the Xmas sales. The helpful sales associate asks if we need anything, and I tell her I'm just deciding which one to get.

Is it wrong to base your electronics choice on the color selection available? Surely not.

So she proceeds to hand us a sheet of paper explaining the warranty they have available, for $15.99, that covers everything but theft. Apparently, Apple's genius plan of world domination involves not selling replacement batteries. You have to buy a new ipod. Great. I'm about to spend $160 on something you can't pop a new battery into--like every other electronic device on the planet. Starting to lose that buying high. She leaves, and I decide.

Enter second helpful associate. He spends the entire time he's unlocking/relocking the case telling me to get the warranty because Apple's customer service is crap and they never answer the phone, and his conked out after a year. Great. So I'm basically doomed to spend $160 every year on continually dying ipods. This isn't sounding so great. And don't I want anything else? No case? Nothing? Just this $160 piece of crap? Ok...

The ipods have to be delivered by a sales associate to the checkout, but a manager person makes our associate wait until another customer has made their decision so he can deliver their ipod to the checkout with ours. Finally, our guy says he'll return for theirs and delivers ours to Customer Service, but not after a shouted discussion all the way from the ipod case to the CS desk about 'Why can't I just take this to a register? It HAS to be Customer Service? Why?' as he's walking backward to the desk. He goes to leave us, but the Customer Service lady is wrapped up in a return by one of the surviving members of Lynyrd Skynyrd, judging by appearances, and sends him to the checkout. Grrrrrrr.

Oh, lord. I want out. I'm done, I don't need it this badly, I'm ready to bolt. If Wayne hadn't been with me, and I could have lied about where I'd been, I would have walked.

We get to the checkout and there are 5 people in line with two cashiers. They open more registers, but the lady with our ipod gets moved to a new register. It won't accept her log-in, so we wait some more. Finally, she rings it up. Again, we get the spiel about what a piece of junk this is, the key will start sticking, the battery will die, so I'd better buy that warranty. NONONONO. Just give me the damn phone. And, yes, please put the four-inch square box into a tiny plastic bag. Aarrgh.

We get home and I have a peaceful twelve-hour lull because it has to charge and I have to go to work.

Today I am all fired up to work on this thing. After my breakfast of champions, I hunker down to the computer. Four hours later, I have an iTunes account with 'A Prairie Home Companion' on my account. But not on the ipod. Instead I have an album by someone I've never heard of in a style I don't like. So I'm listening to PHC on my computer and the ipod is in the floor, and FatCat is scrabbling around with the earbuds. Hence the most expensive cat toy ever.

I will spare you the gory details of downloading iTunes, finding podcasts, swearing about how much music costs, trying to download audio books from my local library's site, and the emotional eating I've done (that's why it took four hours, those brownies aren't gonna bake themselves).

Poor Wayne. I've texted and called him AT WORK about this damn thing. I feel too stupid to call anyone who actually knows how to work these things.

I know how it will go: "Oh, it's so easy, just doubleclickdragexpandeditclickaccept. Then go to Gobbledygook, click on Computerese, drag down the Whatchacally Box, and wait until it's combustionized (that always takes a while), and you've got it! Just repeat all that for each and every thing you want on the ipod. It's so easy! My four-year-old niece did it last week, so of course you can. No really, you can. Ok, stop crying...Uh, got another call, gotta go!"

The high point of my day was making "I hate my ipod" the answer to my security question on my iTunes account. Which will probably send the Apple SWAT team to my house to reprimand me and take away my ipod. Which would be fine at this point. My cats have plenty of toys.