My Really Cool Birthday Present

As is often the case, I’m a little late to the party (see First-time Fatherhood at Forty-Four), but I’m having fun. Tami and Nessa gave me an iPod Classic for my birthday, and I’m just starting to really get going with it. I’m slowly loading my CD collection, which means I have access to much more music at work. In fact, I'm listening to it right now. :-)

As I always suspected would be the case, the real beauty is being able to get individual songs on the fly. Last night I heard a beautiful daddy-daughter song on the car radio (“Cinderella” by Steven Curtis Chapman). When I got home I went on iTunes, bought the song, put it on my iPod, and was able to play it for Tami about 90 minutes after I heard it for the first time.

Now that’s what I call instant gratification! This “internet” thing just might have a future…

Time For Recommended Service?

My life odometer flipped to a new digit yesterday. For those who want to know the exact number:

Nessa’s age x 16 = Shawn’s age

It was a good day. I took the day off work, not because it was my birthday but because I was helping our new Associate Pastor move in to her apartment. When that was done I went and bummed around my favorite stores for a while, seeing if there was anything I wanted to buy myself for a birthday present. I ended up getting a VeggieTales DVD. For supper we went to Hackberry’s (a restaurant run by our food co-op, where we can get gluten-free food) and then I went off to the weekly meeting of the La Crosse Board Game Group. They let the birthday boy pick the games, but showed no mercy otherwise: I came in dead last in all three games we played. True, I’d never played any of them before, but still…

I received many nice cards and other well-wishes from family, friends and co-workers. My darling wife and delightful daughter also gave me a wonderful present: an iPod. I’ve been thinking about getting an MP3 player for months, and now I have a really good one.

Thank you Tami! Thank you Nessa! I love you!!

Take One...

The new laptop came with a webcam ... we're still figuring this out, but thought Grandparents and such would enjoy ... Shawn told me NOT to edit it so you can get a chuckle too ... Nessa is almost back to her old self although you will notice the hanky in her hand that she is rarely without these days (security hanky?).

Back to work now ... more later this week. I promise as Megan hasn't had fun with it yet.

OK, we're so new to this that I didn't think to look at the file size before uploading it...2 minutes didn't seem like that long when we were shooting the video!