This Really Does Change Everything

I left it all to you, my dear (handful of) readers, and (all 5) of you (plus the 5 on Facebook - or are you the same people?) who voted in my Mac or PC poll .  And what you said, in a vote of 4-1 (or 7-3, maybe) was to suffer the slings and arrows of paying an outrageous fortune, so based solely on your advice, i ran back into the arms of Apple.  (This way, if this ends badly, I can blame all of you.  And I know who 3 of you are.)  I realize that i've given the ending a bit of a surprise twist, but i realized that i could get a vastly more powerful iMac for less than a PowerBook, and the fact is, i don't really even take my laptop anywhere, so why limit myself to such a tiny screen and confining keyboard?  And there she is, in her 27 inches of minimalist powerhouse glory.  I am so in love, even if we don't yet speak the same language (Is alt now control, or alt, or that weird infinity-meets-number-key command button? Where is my Windows Explorer button?)  It's okay - hand gestures seem to be enough to get by on for now.

There's glare on the screen from the windows behind my desk, so i'll have to take more shots at night (which is generally when i use it anyway).  But my, oh my, ohhhhh myyyyy is that screen and its resolution mind-altering.  I get sucked into the screen savers like hypnotized cartoon animals whose eyes become little swirls.  For example, and this doesn't even do it justice at all, but here is what editing a photo on this thing looks like:

To give you a sense of scale, that's a full-sized keyboard (Look, Ma!  No wires!)  Then there's the fact that I finally uploaded (downloaded?) all 750 photos from Barcelona (6 weeks later) and another 800 or so stills for a stop-motion movie I'm making on making danishes from scratch (to be posted soon, although be forewarned, it's going to fall into the film noir category).  These photos are huge digital files on my Canon EOS 30D, so they take for-flipping-ever to transfer.  Normally.  On the new Light of My Life, it took approximately 1.5 seconds per photo.  This used to be about a minute per photo, I swear.  My life is forever changed.  Plus, iMovie is really fun and pretty intuitive, since I've never done movie editing in my life and put together my little film (the first 3/4 of it) in about an 30 minutes.  I even did my first guitar lesson - the E major chord - on Garage Band (my fingers still hurt 3 days later, though, so I'm not sure about my future as a singer-songwriter).  So, you'll all be happy to know that the acquisition therapy seems to be working, and I promise to post some happier things.

Which reminds me of a story (as all things do).  One day, a BFF and then-roommate of mine and i came across an interesting discovery.  After crap-on-crap weeks (possibly months) for both of us that left us each wallowing in deep and wide pools of self-pity, my friend's mother offered - nay, demanded - that we borrow her Audi TT convertible and go for a drive on what was in my memory still one of the most gorgeous summer days DC has ever had.  So, we put on cute summer dresses and made a plan to drive up and down the GW Parkway and then get cocktails at the Georgetown waterfront.  About halfway into the drive/flight, with the engine purring as the trees, the curves of the road, and the Potomac whizzed by, and with the wind in our hair, sun on our shoulders, and music in our ears, I turned to my friend with a grin from ear to ear and said "You know, money actually can buy happiness.  How can you be unhappy in this car?"  (Rumor has it that this story has made it to someone who works for Audi and may show up in some marketing campaign, so if it does, this entry will be proof that they stole it from me.  It's okay, for a TT of my own, they can have it.)