Something naughty...

I did something naughty. Not naughty as in a 16 year old school girl. Or naughty as in cat burglary. More naughty as in buying something which one really shouldn't buy. In my case it was one of these shiny little things. I don't really need. I can't really afford. I don't have enough music to fill it. And I love it.

For those of you who are curious (who am I kidding... no one is curious, but I'm going to keep blabbing on about it 'cause it's my new toy), I bought one of the 40GB fourth generation iPods. And it's very nice. Although it was a bit bastard to get all of the songs from my laptop on to the iPod. For some reason it kept on messing up after transferring 100 or 200 songs. After a few hours of the mysterious "Unknown Error - 36" message I tried to wipe the disk and try again from fresh. Sadly this process messed up the poor little fellow so much that I had to take him back to the Apple store and get them to fix it. In fact I was all ready to ask for a refund, but they fixed it so quickly that I thought I'd give it another try. After persevering through a few more file transfer hangups and computer reboots, I managed to get a few hundred songs on my iPod and I got to take it out for a test drive... well actually it was a test walk, but you get the picture. Strangely enough, when I returned from my little stroll around Columbus the remaining 1500 songs transferred without a hitch. Since then I've managed to copy almost my entire cd collection on to the iPod without any further problems. Long may my trouble free days continue.

At present I have around 3,000 songs on the iPod, which constitutes all the cds I have with me in America. So, I'm not quite sure why I bought the 10,000 song capacity 40GB as opposed to the $100 cheaper 20GB version. Who knows though, maybe I'll manage to fill it up sooner or later. I left a number of cds in my Grandmother's loft when I came over the pond.. so if I ever go back home for a visit there'll be a few more songs that can go on my shiny little friend.

Enough of this droning on about my new toy. While I was out on my wanders yesterday I visited a few of those places which have helped the recent warming in my opinion of Columbus. Firstly there was, the wonderfully named, Magnolia Thunderpussy Records (whose website might be up and running by the time you read this), which is a nice little independent record shop (as in they're independent, not that they only sell independent records). Whilst I was there I bought the Mercury Music Prize co-favourite Franz Ferdinand (thanks in part to the recommendation of a certain Mr Smith) and XTC's English Settlement (thanks in part to the recommendation of a certain Mr Minear). Both of which are now on my iPod and, on first listens, are rather good. They might advance to being very good, or slip back to being okay, once I've heard them a few more times. Oh, I should probably mention that one of the reasons that I like this shop is that they have a pretty girlie working there behind the counter... which always helps my shopping recidivism.

Next up on my brief shopping tour was the North Market, a part covered, part open , um... market. One of the stores in the market is Gaelic Imports Columbus, which sells all manner of things that I miss from home, including the likes of Fuse bars and Lilt... both of which I've tried in recent weeks. Oh, and looking at their website I notice that the also sell black pudding, it would seem I'll have to be paying another visit there in the not too distant future. There are lots of other funky food and non-food stalls in the market, and it's all very nice.

The final stop on my tour of cool shops, although hopefully it isn't the only other cool shop in Columbus, was the Book Loft in the German Village area (not quite sure why their website thinks that I want to listen to some silly Irish muzak). The Book Loft is like an old fashioned English bookshop. It's the kind of place that caused Terry Pratchett to invent L-Space. Lots of little book filled rooms connected with book filled little corridors. It was very cool. The only problem was that the rooms and corridors were very short and very narrow. However, when your 6' 3(ish) and 288.8 lbs. (well I was when I went to the doctor's on the 8th July) small book filled corridors and not necessarily the best places to try and pass other people. By the time I left the shop I was beginning to feel excessively large and I really enjoyed getting out in the open.

Um... there was something else. Can't remember what now though. I'm sure it was thrilling. Either thrilling or very dull.

Oh, did I mention that I've got a shiny new toy?