Last night I finally got to talk with Jen’s sister Cath and her boyfriend Jason, who have been doing some research on cell providers and phones, and leaving messages on our machine. Jason just picked up the phone I’ve been looking at, and he has nothing but good things to report. I’ve been holding off because of the lack of Bluetooth support in 10.3.X, and I’m hoping that Tiger will support full iSync functionality. (The word seems to be that you can sync the phone with your Mac, but you need the optional Motorola phone-to-USB cable. Thanks, but no.) So I’ll wait it out another couple weeks until the early adopters iron out the bugs in Tiger and I hear that the phone is supported officially.

I got an email out of the blue from our friends Matt and Sophie, who were kind enough to send us a sizable iTunes gift certificate as a wedding present (which was awesome but totally unexpected—they flew all the way out here, and I didn’t want them worrying about a wedding gift as well), which I’ve been sitting on for a week or two. Last night I finally sat down to redeem some music, and started out with a recommendation from Jen: an album by Kasabian, which we decided is a mixture of the Happy Mondays, Stone Roses, and Lo-Fidelity Allstars. Next, I hit the record store disease list and picked up the latest from Thievery Corporation, an oldie from Tosca, another oldie from Zero 7, and the latest releases from UNKLE and RJD2. I’m halfway into Since We Last Spoke, and I’m enjoying it completely. (I also take issue with most of the reviews for this record and The Private Press; everybody seems to want another hip-hop turntable jam, but these guys are reaching for something here. I don’t find either album disappointing in the least.) I’m jazzed to hear the UNKLE album (hoping it will be as mind-blowing as the first one) although it seems a lot of folks have been less than impressed. (This critic needs to tone down the personal dissing and actually review the record, in my opinion.)

Finally, the time has come to replace the head unit in my Jeep. Now the radio stations cut out and the casette adapter for my iPod refuses to load. There’s nothing like being stuck on the Baltimore Beltway in the summer with no radio, next to a worthless iPod jammed to the gills with music. Good times!

Update: The RJD2 album is solid. Excellent stuff for any of you DJ Shadow heads out there. The UNKLE album is spotty and not all that exciting—the clips I heard online sounded…better than the real thing, if that’s possible. Zero 7 is good mellow chillout got-work-to-do kind of music. Or for sipping coffee and reading the paper on Saturday morning.

Update Update: The Kasabian album is a pretty groovy mixture of genres-I’m enjoying it tremendously. It’s kind of funny that the singer has a slight Ian Brown vibe going on, because I’ve had Reign by UNKLE going through my head all weekend.