Mama has been rocking a 5-year-old Motorola 551 for way too long now, and the replacement battery is nearing its end of life (when it deigns to charge from the wall plug at all). Last Saturday we paddled through the rain to the Apple Store to see if they had any iPhone 4‘s available for her birthday present, but I was unaware that they were so scarce right now. We left empty-handed. I was also going to see about replacing my MBP battery while we were there, but the throngs of people in the store (avoiding the downpour like we were) made that impossible too. At home, I jumped online and ordered a phone, which should be here sometime in the next three weeks.
As mentioned earlier, I took Jen out to dinner Sunday evening at le Petit Louis, a french bistro up in Roland Park, while our kindly neighbors watched Finn. What can I say? My bride was beautiful, the food was delicious, and the atmosphere was perfect. Happy Birthday, baby. Returning to our neighbors’, Finn was happily playing on the slide, while her counterpart had already melted down and gone upstairs for night-nights. She’s completely gotten over her initial fear of the slide, and now spends most of her time at the playground in a constant loop: up the stairs, down the slide. Up the stairs, down the slide.
Tuesday afternoon I went to store.apple.com, picked out a refurbished 15″ MacBook Pro with as many bells and whistles as I could afford (newest processor, RAM, widescreen display, fast video card), squinched up my eyes, and clicked the “buy now” button. It’s been a long time coming, and it took a lot of convincing myself that this was really necessary, but having a laptop that actually has a usable screen, working optical media drive, and functioning battery will be a huge improvement. FedEx says it will be here on Thursday, which is faster than I’d hoped for. I still need to pick up a Mini DisplayPort to DVI Adapter to run an external display, but a colleague at work tells me there’s a supplier online that has them for considerably less than the $40 Apple is charging.