Hubs' New Toy

Hard to believe but Hubs just celebrated his 30th Anniversary with the same company. Okay, it's not really the same company--it's been bought and sold several times over the years. Fortunately, he's only had to reapply for his job once. And his seniority has always carried over.

He was able to chose a gift from a catalog, which caused considerable discussion. I finally told him to pick something for himself--he's made several sacrifices over the years, including agreeing to live on one salary with three kids in Catholic school and getting up at the crack of dawn to commute to his current location.

Since he loves music, he chose an iPOD. He thought it was just a simple 8GB model. Wrong--it's the 80GB model with Bose stereo headphones as well as the little bitty earbuds. So besides downloading just about all the CDs we own, and some of the stuff the kids have (our children have very eclectic tastes in music), he downloaded Pirates of the Caribbean: The End of the World.

The iPOD actually made Christmas shopping for him very easy this year: he got accessories. So he has the strap on case so he can listen while he works out. He got the docking station/alarm clock/radio (which is so bright I can almost read by it). And he got the docking station that connects his iPOD to our Home Theater System (such as it is).

The plus is the music quality is pretty decent. The minus is that Pirates appears very dark on our TV. We recently watched it via On Demand and the color was fine. The video appears normal when viewed on the iPOD, so we're not sure what the problem is.

Unfortunately this docking station comes with a remote. A little one that we're sure to misplace. It also means that as Hubs is showing me the neat things his iPOD can do, so we can't listen to a complete song. I don't mind if it's an instrumental, but I'm just getting into a ballad by Simon & Garfunkel and then we're in Chicago. Or an Irish ballad. Or the music from Pirates.

I hate that.

He's now left it on the 40 songs from the three Pirate movies. (Aren't they all the same?) And he's left the room while I write.

However, one of the pieces he's downloaded is Fanfare for the Common Man, which is one of my faves. Now that I know we have it, I may have to use it as the "alarm" for DS#2 and DD#2 on school mornings!

BTW, any suggestions for other iPOD accessories that are Good To Have would be appreciated. I'm especially interested in accessories for the car--Hubs commutes in our 1997 Dodge Caravan, which has a radio, but the cassette player is broken. Rather than fix it, I'm thinking that an iPOD dock would be nice. But is there a model out there that will fit the minivan, delivers decent sound, and won't break the bank?