the Dalaverse

I bought a new iPod! My mother is aghast, but I really did need it, insofar as you can need an overpriced electronic device. For one thing, much as I love Grace O'Malley, I vastly overestimated the meaning of 20GB - or underestimated my rate of music acquirement, whatever. Basically I couldn't enjoy any new music ever if I continued with my 20GB - I had already cleared off more than I felt was necessary. What is the point of an MP3 player if you can't carry your entire music collection around in your pocket? And when I move this fall, I'll be an ocean away from my CDs rather than two hours. Of equal importance is the fact that the earbud port got damaged at some point in my two years of carelessly tossing it around in purses and backpacks. Whatever I plugged in, I had to wiggle it around to get it to play through one or both sides. Sometimes I had to actually hold it in to get anything at all. (I'm not going to make this mistake with the new one. It will live in a protective hard case whenever I'm not using it, and I'll unplug the earbuds.

So I caved and bought an 80GB video iPod, in black. Therefore I named it the Black Pearl. Yeah, I know, terribly original. It's so new and shiny and pretty, I'm not even bummed about how long it's taking to add all my music (I've just started C, and that's only the bought-and-paid-for, non-burned CDs). I'll still keep Grace O'Malley around to use as storage space and a really fancy thumb drive.

At least the price went down such that I bought a device with four times the memory for the same price I paid two years ago (okay, that had an extra fifty bucks since it was the U2 special edition). I'm not going to think about how the next generation will probably come out by Christmas. Nope. Because - new toy! Yay!

I also worked on "Keeping Faith" today, for serious. I feel mildly guilty that this part is taking so long, but I was having serious trouble striking the right tone with this particular conversation. And it did give me the opportunity to iron out the whole rest of the plot, complete with snatches of dialogue. Should be smooth sailing from here on in. I'm quitting for the night because the troublesome conversation is finally working but it'll be better if I let it sit overnight, and there are still a few more scenes left to the part after that. Also, I'm sleepy.