I first caught a glimmer of Twitter a couple months ago whilst stumbling about online, drawn to the adorable little blue bird logo. I read up on it briefly, but quickly decided that this seemed a time-consumming, juvenile, overall fruitless endeavor. I mean, I am a religious IM'er and have accounts with iChat, Yahoo!, AIM, MSN and Skype. I blog. Fairly routinely. Why do I need to post play-by-play reports of my day in 140 characters or less? WHO am I sharing this with? Do THEY care? And if they do, WHY do they care, and do I even care if and why they care? I promplty hit my stumble button again, leaving this new fangled social-networking thingamabob to the communication-crazed 13 year olds.

Just recently, however, ana/g called me up and said, "Hey - join Twitter." A little bell rang. I recalled the little blue bird. I replied simply, "OK" - a bit reluctantly, albeit. But I dutifully navigated to twitter.com and created a user ID. I completely and blindly caved despite all previous reservations - but I figured she had done sufficient research enough for the both of us to warrant the decisive "Hey - join Twitter" command. Besides, I didn't HAVE to use it if I really wasn't digging it, right? I could stop anytime I wanted to, right?

Once I got my ID, I made note of my password, checked the Remember Me box, and bookmarked the page in a matter of 60 seconds. So. Now. What to write? (It's like the first page of a Moleskine. So much pressure!) This first Tweet would be the Tweet to open the door and pave the way for all the other Tweets. I mean, how does everyone on this thing know what to write, anyway? Who outlined it for them? Are there suggestions somewhere? What could possibly be so alluring about a (maximum) 140 character message? I nervously leaned forward, contemplating the impatient blinking cursor underneath the LOOMING question:

what are you doing?

What am I doing??? Seriously? Like right now? This feels potentially invasive... I'm very private, after all. How much detail do you want exactly? Oh, right, no more than 140 characters... Hmm.. Ok. So. It's not like this was a test or something. Nobody's actually grading me on this or anything, so I told myself to just relax, and go with the gut.

> "now what? are we having fun yet?"

I am such a pessimist. I know. But I had to be true to me. Phew, at least it was done.

And that was all I could possibly think to Tweet in my first 24 hours.

At day 2, though, I was loosening up a bit:

Apple have announced 100 million iPod sales. But don't thank us, Mr. Jobs... thank YOU. Because... they're just awesome little things. Your gorgeous little invention has single-handedly re-invigorated my lust for music... the lust I thought had been brutally murdered by Britney, BSB and *NSYNC. And 100 million means the iPod has almost entered the echelon of a bonafied "everyday" item - like a cellphone, a laptop, or lately, a pair of classic Chucks.

Mine is 30GB 3rd Gen with buttons. It's a tad bulky and the screen is not colour, but I have no desire to retire it because of that. It purrs (and sometimes even whirs) like a kitten. I bought it second-hand, in like, 2003-2004, something like that, from a friend who wanted to upgrade. And I just adore it. It's like a little, bitty friend who I have come to grow so very attached to.

My iPod plays for me everywhere I go (including the 3.5 day trip from AZ to T.O.) I have a JBL On Stage with an itty-bitty remote so that it can play for me in the kitchen or the living room. And I sleep with it, also. Every night. It helps to shut out the noise that rattles in my brain after a long, hectic day. I usually go for the Billie Holiday playlist, or my Mellow playlist, and more recently, my designated "Sleep" playlist. My iPod lulls me into dreamland usually before the third song completes.

I have a Wake playlist, in which I've lovingly ripped and downloaded every song I can think of with morning, awake, rise, get up, sunshine, sunrise, etc in the title. And there's some goodies on there, let me tell you. (Sunshine Superman, anyone?) Gets my day off to a groovin' start, indeed.

I have a Ultra Lounge playlist. A Bossa Nova playlist. A Punk playlist. A Funk playlist. I have an Italian playlist for when I'm cooking/eating pasta, and a Nature playlist for when I want to be all "serenity now." I've finely crafted playlists that capture moods, too, titled Mellow, Autumn, and Cookstown (the place where I grew up, containing all the hits of my youth). Hell, I even have a French Accordian playlist (don't you DARE judge me, audio-snob! I often like to pretend I'm strolling along the Sienne - is that so wrong?!)

I have pretty much maxxed out the disk space too... I have a distressing .8 of a GB left with nearly 5 thousand songs... and I can't for the life of me figure out what to delete to make room for more playlists!

But I love my iPod. It is a little old by most Nano-owning, video-owning iPodders, but it's so reliable. It's there with me in all my activities, and it's there with me in all my various moods.

My iPod is GREAT. It's a veritable GEM. In fact, it's one in a (100) million.