You would think that having lived on the planet more than half a century now that I would have developed positive ways to deal with stress and disappointment. You know, ways that don't involve eating my weight in chocolate or sprawling on the sofa brooding about how very unfair life can be.

Oh, you might think that, but you'd be so very, very wrong.

I still haven't heard back about the mammogram and I'm rationalizing this by saying to myself, "Marn, no news is good news". Unfortunately my self seems to have stuck its fingers in its ears while chanting "Lah lah lah lah lah I can't hear you" because this positive rationalization is not working.

I've also had to face the fact that I won't be able to afford to go to Vancouver this year to share Pride weekend with Queerscribe and Joey (who was kind enough to offer me his guestroom) because unforeseen expenses reduced my Vancouver kitty to a pitiful amount.

I really, really wanted to go there.

(And before we go any further, this is not one of those welfare journal entries where I plead poverty and beg you, my three loyal readers for money. The spousal unit and I are fine, it's just that we live within allotted budgets for things and we save for the luxuries. We got a few budgetary surprises--as sometimes happens--which nixed Vancouver, but we're basically fine. So, please, hold on to your money. Actually, start saving because I'll be trying to pry coin out of your fingers in a few months for breast cancer research. Promise.)

So, where was I? Like I said, I've been sprawling on the sofa brooding, in just days single-handedly increasing the national annual Canadian chocolate consumption by 4.82%, and really slacking off on my cardio.

The latter is a stunningly insane thing to do because cardio floods your body with endorphins, the happiness chemical, and it's the perfect way to counteract the blues. I know this. But I'm having a hard time breaking the alien force field that has velcroed my butt to the sofa.

So I decided to take the money in the Vancouver kitty and do a little retail therapy. I decided to buy myself one of those itsy bitsy little MP3 players to jump start my cardio again, to make it more fun.

Music makes all the difference for me, and always has. Certain songs can push me over the hump, the place where mind takes flesh beyond what it wants to do. I bless each and every loyal reader who has bestowed a workout CD upon me.

However, one of the huge annoyances of my CD player is that even though it's a sports player and has some sort of mystical anti-skip technology built into it, this mystical anti-skip technology seems to be aimed towards people who run with the grace of fairy princesses.

Well, I have been described many ways, but the words "fairy princess" have never, ever been used. My running style is less fairy princess and more, uh, Shrek, so when I really get going the music skips all over the place and I lose the edge it gives me. This happens even on the Stairmaster. Major tick off. Major.

Besides, all the really cool kids at my gym have the itsy bitsy MP3 players and wear them on these little armbands and OMIGAWD it looks so freaking athletic and if I can't be a great athlete couldn't I at least look like I'm an athlete?

My thoughts, exactly.

I spent endless hours on-line hunting up MP3 players. Not only did I read reviews, I read all the hundreds of comments people leave after reviews. I ruled out one of the hard drive based players such as an iPod and decided to go with a flash player�no moving parts to jar, feather light, with enough capacity to hold a few hours of music. I can rotate tunes in and out as boredom strikes. I don't need more capacity than that.

So after a stunning amount of dithering I ordered the iRiver iFP-790. The fact that it is itsy bitsy, shiny and red had nothing to do with my choice. Shut up. Stop snickering.

I checked the site of the company I ordered it from oh, roughly 5,132 times a day to track the iFP-790's shipping progress. You can well imagine my horror when the site showed that they had tried to deliver it, but no one was home. Excuse me? Excuuuuuuuuse me? I had spent so much time looking out the window for the truck that I'd left a nose print on the glass.

Nobody home, my butt. I was home at the time they said they tried. The truth? They couldn't find our house, which is isolated and tricky to find. It took three delivery attempts before the player arrived. In the meantime, I had been so whiny and fretful that I'm sure the spousal unit was seriously mulling over the consequences of shoving me into a shallow unmarked grave in the woods just to get some peace. Poor man.

As you can well imagine, I was pretty much mental with excitement when I slid the installation CD into my computer. Seriously. I could almost hear the tunes streaming out of the earbuds.

There was a whir and the program started to launch. It asked me for internet access to look for an update, which I granted. More whirring. Silence. No flashing lights, no whirring of the CD, no little hard disk sounds.

Silence.

It wouldn't install. Of course, this was over the July 4 weekend which meant that even though there was an 800 number, there wouldn't be tech support until Tuesday. So I went to the iRiver site, which is wonderfully well organized, and downloaded the latest programs and drivers and tried them.

Zilch. Would Not Install. I read through all their FAQ's. Zilch.

Again with the fretting and whining. I'm sure the spousal unit's shovel fingers were getting unbearably itchy.

Tuesday I got iRiver tech support on the line. We spent over half an hour troubleshooting, but couldn't find a problem. They had me install an earlier version of the music transfer software, which would load, but it couldn't "see" the MP3 player, even though Windows had spotted it and loaded it as a new device.

We did this. We did that. We did the other thing. All avenues explored, the techie told me he was stumped and I would have to send the iFP-790 back.

Send it back.

My lovely itsy bitsy shiny red thing to which I'd become insanely attached.

Send it back.

WAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.

Well, this morning I started to pack the iFP-790 back up. If you think I was blue before, you have no idea how disappointed I was then. I felt as if I had been somehow judged unworthy to have The Best Toy Ever.

I took one last look at the Windows system files. And I noticed something. My Nikon 990 camera installs itself as a permanent USB device, whether it's hooked up or not, whereas the flash player only materializes as a USB device when it's turned on.

Could the digital camera be muscling between the flash player and its software, even if the camera's not hooked up to the computer?

It took me hours and hours to get my computer to recognize that camera after I formatted my hard drive a few weeks ago and re-installed everything. Hours. The thought of uninstalling the camera made my heart flip flop.

But oh, the itsy bitsy shiny red thing.

The precioussssssssss.

So I did it. I uninstalled the camera as a device, rebooted the computer, hooked the itsy bitsy shiny red thing to it, turned it on, turned on the music transfer software

AND IT WORKED! They see each other. Music Can Be Moved. I can use the itsy bitsy shiny red thing. I can look like one of the cool kids, one of the athletes.

I have the preciousssssssssss.

Excuse me, for I must now go and wallow in the giddy.

--Marn

Mileage on the Marnometer: 544.52 miles.
Oh man. This is going to be hard
Goal for 2004: 1,000 miles - 1609 kilometers