Magic Bus

Nope, I have no idea what the title is about, either. This is what happens when you force me to come up with titles every day.

Had a good weekend, though. Got my iPhone, finally, months after deciding it was what I wanted and then waiting for the new phone announcement in June and then waiting for the actual release date, and then working through a couple of glitches...

Glitch #1 turned out the be that I'd apparently set a PIN on my old T-Mobile account at some point in the past, without which they wouldn't turn my phone number over to AT&T. I tried all the PINs I ususally use, without success, so I had to go down to the nearest T-Mobile store (half an hour away -- the one that used to be a couple of blocks from us closed, dangit) to prove that I'm who I say I am, and get it reset. (I'm still not convinced that I set that PIN. The guy at the store told me what it was, and it rang no bells at all. My suspicion is that I agreed to a temporary PIN at some point and scrawled it on a piece of paper with the intention of changing it later, and then forgot to do so.)

Glitch #2 popped up last night when I went to use it for some music while I was putting dishes away. Songs that I'd ripped off my CDs (or downloaded illegally, back when I was still doing that, shhh) played just fine, but music I'd legally purchased from iTunes would show me the album art, and the counter would tick, but no sound would come out. I couldn't even play the sample clips when the phone was connected to the iTMS. Some poking around discovered that, specifically, the phone wasn't playing w4p files, but that was no help, because they're supposed to be supported. I fiddled with settings and spent an hour looking around online in help files and another on hold with Apple's tech support line (I never did get through -- I gave up and decided to call back today from a speakerphone). Later, trying to play some game I'd downloaded, the phone hiccuped and reset itself, and when it had rebooted, all my music was working just fine. So... I dunno.

The other glitch, which is entirely my own fault, was downloading a "game" for the phone which creates bubbles when you drag your finger over the screen, and then lets you pop them by tapping on them... and then letting Penny play with it. Now she wants to borrow my phone to play the game every thirty seconds or so. This morning, while watching Dora, she clutched my phone in her hot little hand, desultorily swirling her finger around the screen without even looking at the bubbles.

Anyway, we had a fairly good weekend, iPhone aside. We took the kids down to visit my parents for a couple of hours while Matt and I got some shopping done, and I finally got around to listing a whole bunch of crap on our local FreeCycle list that I've been meaning to get rid of. It's not all gone yet, but most of it has been spoken for, whoo! I'm all in favor of crap reduction.

The only frustrating part to the weekend -- and even this was kind of funny -- was that Alex quite suddenly and completely out of nowhere seems to have decided to come up with a case of separation anxiety. If he could see me, then he was not happy unless I was holding and/or playing with him. And if he saw me turn away from him (or heaven forfend, walk away) then he would burst into tears.

He only did it for me -- sitting in his jumper between the kitchen and green room, while I was cooking at Matt was folding laundry, Alex actively leaned toward me and cried, even when Matt tried to turn him to face the green room and play with him. It was all about Mommy Mommy Mommy this weekend. It'll be interesting to see if he pulls it out when I drop him off at school Wednesday.

On the other hand, he's so close to crawling, I can taste it. He'll definitely be crawling before Penny's birthday. He gets up on his hands and knees and rocks back and forth, trying to figure out how to get his legs and arms coordinated. This is earlier than Penny. I don't remember her doing the rocking thing much at all, but I do remember she started crawling on Mother's Day, which means she was about nine months old; Alex is six and a half. I wonder if that means he'll crawl longer than she did, or start walking earlier?