Susan’s Journal

This is my first blog post on my new iPad. We’re on a plane to Boston, where we’ll spend the weekend together. I’m going to show Bud a bunch of scenes from my life, including some I’ve never shown anyone. No, not anyone.

Those of you who know me know i didn’t originally have any interest in an iPad. Travelling this summer for work, though, I’ve started reading a lot of eBooks. I downloaded the Barnes & Noble eBook reader to my iPhone, and i discovered that they have quite a few good eBooks for free.

I found out along the way that three of my friends from work have the Nook, the eBook reader that Barnes & Noble sells. The cool thing about it is the fact that you can “lend” books to people, and they can read them for two weeks.

Bud, however, has a Kindle. He loves it, and it has 3G internet access, something the nook doesn’t have (you can only get on the web via wifi). If I ended up with a kindle, though, i wouldn’t be able to read my free B&N eBooks, and I wouldn’t be able to share books with friends.

So I spent a few weeks in a toss-up. I didn’t really want to lug books around on planes anymore, and the constant flip-flip-flip of pages while reading the iPhone, coupled with the fact that it killed the phone’s battery on a flight, made me long for something better.

So a few days ago, on one of many flights home from Virginia, (sitting in first class, which Bud arranged, might I add), I got my first close-up look at an iPad. The lady sitting next to me had one, and she was reading a book with it, then watching a movie, then listening to some music. She talked about editing Word and Excel on it too.

She got me thinking. Here is a device that I can download *both* B&N and Kindle apps for, is backlit (which neither of the eReaders are), and that i can also watch movies on–or type blog posts, like i am now. I talked to Bud about it, and he told me to go to the Apple store and play with one.

So I did. Yesterday morning I showed up at the store just minutes after it opened and started to play with one. I watched a few CNN videos, I watched the “goat is dead” video on YouTube and laughed, I watched the video for “Fireflies”, and I checked out the iBook app. I also opened up Notepad (or whatever the hell Apple calls it) and typed a few lines. I typed very, very fast on the keyboard, which surprised me. Then I found a keyboard app, which I plinked away with my piano lesson training, and giggled. I was sold.

There were a few more customers in the store now, and none of the associates were free. I stood around for a few minutes before I realized I should make an “appointment.” Hey, no laughing, I almost never go to the Apple store. I signed in with one of their computers–it said my appointment was in ten minutes–and i waited.

And waited.

After about an hour and a half of waiting, I was getting discouraged. Half an hour after my assigned appointment time, my name hadn’t even shown up on the twelve-man list yet. I’m sure I was starting to look harried, because a young girl with a piercing through her lower lip found her way to me. I told her I had made an appointment, and she looked it up on the computer. Apparently something or rather I hadn’t make the right kind of appointment. She said shed find someone to help me, it would just be a minute, and she vanished. Thirty seconds later, a kind older man employee walked up to me.

He told me they were out of stock. All of them, every flavor.

He suggested i get on a “reserve list,” and when one came in they would call me. The problem was, by the estimated time they would come in, i would be gone to Virginia again, and they would have to give it to someone else if I didn’t pick it up. I had him put my name on the list anyways, thanked him, and left. I felt defeated.

When I got home, though, I followed a suggestion the man made, and I called another Apple store nearby, even though I was positive they wouldn’t have any in stock. One time it was busy, and one time no one answered after about twenty rings. I was kind of jet-lag tired, so I laid down on the couch with the ceiling fan on for a snooze.

I woke up two hours later, at 3:30pm. Whoops. I hadn’t meant to sleep that long.

Half-asleep, I picked up my cell phone and re-dialed that other Apple store. A nice lady answered, and she told me they had the iPad I wanted in stock, but that she couldn’t hold one for me, and they had “under 10.” Under ten could mean nine, or it could mean two. My instinct told me to go for it. I threw on a different shirt–I was in such a hurry I’m lucky i didn’t put it on backwards–grabbed my GPS off my bed, got the address off the screen of my laptop, and flew out the door.

I didn’t grab the power cord of the GPS, but i figured I knew pretty much where the place was, so I wouldn’t get lost. Ten minutes from the house, though, I realized I didn’t have my phone either. Bud was coming over after work, and i hadn’t told him where I’d be. Whoops again.

I flew through traffic, somehow feeling like I was in a contest with someone else to get the last iPad. When the GPS announced “You have reached your destination,” I saw that I was in front of a mall. I hadn’t thought this Apple store was in a mall; I must have been thinking of some other place.

A few feet from the front door of the mall, i stopped a well-dressed thin black man with a Starbucks cup who looked like he might know where the Apple store was. He did. “Go towards Macy’s, turn left, and… It’s down there,” he said. I thanked him graciously and walked into the mall.

It huge. There were rushing fountains. I was at an intersection where I had to go right or left, but there was no Macy’s in sight, and there was no idiot-direction signs in sight. I stepped up to a man sitting on a bench, apparently waiting for his wife while he shopped, and asked him which way Macy’s was. He pointed, and I was off.

I swear I walked for about a quarter mile before i got to the Apple store. It was a madhouse. There was barely room to walk. Somehow, though, a young man saw me through the crowd and walked up to me. He asked me if he could help, and I told him what I wanted. He said he’d look to see if they had any left. I followed him.

They had three. Only three of the 64GB wifi ones. Interestingly, there was about twelve of the 3G network version ones–apparently people didn’t want those so much. I didn’t. If I’m in a bind and I need to check my email where there’s not wifi, I still have my iPhone.

So here I am. I have all my music and a dozen or so movies synched up to the iPad. So far in this flight I’ve watched half a movie, read a few dozen pages of a book, and written this big long blog post. All that, not to mention this ipad is nice and small and will fit just about everywhere. I’m definitely happy with my decision.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad