Today we just wandered around York a bit … it was a Bank Holiday … so it was kind of busy.

We did have to arrange our trip to Dublin … which was a bit complex.  Once that was sorted, we walked around a bit … had lunch at Little Bettys, which was quite good.  I was even able to find an open wifi network while at Little Bettys so I could check email.

We got back to the hotel around 3:30 … as my friend Martin was going to pick us up at 4.

Martin came to collect us and took us to his house … we had a wonderful time with Martin, his wife Jane, and kids Ben & Heather.  Jane made a wonderful beef stew with potatoes and vegetables from their garden.

Of course Martin and I geeked out a bit … talking iSeries, Linux, digital cameras, and Martin’s Asus Eee PC (which I’m probably going to have to get).

One thing that was very interesting was to see Martin’s house … Martin and I are both in similar age & economic brackets … so seeing his house, community, and town, was quite enlightening.

Yes, it’s true. I’m officially an IPODder.

For reasons I won’t go into, my good friend Steve gave Ginny and I a $500 gift card to ABT Electronics (he’s a VERY good friend).

Today we decided to go over to ABT to see what we could get.

Talk about a madhouse … I thought Frys was crazy, but ABT was insane.

Steve showed us some of his the kitchen appliances he’s getting for the house he’s building … and then left us to make our purchases.

After looking at various items, we decided to get the following …

• IPOD Nano 4gb for me, including
• Apple care 2 year warranty
• Arm band & protective skin
• Bluetooth headset for Ginny’s cell phone
• Clock Radio IPOD dock for Ginny

I chose the IPOD because my current MP3 player only has 256mb of memory … and I find it quite frustrating that it runs out of space when I try to put more than a few songs on it.

I wasn’t too thrilled with the size of the nano … but with the skin it’s got enough bulk (and protection) to satisfy me.

Oh yeah … even if you’re not shopping for electronics, I do recommend at least one visit to ABT to see some of their art installations. They have a huge fish tank, a granite globe that floats on water, and this really cool piece that has marbles rolling around tracks. Ginny and I stared at it for about 10 minutes.

I was talking to my friend Steve today, asking him if he had gotten an email I sent him, when he responded …

Ah cr@p, I started to answer that yesterday, and the dog rang.

Most people, of course, would think that he mistyped and was saying that the Phone rang … but this would be wrong. The dog did indeed ring.

Steve & Ruth got a really cute dog a few weeks ago (photo forthcoming) … named Polly (short for Polygon, I think) … and they’ve trained her to ring a bell by the kitchen door when she needs to go out.

So while most people would more often get interupted by a phone ringing, Steve & Ruth will get interupted by the dog ringing.

Update: Added a picture of Polly.