back (-up) to the drawing board

oh technology, how i love thee and loathe thee at the same time.

our public library system has recently rolled out an amazing new offering: online audio books, able to be downloaded to your computer and then transferred to your ipod or mp3 player, for free.  i mulled over how useful it would be for me personally and decided that i myself wouldn't really benefit from it; when i work out, i'd rather listen to music, and i'm never in the car alone for long enough to get through even a chapter or two at a time.  BUT i figured it would be such a cool thing to have for the kids.  susanna might get a kick out of hearing john lithgow reading dr. seuss on the computer.  and liam would really enjoy wearing some headphones and following along in one of his magic tree house books while listening to the author.

so i downloaded a few titles, but then had no idea how to transfer them to my iphone.  i enlisted my far more tech-savvy husband to help ... and that's when things went awry.

i've had this iphone for seven months now and had always wondered why it came with that computer cord.  i had no idea i was supposed to be connecting it to this itunes store thingy for software updates.  which means that i also had no idea that i was supposed to be backing up my phone.  i'm sure you can see where this is going.

so when chris linked my phone to the computer in order to transfer these audio book files, the itunes store thingy almost started smoking, reeling from the number of software updates i'd missed over the past seven months.  and then, POOF.  gone.  out in the ethernet somewhere is floating all of my contacts, my apps, my music, my text messages, my audio files, and -- gulp -- my pictures.  by the time my phone had finished flashing its glaring error message (we're still not quite sure what happened), the only thing left were the basic icons that come when you purchase it.

and this is when i realized how reliant i've become on this little gem of a device.  i couldn't get in touch with ANYONE, since the only phone number i have memorized is my parents'.  i had no idea what i needed to get at the grocery.  (months ago, i downloaded this grocery list app and organized it to mirror the aisles of my grocery store -- by taking a picture of each aisle overhead sign.  so geeky, i know, but man is it fun to go shopping now.)  i couldn't remember what the URL was to check my work e-mail.  dismay set in when i realized i cannot now prove my prowess on the game of bejeweled by showing off my amazingly high score record.  and, most importantly, all these sweet pictures of the kids doing whatever they do day in and day out had vanished.  (hence no wordless wednesday this week.)

it was a sad, sad day for sara mann.  and literally just now as i began to wind down this post, my e-mail just popped up with a new message from the wake county public library system: "reminder!  your digital title is now available for download!" 

i think i'll go actually read dr. seuss to susanna myself.  take that, technology.

and maybe later on today, i'll get around to figuring out this back-up thing.  where's that cord again?