This past weekend we delivered a new baby. Our friend Bev has become the proud mother of a 38 pound baby girl named Elle. She’s 20 inches wide on the diagonal has a SuperDrive, two firewire ports and is cute as the dickens. Yes, Bev bought an iMac with all the trimmings and we went over on Sunday to set the little one up. Leaping full bore into the 21st century, Bev also got a cable modem so for the first time experienced the joys of high speed Internet. We spent the day showing her the ins and out of Tiger (for those unenlightened schmoes out there, that’s the new Mac OS), iTunes (she also got a 20GB iPod and an iPod Shuffle) and iPhoto (she also got an HP Photosmart 8450 printer – it rocks!!). Wow! I have to say the new iMacs are really die-no-mite! That slim design is perfect for small home offices and it’s quite a powerhouse when it comes to digital symbols for facebook” title=”music symbols for facebook”>music and photography. In anticipation of Elle’s arrival, Bev bought a quite glorious computer armoire that fit extraordinarily well against the wall of her apartment she has designated the computer room. And as she still has some money to burn, she has decided to get a LaCie drive for backups and some external speakers. I think the LaCie drive is a truly excellent idea – I recommend them to everyone I know (I’ve survived a hard drive crash and total data loss and once was enough, let me tell you), and while the built-in speakers on the iMac are okay, I’d have to say I agree with her decision. We have the Creature Speakers at home and love them. At work, I went cheaper and have a set of Logitech speakers which are pretty good (it’s not like I can turn them up all that high there).

All was going swimmingly until later in the afternoon when her next door neighbor dropped by. Well, better to say he lurched in, as the door was open. I thought he seemed a bit slow-witted, mumbling semi-comprehensibly and generally coming across like a real idiot. He had helped Bev move the armoire in (and it was huge, I’ll give him that) so he was going on about that and various other irrelevant subjects. It slowly dawned on me (that lightning brain of mine at work again) that the guy was three sheets to the wind (maybe even four or five). Bev and Chuck had caught onto this straightaway, and were doing their best to get him to leave. He was way beyond hints, so he rambled on a for a bit until Chuck said, “Gee, well, we have to be going now,” and we all started to leave. It looked like he might just have happily stayed in her apartment, but finally we managed to get him to leave, too. Happily for Bev, she said this was unusual behavior for the guy who she swears is normally a really nice neighbor. I’m just glad we don’t live next door to the fellow. Chuck, I feel sure, would eventually kill him.

Bev was looking a little shell-shocked at the sheer volume of information that had just been crammed into her head, so it was just as well that we called it a day. But my bet is she’ll be a good mommy.