Maria and I have finally succumbed.... thanks to the National Science Foundation

Over the past few years, Maria and I have scoffed at all of the people shutting themselves out from everyone else by putting those hideous white iPod plugs in their ears. Even when I won an iPod nano 2 years ago at a scientific conference, I immediately sold it, saying "my PDA does the same and more, and we need the money anyways to pay for diapers!" (I won it right before Anabelle was born). Well, I got some funding from the National Science Foundation that provides me a small amount of money to buy supplies, equipment, books, or anything pertaining to my research. Well, with one of my purchases we got a $150 gift certificate for use at the online Dell computers store. However, almost anything of interest to us at the store costs much more than that (e.g. computer monitors (>$200), a canon rebel camera (>$500), etc.). Then we noticed their little menu of mp3 players, and we started thinking... Maria goes to the gym 3-5 times each week and she'd love to listen to music and/or audiobooks during her workouts... In addition, I have a program that takes text from the internet and generates an audio file, as if someone was reading it to you, and so in my nerdiness I was thinking "I could take scientific journal articles, online textbooks, and books from LDS library and listen to them while biking to school, watching Mulan and Toy Story 2 with Anabelle (for the 10^nth time), or while washing the endless pile of dishes in our sink!" So we blew the $150 on two mp3 players. Maria wanted one with which she could look at pictures, so she got the Creative Zen V plus, while I got a bare-bones Creative Zen Stone. We love them, but Anabelle has felt left out. She keeps saying "Mine iPod! Mine!", even after we keep telling her that they are not iPods, rather less trendy and more reasonably priced and more versatile mp3 players! I'm surprised that she is almost 2 and still can't tell the difference between an iPod and a Creative Zen mp3 player! If she keeps up at this rate, she'll never fit in with the cool kids.