Before I expound on the title of this post I want to report the important news. Beth is back in town!! I just picked her up tuesday morning from South Bend. It sure is good to have college people around again… especially the one that I’m going to marry!

Alright, so with the important stuff out of the way, there is no company in the world that can give me gadget lust like Apple. For those who don’t know (where have you been the past 48 hours?? ) Apple just announced the iPhone. I don’t know if you remember or not, but almost a year ago I posted about some rumors of a “touch sensitive” iPod. At the time I was thinking that sort of thing would come 5 years in the future or something, but Apple got impatient and decided to invent the thing now! Anway, I could go into a ton of details about the iPhone’s infinite flexibility or proximity sensors or built-in web browser or amazing iTunes functionality but you should check out the demos on Apple’s website instead. They speak for themselves Now it’s a matter of waiting until June when they go on sale! (and saving $998 for two of them and somehow convincing myself to stay with Cingular. Why oh why couldn’t they support Verizon!)

How many of you know of André Rieu? Anybody, anybody? For those who don’t, he’s a violin player and the conductor of the “Johann Strauss Orchestra.” He became famous playing classical waltzes and now gets standing ovations (not to mention people dancing in the isles) at his sold-out concerts around the globe. I actually didn’t know about him either until this past summer on SST, but it just so happened that my host family on service absolutely loved his music. They even had a collection of his performances on DVD. Anyway, in my wanderings around the internet I discovered that he was going to have concert in Chicago this year! Unfortunately he caters to a slightly older and more financially established segment of society. Tickets are $100 a pop for the “cheap” seats So, let me know if you would like to donate to the “help Marcos and Beth go to an André Rieu concert this May” fund Oh, and if you want to see/hear him in action look around youtube they’ve got quite a few clips from his concerts online there.