A few e-mails later, it’s occurred to me that I never actually mentioned that I was back from Ghana. I had an incredible time, and we came back right as I was beginning to miss home, so it worked out well. JFK has got to be the worst airport on the planet. I don’t think I saw a single happy person the whole time I was there. (Also, for all of the American, pro-English-language jingoism, you’d think that we might go through the trouble to ensure that the first person that one landing in America has to speak to speaks English?) I have many tales, but don’t really know where to start and don’t want to give too much away so I can have lots of great stories for when school starts.

What I’m actually posting about is The Dangerous Book for Boys. I’d seen it mentioned somewhere and thought that it was a really neat idea. It just showed up on the front page of Amazon as a most-popular selection. It’s hard to tell who the target market is, because it sounds like it’s something that anyone, or at least any male, would enjoy. I think I may have to pick a copy up.

So it’s no secret that I was obsessed with the iPhone from the minute I saw it in the keynote. Not like, “That’s kinda cool, if I had money to burn I might buy one” obsessed, but like, “I’ll pay the $600, pay the early termination fee with Verizon, and sign up for a 2-year contract with no credit history [read: get raped, from what I’ve heard] the day it comes out” obsessed. Over time it faded, and I was won over the by “Wait a few months and see how it goes over” theory.

Today, my mom and I were coming home from the Cape and stopped by the South Shore Mall. After buying a few things, I persuaded her that we should take a couple minutes to drop by the Apple store there.

After about 30 seconds playing with the models in the store, she and I were both ready to buy them. For one thing, they’re way smaller than they look. At one point I pulled out my Treo, and realized that it was bigger than the iPhone. And heavier. I’d always thought that it was impractically large. And some of the photos make it look that way. But don’t knock it on size until you see it in person.

You see all the features in the commercials, and it’s really impressive. But play with it for a minute and you’ll be floored. From pictures, the keyboard must be pretty hard to use. I pulled up Safari and typed in “blogs.n1zyy.com/main” which is probably not the easiest thing to type. I screwed up and typed “/maim” (which is somewhat of an awesome typo), but otherwise, typing on it was far easier than I’d have thought.

The blogs loaded in a really small size. I turned it sideways, and so did the blogs. I hit some random button and bookmarked the blogs. (Woot!) Much unlike the fake browser on the Treo, it was the real deal. About this time, my mom was watching a hilarious video on YouTube on ‘her’ iPhone. I could hear it fine, and the store was really loud. I then noticed a new comment on one of my posts, so I went to that, and wanted to scroll down. I couldn’t find the scroll bar, and was confused for a second. But then I remembered, and dragged my finger across the screen.

From the commercials, I always worried you’d scroll past where you were trying to go, since it ‘glides’ a bit after you stop. That’s not the case at all. It’s incredibly intuitive, and works incredibly well.

I went to configure a GMail account, but realized that I really didn’t want my login details on a phone in a public place where 200 people would probably play with it that day. But I bet it would be easier than setting it up on my Treo. I’m still trying to figure that out. It barfs up an error along the lines of “Relaying denied,” but with lots of gibberish included. I think I just need to use Verizon’s SMTP server, but I can’t find the details anywhere. I wonder if the iPhone is that complicated. Something tells me it’s not.

Seriously, though, the iPhone is like Obama. (Another analogy Mr. T might not like?) It seems really neat. But when you see it in person, it far exceeds your (lofty) expectations.

There’s a new consignment gallery in town that I’ve been meaning to check out for a while. Tonight they hosted a speaker on a topic that interested me, so my mom and I dropped in.

In addition to some cool lamps and a few swords, they have a case full of watches, bearing a sign: “All watches: $30.”

At least half of the watches are Rolexes. (Some Movado watches, too, which are also ludicrously expensive.)

It didn’t take too long for it to dawn on me that the reason they were $30 each wasn’t that they were insane, but because they were most likely all fake.

I toyed with buying one anyway (along with an ancient rangefinder camera), because it did look cool, and besides, who’d know if it was the real thing or not? I ultimately didn’t, but I’m considering going back.

It turns out that fake Rolexes aren’t the exclusive territory of guys in New York with trenchcoats. They’re sold online, but are generally sold under the euphemistic term, “Replica.” This alone isn’t too shocking (although their honesty is.) What’s shocking is that the fake Rolexes are still going for 4 digits.

My only concern (well, besides legal ones) is that none of the watches were ticking; I assume they just need new batteries, but can’t really be sure.