In my experience I believe things name themselves. Take my first and only pet kitty, when my mom brought her home she was the runt of the litter and a wee 3 months old. The moment her teeny paws touched ground she floored it to the farthest room in the house, ran behind the recliner and huddled in the corner. As we kneeled trying to coax her out of her hiding place, the sun shone on her white and tan fur, sorta sparkling like sunbeams and I turned to my mom and said her name is Sunshine.
Or my first car, that my boyfriend @ the time in a mysterious amount of good karma was very instrumental in helping me find, was named after he told me I was like a Teddy bear, and I dunno, in honor of him I s'pose I named her Teddy & it kinda stuck and fit.
Then there's my current car, who after tumultuous months that involved Teddy croaking and me totaling the car that replaced Teddy leading me to ride around in various expensive rentals, was named late one night as I drove down the highway following her to the airport. Unfortunately I was not her first driver, I had to return the expensive rental so the salesman drove her while I anxiously followed in order to take him back to work. As we navigated thru heavy rush hour traffic, I just felt so happy to finally be a car owner again and a huge wave of gratitude washed over me. Being so grateful for her, that and a subtle twist on her color gray, became her name: Graycee.
So in that tradition of naming things, and I always believed if I have a baby, I'll wait a few days and let the name come out of their personality, I know bad mother please don't called child services on me, you may remember my iPod is nameless. You know what's coming next dontcha?
Not only has she a name, but she has a story behind it to boot. Wanna hear it? Here it goes:
On Monday, she (she didn't need a name for me to know it was a she) came to the gym w/me for my first run in ages. Sunday night, thinking my ½ mile run would be aprox 8 mins, I made my first 2 playlists, both 8 mins long, that I could alternate listening to this week.
It was hard to find songs to be exactly 8 mins, both playlists ended up being more like 10, which was fine, even us perfectionists can relax a bit. When she was fully charged, I hooked her up to get her songs and b/c I'm still a n00b @ I inadvertently downloaded some podcasts I'd signed up for last last month.
Feeling discombobulated, not quite sure how to get them off and then also seeing all these tracks in a recent folder, not wanting to deal w/the hassle of reading the manual, I just shoved her back in her snuggly case and hoped for the best.
Back to Monday.
After a 20 min walk @ 3 mph, I was ready to run. Clumsily I started clicking around the wheel till I found my tunes, but the treadmill wasn't ready, and the songs started playing and I couldn't coordinate having the song play in time for my foot to hit the belt. While perfectionism relaxs @ times (see above: paragraph 8, line 1) it also returns w/a vengeance.
I kept pausing the treadmill, semi-walking, painfully aware that the mileage ran won't be exactly .5 and I'd need to do more like .54 to make up for the .4 miles I shuffled along as I wrestled w/the iPod.
*whew*
Somehow, someway I managed to get everything in synch, until the earbuds kept falling out of my ears *fumes*, later I found they had tiny letters on them (R & L) and once I applied them to the proper ear, they stayed in.
Anyhoozle, I missed a crucial piece of the story.
When I got the gym, as previously noted, the remote wasn't working so the TV was stuck on Cartoon Network @ a fairly low volume. All of a sudden I looked @ my iPod & beamed realizing, she was a genius!
Those podcasts could very well come in handy if I wanted to listen to something and not get stuck playing the same 6 songs over and over till my workout was done.
Back to the run.
So there I am, running, and out of frustration, I ended up holding the iPod b/c it was the only way I could run and hit play @ the same time. It was a laborious run, an extra 13lbs will do that to ya. As I chugged along, my left knee felt a bit wonky and my ♥ rate soared into the high 170's peaking @ 184 which my trusty new ♥ rate monitor, who now beeps when I'm over or under my target, annoyingly kept pointing out.
But I kept running.
Whoever said an iPod makes all the difference in working out didn't lie. Not to be all like Oprah espousing on how great something that you may not have is, but I gotta tell ya, if you don't have an iPod, gee whiz, try and get one. During the walks, I have to keep my eye on time b/c I was doing a manual intervals pgm and haven't yet set up any other playlist to use for tracking (I will this weekend), so to be able to zone out and focus on the tunes, while running, totally made the time fly.
Songs 1 & 2 were done and here I came to the home stretch. But wait, I'm going over 8 minutes and am no where near the ½ mile requirement, to ease my way back into running I was going @ 2.5mph, but...but...but...the iPod, in another moment of pure genius, ended up providing tunes that just about lasted the duration of the run. And the word Genius came back to me and I looked @ her and she looked @ me and in that moment her came to me:
Geenee (pronounced Genie of course)
Now I could've called her Brill, short for brilliant or even Sy, a play on psychic, but Geenee just fits. I know most parents feel their child is the cutest smartest one ever, but I'm telling, this iPod is a smart cookie...she knowssssssss me and I think, though I kept her @ a distance in her first few months, we are well on our way to being BFF! Later today, I'll provide my playlist for the oh so patient Jeni.
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Good name. The iPod is definitely a lifechanging gadget for working out. Of course it also means I no longer have the excuse of only working out for the length of one CD. When I got mine a while back, I named her Run, Bitch, Run in order to remind myself that I bought it for the express purpose of taking it on jogs.