We had a great time tonight having dinner with Pop and Polly and our cousins, Jolene, Bob and Louise. We swapped family stories about vacations, family cars, and ancestors who liked to double as apparitions (even though they were still alive.) Our dinner at Bob Evans was surprisingly good... much better than previous experiences I've had at the restaurant.

When Lydia and I got home, I opened the trunk to get out my bag that I shuttle back and forth to work with - the one that carries my iBook. Normally, it's not in the trunk, but I wanted to leave it out of sight while we had dinner. Evidently, there had been some shifting during our flight home, because it was face down when I picked it up. I pulled it out of the trunk, not noticing its awkward angle in the dark, when I heard it slide... shhh -- BOOMP... skitter skitter. The iBook had bailed out and was upside down on our aggregate driveway.

Luckily, it had landed on the corner containing the battery (not the hard drive,) and started right up when I opened it. Unfortunately, there's now about a 2mm diameter chunk (maybe 1/2 mm deep) missing from the top corner and some pretty good scrapes in it in that vicinity. Surprisingly, the top is not too worse for wear. This is the first real ding in the 'book. It's kind of like getting your first ding in a new car... just kind of knocks the wind out of you. Some people even advocate putting a ding in your car yourself before anyone else does or that manufacturers do it for us in advance.

The white plastic of the iBook is gorgeous to look at, but not too great for durability. I like to think that I'm pretty careful with it, but it still seems to be getting the stray scratch here and there. Oh well, it's what's inside that counts, isn't it?