A rant on gloves and Apples

I've had this rant in the back of my head for a while now.  In one of my first blog posts, I mentioned in passing that my iPhone and I did not "meet cute."  It had to grow on me.

Now, that they've introduced the iPad--and they didn't fix what I consider to be a major flaw in the design--has put in a bad mood.  Add to the fact that I've been thinking of gloves recently--they're on sale!, and I have the ingredients necessary for a blog post.

To be blunt: I love gloves.  When I was first thinking of starting this blog, asking myself "What should my blog be about?", the first answer was gloves.

There are blogs about clothes, in general.  There are blogs about purses, and shoes, and jewelry, about perfume.  But as far as I can tell, the only glove blog is the For the Love of Opera Glove blog--which hasn't been updated since 2004.  Makeup blogs will have FOTD--face of the day.  There are several blogs along the lines of "What I Wore Today" (including, of course, "What I Wore Today"). But what about us glove lovers?  Why I can't get a daily fix of some lovely gloves, and how to wear them?

I wear gloves all year.  I love going to fairs in the summer wearing white gloves and a straw hat.  It feels so respectable.  I own as many spring/summer gloves as I do winter/fall ones, and I am looking to increase my spring/summer collection.  Each coat I own has it's own pair of gloves.  Basically, if I'm leaving the house, I'm wearing gloves.

There are more to gloves than opera gloves, but assuming that it is true, that the most popular gloves out there are opera gloves (which is NOT what I observe in looking around the people I pass by everyday)--that makes Apple's overlooking of this flaw even greater--you can't use the iPhone or iPad while wearing gloves.  And stripping--because the way I see it, taking off gloves, especially if you have to peel them off the entire length of your arm, as an opera glove--is not something so casually done, say, on a crowded bus.

So, my iPhone--hated the bugger when I first got it.  I picked it up from the post office--and noticed I couldn't use it.  It was summer even, and even through my thin summer gloves, it wouldn't read my finger pressure.  That was my first impression, and first impressions stay with you.  Within half an hour, I was imaging myself "accidentally" dropping it behind the wheel of my car.

I looked up how one was supposed to use an iPhone with gloves.  The solutions suggested?  Use your nose, or your tongue.  My nose doesn't work, for some reason.  My tongue does work.  But only if I lick it like I MEAN it...no little dainty ice-cream lick, but firm, hard-candy/half-my-tongue-on-the-screen lick.

My thoughts: "I'm sorry, iPhone, but we just met less than an hour ago."  I'm not putting out for my phone.  I'm not that kind of girl.  (Though, I'm pretty sure that anyone who saw me doing that would probably think twice about stealing my phone.)  The iPhone had such GREAT choices for using it.  The choices are: take off a piece of clothing, or lick me hard.  

Other things that bothered me--besides needing to strip in order to use the thing--a dual step to answer the phone (isn't it supposed to be more efficient to use the iPhone?), a really sucky speaker (when alone in the room, I take my calls on speakerphone), and the general elitist attitude of its accessories (everything has to have the designed for iPhone logo on it, or there's no guarantee it will work).

Anyway, I have a stylus for my iPhone now.  It's not a good stylus.  It doesn't read well at all--but it's the only "official" stylus (the Pogo).  I've come to accept that sometimes I need to take off my gloves, but there's still a little resentment underneath.  At least, I only need to take off one.

Yes, I've seen the gloves with the little capacitative patches on the fingers. But the most I've seen is on the thumb, the index, and middle fingers.  Some people type on the iPhone using the index, middle, and ring fingers.  Because some people have small hands.  (Random trivia--the tip of my pinky is too small for the iPhone to register.)  And no, I don't think gloves without fingertips are very stylish.

Really, I'm not the person that the iPhone was designed for.  They had someone else in mind.  Not me.

And now comes the iPad.  Which has a full size keyboard, which means two hands.  Which means one would have to remove both gloves.  At least, from what I could tell, they didn't offer an alternate way of input (other than a separate keyboard--which defeats the purpose of the thing if you have to carry around a screen and a keyboard, no?  I mean, isn't that a laptop?).   So, so, so, stupid.  We're not talking some minor tweak to make the operating system go 2 ms faster.  I mean, it's a change so that one can actually put in input!  How can a thing be interactive if it won't register any inputs?  It's freaking fundamental!

Anyway.

The gloves I saw on clearance were leather, elbow length, unlined.  I think they'd be so cute with a tank top in summer.  My current summer gloves are all 5 button length or shorter.

And for those gardeners out there, looking for a classically styled gloves, instead of the chunky work gloves, I highly recommend Foxgloves brand gloves.  They also work really well for going out.  For a durable dress-casual gloves (gloves to wear when going to the store) I like the Foxglove Original.  For something dressier, there's the Foxglove Elle, that's elbow length.

(The penny remains)

Stuck

I'm stuck in my own blog.

I've been trying to catch up, writing about my Christmas vacation.  It's been a tough process.  In the most general sense, I had a wonderful time back in Metro for Christmas break.  It was difficult for me to adjust back to being in University Town.  I would like to add more detail to it, to make a fuller description of my Christmas break.  I've been trying to write: this is what happened, this is how I felt.  However, the last two weeks of last year, I lived through one version of events, and my husband lived through another.  The facts, we can agree on--we went here, we did this--what those events, meant, however, is up for dispute.

I can write my own interpretation, but reconciling the two interpretations is not so easy.  I suppose that since this blog is my forum, I wouldn't be blamed for presenting only my version.  But I want the history to be correct!

So for now, Christmas break did not happen.

Forward!

And, although this evening I found the penny knocked from the window sill, I put it back.  So, the penny remains.

Return from Holiday

My last post, on December 5, was written at the beginning of the last two week stretch of the semester.  I was busy writing--I turned in 5 papers over those two weeks, and writing for "fun" (this blog) seemed to be beside the point.  The next two weeks, after the end of the semester, was spent on holiday with my husband in Metro.  The lack of posts from those two weeks were inexcusable.  However, I did have a wonderful time.

I have, however, returned to University Town.  School starts tomorrow, and I will return to my twice weekly updates.

I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday, had good time with family and friends, and returned to work rested.  Thanks for bearing with me.

Since last time....

November:
It was Thanksgiving.  I made a turkey Wellington--crazy recipe because I'm really frustrated with turkey.  It turned out OK.  Then I flew home.

Flying home was great!  The first leg of the flight offered actual food!  Not $7 snack boxes, but free food--a box with wheat crackers, a little wheel of herbed Rondele cheese, and a package of sliced salami.  It included a small package of M&Ms, and another small bag of dried fruit.  That was before the drink cart came around with pretzels, and we were handed an entire can of soda.

Then, I was in Cleveland Hopkins International for the first time.  I remained only in one terminal, but it was nice and airy.  I liked how they placed the restrooms in the middle of the hall, with a corrugated metal half-pipe roofs--it made the terminal seem boulevard-ish.  The terminal even had an area for young children.  I people watched as I waited for my next flight, and it was a pleasant people watching--not staring into a tired crowd moving hurriedly back and forth in a long tunnel, as it can sometimes feel like in an airport.

The second plane was a bit odd.  Typically, on such flights, there are two seats on either side of the aisle going all the way back, where it opens to a small area for the flight attendants.  This flight, instead of being open in the back, had a back row that was 5 seats across.  That is, one person sat in a seat in the "aisle".  (I was seated in the last row, but next to the window.)

I was in good spirits when I landed.  It was about 6 o'clock, but dark my now.  I thought it odd that the car did not unlock when I tried to unlock it with my key fob...and that the light did not come on when I manually unlocked the car...and then that the car didn't start.

After a few frantic phone calls (I didn't have my AAA card, and couldn't reach my husband.  I called my in-laws, instead.), I got on the bus to go back to the terminal (there was a shuttle bus between long-term parking, where I was, and the airport terminals).  I stopped a couple that was disembarking to ask if they could give my car a jump.  They said that they didn't have a jump cable, but I said I did.  Only, when I looked in my trunk, turns out I didn't....Back on the bus.

My husband called me when I had arrived back at the terminal--his parents had contacted him, and he had called AAA for a service vehicle to be sent out.  My car got jumped, and I was on the way home by 8 o'clock.  I drove the 2 hrs home without incident.  The first thing the next morning, I was at Sears, getting a new battery put in.

The following week, I made two presentations.  That week also had the first day of hunting, and the local schools were all closed. I received an early birthday present--a clock radio docking station for my iPhone!  I'm very happy with it.  It's display, sound quality, and ability to pick up stations, are all better than my previous clock radio.  It looks pretty, too.

There were also strange weather reports.  It was 50 degrees and raining here in University Town in the Northeast, but I heard that it snowed back in southern Metro.

Finally, the penny remains.