and her name shall be heidi

remember my list of wants in a car?

allow me to refresh your memory. and i'll add a bit of commentary (in green)

1. sunroof (or a convertible...haha)
done. combo moon and sunroof

2. a color that i love. this is different for me based on what kind of car it is, since different cars look good in different colors to me.
i didn't think i would...but the silver looks pretty awesome, i must say

3. i'm not picky about leather or cloth interior...but IF leather, then i must have heated seats
boy, do they ever heat. in fact, i forgot the other night to turn them off after i got home, and couldn't figure out the next day why the ac was running full blast and i was still warm...

4. good sound system (i'm not one of those lovely bass boomin' people at stoplights, but i do like to get in a groove)
so.much.better than any car i've had

5. a sporty look. please, please, no boring sedans. sedans with a sporty edge, sure.
sedan, with a sporty edge

6. good gas mileage. i'm not opposed to an SUV, i just want it to get decent mileage
not only does it get good gas mileage, it tells me at all times it's current gas mileage is, as well as an average of the "trip" you're on

7. lowish mileage. i drive a lot. i have family scattered all over. i'd like to get a few years out of the car.
it's relatively low for being the year that it is...and for the make/model, it's SO not a big deal

8. trunk access in a car (rear fold-down seats, preferably 60/40 split). suv, well that doesn't so much matter.
60/40, easy easy fold down

9. FUN to drive
OH yeah. in fact, anthony drove it this past weekend for the first time and didn't give me back the key for quite awhile! and it's a fun key too :)

10. a good value. i don't want to rip anyone off, but i certainly don't want to be ripped off either. i would prefer not to use my entire insurance settlement...i'd like a few hundred dollars leftover to stock away in savings for awhile.

i bought it at an auto broker for well under blue book. amazing, amazing deal.

so...wanna see her?
that german engineering is the reason for the german name
(and i've told a couple of friends that i feel like i need to put an irish flag decal on it so that i have both sides of my heritage represented!)
sorry the pic quality isn't that hot...but there you have it. a 2003 volkswagen passat...loaded...luxery...and mine
God is GOOD
(just in case you wondered)

and i...
am thrilled
:)

my experience with updating my iphone (3g) to OS 4.0

did not go exactly as planned.

which was frustrating, because you would think my macbook would communicate with it well.

i tried several times to run the "update" with no luck.

and by no luck i mean it would start a backup and after several hours would still be stuck backing the phone up.

so i did what any sensible girl would do.

i googled.

after reading several sites where people had similar issues, i lighted on an answer that seemed to be the most prevalent.

choosing "restore" instead of "update". according to them, this would automatically update your phone to the newest possible update.

sounded good to me.

i knew it would erase all my stuff, but i had faith in the "restore to backup" option.

so back up the phone i did :)

all in all, the process took about 2.5 hours from start to finish. here were the steps:

backing up my iphone (2 min)

restoring to factory settings (30 - 45 min)

waiting for it to restart (5 min)

freaking out that all my stuff was gone even though i had known it would be (5 - 20 min)

praying that the restore from backup would actually work (8 min)

and finally--with prayer--hitting the option to restore from backup and checking back every 30 seconds to see how close we were to fully backing up (1 excruciating hour)

oh, and then waiting for it to restart from THAT backup (5 min)

and waiting for it to sync, which basically meant putting all my music and stuff back on it (another 30 min)

having a momentary panic attack when i opened my text messages and saw they were blank...but only for a second. then the last one i had received came up, which made me smile--mostly because it was from my honey and said 'love you' :D (5 seconds)

i am happy to report that all is well...and those 2 hours spent doing all that were less stressful (even with my mild freakout) than the several hours (longest stretch being--i believe--approximately 8 hours with little to no movement on the task bar).

so why did i write this all out?

because there's probably other people out there who have run into similar problems and are unsure if this is the right solution.

so if you're not an iphone user, my apologies. will a cute picture of emi help?