An iPod and A Washing Machine: A Two-Part Tale of Woe

Two nights ago, we were frantically hunting for our Nano. We played the "last time we saw it" game, as it is usually tucked safely in our purse and had apparently gone AWOL. Let's see--we listened to it riding the bus on Thursday, didn't use it Friday...Thursday night we went mountain biking but were chatting with folks at the beginning of the ride, so we put it in the pocket of our bike shorts. Our bike shorts. Which Mr. Seattlest was kind enough to wash for us on Friday.

Oh shit.

(To be fair, we don't root through his pockets before washing anything of his either--as responsible adults we're supposed to empty our own pockets before things go in the laundry bin, right? Besides, as we've feared since we got it, that thing obviously weighs almost nothing and we've constantly been afraid we'd lose it or put it through the wash.)

Thankfully, bike clothes don't go through the dryer in our house, so it only suffered water and not the extra indignity of a circuit-frying heat cycle. So long, not-so-old friend, we sighed. We were screwed.

But a friend had done the same thing, it turns out. (This was the same friend who consoled us after we drove into the garage with our bike on top of the car. He'd done it twice.) In fact, we were less alone that we thought. Let it dry out, our friend said. This was echoed by Howard at the Bellevue Square Mac store. It might come around, they both reassured me. Plug it in to a power source (it won't have any charge to speak of, per Howard), then turn it on.

This morning, we fired it up, and rejoiced to see the little Apple appear on-screen. For the past 30 minutes, we have been advised to "Please wait. Very low battery."

And so, we wait.