But spare a thought for poor Napoleon. He’s been walking around the house for the past two days looking like he wants to die. He spent last night at the foot of our bed making pathetic meow noises. I’m sure the RSPCA would’ve had no objection if I shaved his fur right off.

Last night was nice, though. Shunning boozy New Year’s party plans McBec and I went to a posh Italian restaurant, ate awesome food, drank awesome wine, and then went to see a movie. We were home by 11:30pm and read books in our underpants as the clocked ticked over to 2008. How romantic.

What did you peeps get up to?

Over the next two days I charged the iPod and started ripping all of McBec’s CDs onto my hard drive in preparation for transfer onto her Nano. On the third day McBec called me from work and said, “I don’t want the iPod any more. Put it back in the box; I’m going to return it.” But it was already out of the box and charged, I argued. It was three days old, I argued. There’s no way Myer is going to refund a clearly-used iPod, I argued. “Don’t care,” declared McBec. “I’m taking it back.”

For the next two weeks the crudely re-boxed iPod sat on the kitchen table. “When are you taking that thing back?” I asked each day. “Soon,” McBec would reply.

Eventually McBec got around to dropping into Myer with the slightly-used iPod. She approached the pimply shop assistant. “I’d like to return this iPod,” she said.
“What’s wrong with it?” inquired pimple boy.
“Nothing.”
“So why are you returning it?”
“Don’t want it any more.”
“The box has been opened.”
“I know.”
“When did you buy it?”
“About a fortnight ago.”
Pimple man was stumped. “I’ll have to talk to my manager.”
“You do that,” said McBec, asserting her consumer rights.

Long story short, McBec got her refund after the manager simply gave in to get her out of the store.

Fast forward to mid-December and McBec is perusing a weekend newspaper magazine insert. “Oooh! Those new iPod Nanos are sexy. Especially the green ones.” I put my head in my hands and groaned. One week ago McBec gave me money and instructions to buy her a green Nano during my trip to the city. After purchasing the iPod I safely stored the receipt and decided to give her a 24 hour cooling-off period before opening the box. But this time it looks like McBec is for real and I have just started loading 7GB of music onto her second ever iPod.

Vote early, vote often.