For the first time in as long as I can remember, I’ve gone for days on end without so much as waking my computer from sleep. There’s been no emailing, no Twittering, no Flickring, no blogging (clearly), no surfing the Web, nothing. The last time I opened up my laptop was on Christmas, when I blogged and looked up a recipe for Brussels sprouts with chestnuts, bacon and maple syrup. Other than that, I have been comfortably computer-free.

So how have I been spending my time, you might ask? Well, besides visiting with my family and stuffing myself silly with Christmas food, I have been playing Wii. A lot of Wii. Way more Wii than it is reasonable for one person to play.

I haven’t even been playing the sort of physically active Wii games that you could maybe justify as being a form of exercise. No, I’ve mostly been sitting on the couch, mindlessly shooting targets in the crossbow training game that comes with the Wii Zapper. The methodical target-shooting is both slightly meditative and highly addictive, and the short game prompts an almost irresistable urge in me to play “just once more” over and over and over again until I realize I haven’t blinked in about an hour and I can’t move my hand anymore. It’s not healthy.

Help may be at hand, however, in the form of a different gadget that’s captured my attention: my brand new iPod touch. Ooh, la la! I’ve been kind of wanting one of these for several months, but the “kind of” turned into “must have now” when 1) I realized how much cheaper they are here in the States than back in England, and 2) Jeremy managed to jailbreak his iPod touch and suddenly had all these nifty little apps at his fingertips that I found very appealing indeed.

So today my parents kindly got me a lovely, shiny iPod touch as a belated Christmas present, and I spent all of this evening loading it up with music and pictures, along with Google maps, dictionaries, encyclopedias, a weather app, a mobile scrobbler for last.fm, notepads, sketch pads, and games, of course. I think it’s ridiculous that you have to “hack” your iPod to get all of this great stuff on it, but hey, whatever it takes. I just hope I can keep my hands off the iPod long enough to knit up a cozy for it—I don’t want anything to mar its pristine surface. It is the very definition of a sexy little gadget. I think I’m in love.

Further reading…