One Bad Apple....

Monday, I had a truly frightful experience. My iPhone at work went dead around noon; I saw the battery percentage drop like a stone to zero. Usually, during the work day (7:30 to 4:00), it will go from 100 to about 80...kind of like Florida in the summer from day to night temperature. Mayday, mayday, mayday.

Some people most like their iPhones for the cool Apps, iTunes, GPS, iPod, Texting, Angry Birds, and some even might like it as a phone (although the phone feature is its most average & prosaic item). Kind of weird given its name.

Not me, I depend on the Calendar, to run my life like some ear-pulling Nanny with the unruly children that is my attention span. Chaos ensues when I don't have my calendar working. I feel chronologically naked out in public. The iPhone Calendar is my Technological Adderal.

So, when the iPhone died, fear came over me like a cloud of foreboding darkness. Being the astute techie that I am, I assumed that the battery went bad. I checked the web and yep, it is common for the iPhone battery to croak after about 18 months. Seemed logical.

So, I ambled down to the Apple Retail Store at Park City in Lancaster, a store that upped the cool factor of my town exponentially when it opened, only one of eight locations in Pennsylvania. In an informal survey of cool chic, Pittsburgh is 300% more cool than Philadelphia, as it has 3 stores to Philly's one. I expected to be in and out within minutes like some fast food burger chain. No so fast, buster. Literally. Sit down and get ready to eat your peas pal.

Well, after the wheezing Apple store dude who had a serious cold, hooked my iPhone up to the diagnostic computer--like a mechanic does with that device that plugs into a car's cigarette lighter, telling him what is wrong with the car (like the gas cap being off), I was informed that my battery was probably fine. Instead, it appeared as if I had a software problem, an infection of sorts. Apple dude made the analogy, "It is like when your body gets sick, all of your energy gets drained" as he coughed and hacked, making the object lesson much more illustrative and lethal.

Long and short of it, 2 hours later, I walked out with my iPhone working again, albeit with all my photos and GPS locations gone forever like the Beatles. And, my computer--that I had brought with me, was coated in cold germs like a Petri Dish dammit. The Apple dude complimented my on my foresight in bringing my computer in...it made the Restore a store-controlled process versus me trying to figure out how to proceed at home. We had to delete iTunes and subsidiary software on my PC and then reinstall.

The Apple employee's advised that every so often I needed to choose the option to "Restore" my iPhone rather than just "Check for Updates." Kind of like a deep cleaning scrub of the instrument versus just a cursory light sweeping. Since I had not seen my battery issue coming on the horizon like bandits--instead it literally came like lightening--my whole night was thrown off. For the want of the shoe, the horse was lost type of thing.

Thus, I had to come home late and scrub my bathroom which operates as the guest bathroom when out-of-towners stay with us. Suffice to say, about the only time I really deeply scrub the bathroom vs. just a light sweeping too, is when guests stay over...to get the bathroom guest- ready often takes a couple of hours. Lina, bless her heart, tried to take care of the job in light of my unexpected absence, but gave up gagging when she got to cleaning the tub and pulled the eject cord rather than vomit from disgust. I had planned to do it from 6-8 and then relax.

So, I didn't get to bed until about 11:45 PM, and had to awake at 5:00 AM. A time collision...

I was delighted to discover on Tuesday morning, that I had picked up the cold from the sick Apple dude. So, all in all, the whole bunch of Apples of a week went bad because of the iPhone crashing on Monday night, reminding me that this life of ours can be one where we are fighting off the chaos of sickness. For colds, I eat raw garlic...it is the nuclear option for fighting colds...it works like a body Restore, knocking out the software-like bug infection marauding in my body. For grimy bathtubs, I used Comet and a firmly-bristled brush. For iPhone maladies, I take my Precious to the hospital of a store, entrusting it to the care of the clinical experts.

For my spiritual state of sin, I read the Bible, for TRUTH. It does a deep "Restore" of my soul rather than just a light "Check for Updates."