The iPhone goes on sale today at 6pm. Since we have tickets to a concert at 7:30, we’re going to have to miss out on the fun of waiting in line this afternoon. The Apple Stores will be open until midnight, though, so our plan is to stop by one of them after the concert and try our luck. Worst case, I’ll try to find one locally tomorrow morning. Worst-worst case, I’ll order one online.

I kind of enjoy the community of the “waiting-in-line-to-buy-a-toy” thing. We waited in line for about 45 minutes in November to get our Wii, and that was admittedly pretty fun. Granted, it was 45 minutes, and it was Southern California. We had the weather on our side.

When I look at the stores around the country where people have been camped out since last night (or before), and it’s raining, or it’s over ninety degrees, it makes me realize how spoiled we are here. I’ve been reading the MacRumors forum for updates on the Apple Store line status around SoCal, and I found a great picture of the wait at The Grove, LA’s big outdoor mall. (You can read a previous blog entry about The Grove at Christmas right here.) They have what is probably the busiest Apple Store in LA, so naturally, there are already a lot of people in line — there were about 100 by 9am. The best part (as seen in the picture) is that the management of The Grove handed out umbrellas to the people who were waiting in line to protect them from the sun. Around the rest of the country, people are standing in the rain, or baking in the sun and humidity where it’s 100 degrees, but here in LA, where it’s 74 degrees with a light breeze and almost no humidity, the management of the mall hands out umbrellas. Southern California is cushy.

New York was fun — no doubt about that — but there was definitely the feeling, day after day, that the city is trying to beat you down. The noise, the dirt, the smell, the sweating… Good lord — the subway platform in August is one of the worst places on Earth. Then, when a train does come, it’s packed, and you end up in a car with no A/C. I don’t miss those days. Or there was the time when AEJ and I flew to NY last summer, and when we got off the plane, we were greeted by — no joke — a large, unfathomably stinky pile of human vomit next to baggage claim — NYC’s little way of saying to us, “welcome back.” I do miss the people, and the concerts, and the restaurants, but it’s nice to live somewhere where it’s easy to live.

In other news, a few days ago, I posted a blog entry announcing something, then started to get the feeling that I shouldn’t have said anything at all, so I deleted the entry. Here is the “non-controversial” part of that entry…

We did a little CostCo shopping the other day. I love CostCo, but they don’t have bags there, and you have to put your stuff in a random box in order to carry it. I don’t know what this box was for, but Loki decided that the description somehow fit him.

Oh, and I’m judging a band contest — one that’s done strictly from recordings. I received a huge box the other day with scores and CDs. It’s kind of overwhelming. Loki, always a fan of boxes, thinks this is going to be a great project.

It might be tough to judge how cute he looks in that shot, so I cropped it. The framing isn’t as nice, but man, that’s a damn cute cat. Who has paws? Who has cute little kitten paws? (You have to say that with a baby voice.)

Time to get back to work. I had kind of set a goal for myself to finish the slow movement of the sax concerto by Monday. With the concert tonight, and likely iPhone shopping (and playing) tomorrow, time is running out.