I did it!

I've been planning out my husband's Christmas present for almost a month. I was so excited about it but couldn't post anything because Dan reads my blog.

One Sunday a while back I took his car for an oil change. The place I took it just happened to be next to a pet store so I had an excuse to buy more fish. *wink-wink*

On the drive to the shop I couldn't hook up my new iPhone to his tape deck adapter because it wasn't working. It hadn't worked for quite a while. If you've ever wandered over to his blog, you'll know he loves music. His iTunes library is well over 11,000 songs and he loves to play his iPod on random all the time. Except in his car. Where he can't, missing out on about an hour of listening time a day.

Aha. A great gift idea! I was thrilled. He's the kind of guy who thinks gift-lists are stoopid and believes you should be able to come up with ideas on your own. He's also hard to buy for because he has two hobbies: music and golf. He's at the point in his golf game where he'd need to pick out his own equipment and gift cards are right up there with gift lists. I've gone to the "golf shirt" well a lot. So, needless to say, when I thought up a fancy new car stereo that plays iPods for his big gift, I was excited.

I started doing the research on-line and quizzed Phil a lot, the young, I'm-old-enough-to-be-his-mom, techno-whiz kid in my office. He pointed me to a couple sites and a couple good brands to look at, told me it wasn't hard, and even did a bit of research about Dan's car for installation. After a visit to a local stereo store, I found a good model and had a price for comparison. $x. They wanted $y for installation, $z for the installation kit, and $30 for the iPod connection cable. And don't forget state tax. Back on-line I go, find the same thing, free shipping, free iPod cable, free install kit, no sales tax. All for $x-$10. Whoohoo!

Phil and I went out to Dan's car at lunch one day and opened up the stereo compartment to scout out the ease of installation. The next thing to think about was when would we do the installation with Phil's leave schedule to work around. When the stereo arrived in the mail we examined all the parts and the directions and discussed the wires that needed soldering together. I had to wait for Dan to go to one of his Wizards games so I could solder the wires myself with a soldering kit I bought. I only burned my finger once.

We didn't get it installed before Phil left for Christmas so I wrapped up the faceplate, the part you take off for security, for the gift-giving. Dan wasn't sure what he was looking at and wasn't sure I could do the installation after I explained what it was.

Ha! I had a blast putting it in myself. I did it last night, Phil will be so proud. It was easy since the wiring was already soldered and ready; the hardest part was finding a place for the grounding wire and getting my hands back in there to bolt it down. I should have taken pictures, but the camera batteries were dead.

Dan called me this morning to tell me thanks, he liked having his ipod playing on the way to work, and he was impressed with my ability. Now he has to figure out how it works.