Go ahead. Be noisy.

Sure, I need to hike up a rather long dock, even if it's raining, to use the bathroom in the middle of the night. And I haul our drinking and cooking water to the boat in gallon jugs. And I have no choice but to play footsie with my husband in my sleep because our bed converges into a six-inch wide space at the foot-end. And my showers cost me $0.25 per two minutes, and also involve a walk up the dock and a wet-headed walk back again. It isn't a life of opulence or convenience. But today I absolutely splurged on something to make boat-life a huge chunk easier--Bose noise-reducing headphones. I've been ogling them for months, if not years. I'd held off a long time on this extravagant purchase, and I now feel like the most spoiled girl on the dock.

Everyone knows the boat is a tiny space, and Scott and I have managed our workspaces in such a way that we can both work without being in each other's physical way. But, either we must have silence, or headphones on, in order to not disrupt the concentration patterns of the other. Sometimes it just isn't practical. Scott is near silent in the hours between when he wakes up at some (unnecessarily) crazy hour while I am still asleep. But once my heads pops out of the v-berth, it really is only fair that the silence is ended for a while.

Today the audio level boat compromises seemed like they were just adding too much to all the other compromises of married boat life. Scott should be able have CNN on his laptop sometimes while working at the other computer, and I should also be able to have quiet while I am working. I don't think either of us wants too much. He doesn't ALWAYS have CNN or music or a radio on, just some of the time. And I don't ALWAYS want silence when I work, just when I need to do certain kinds of tasks. Yet the two seem to conflict often enough. So I headed downtown to the Bose store.

It took less than 15 seconds to sell me. The salesman told me to try out the headphones. I put them on and he hit a button that made music and talking come out of them. The audio was telling me about the superior sound quality of these headphones, which I don't really care all that much about. I just DIDN'T want to hear other stuff. So I was going to take them off and ask the guy about the sound they eliminate. What I hadn't realized was that when he made sound come out through the headphones, he also turned on the sound of an engine and a train in the store. I was actually confused as to where those sounds came from. I put the headphones back on and the sound disappeared again. Okay. Good. He went on to tell me I could return them for a full refund for 30 days, and they have a full warranty for a year. I asked if that meant that they malfunctioned for ANY reason I'd get new ones or fixed ones, even if I drove over them or something? Yes. Good. I should know within a year whether these suckers will hold up to the salt air. I happily made my purchase, and headed to a coffee shop to try them out.

Wow. Really. Wow! I had to put my computer on it's lowest volume setting, then reduce the iTunes volume even more to have my background work music low enough while it still drowned out regular coffee shop sound. What was more amazing was that, when I took them off again, the coffee shop sounded horribly, horribly loud. Once my headphones were off, I couldn't get out of there fast enough. And I can usually easily work in coffee shops with regular coffee shop sound. I just turn my earbud volume up high enough to drown everything else out. Not good for my ears. Not good at all. This is much better.

A funny thing to be excited about when buying something is the size of desiccant that comes in the packaging. These headphones had a huge packet with them, three times bigger than you get with a new pair of shoes or something. I think the size of the desiccant says something about the quality of the product. I plan to keep my packet of drying agent right in the lovely case that my headphones came with. I also think it's probably good that the little things like desiccant excite me, even when I just got very cool new headphones. I am, after all, a very simple girl.

Yep, all is good. And quiet.

:)
M