Lost-o-mis-o-MP3-a-blog™

I've lost my lovely MP3 player and I am extremely annoyed - mainly with myself. It has made me disproportionately miserable in a way that has quite surprised me.

• I had it up to about 21st December.
• By the time I went back to work on 4th January I didn't know where it was any more.
• It's absolutely unclear whether it's still in the house or if I really dropped it on the tube or left it on a car roof or something.
• This was a somewhat chaotic period with lots of nonstandard things going on.
  
• This whole saga is a complete drag and I am furious.
  
• It's too nice to lose and I feel I cannot do without it. It was a birthday present from Deb with major advisory input from Lottie. It was perfect: indeed it was a real "flapping owl" of a gift.
  
• I've ordered a new one. Bits have started turning up (remote, screen protectors etc) but not the player itself yet.
  
• If the old one turns up Deb and I will have one each.
• It's going to be a big drag setting up the new one, but we will get there in the end.
  

Gah!!!

Lessons learned (if I only had a brain):

• Act immediately you suspect it's missing: don't let it ride for days while you're vaguely thinking I wonder where it is, I hope it turns up, I need it next week.
  
• Put a label on the back. I've had various things returned to me because of this simple measure.
  
• Try to control the chaos!

Update (3rd February): the new one came and is now in and working. Huzzah! I had some pain with getting it synchronized: it turned out it was only one track that was sabotaging it, but that was one out of 4000 so identifying it was a bit of a drag - but doable. Interestingly, this faulty track caused Windows Media Player to crash gracelessly, which I thought was a bit poor. Even Creative's own software also crashed, which was even more surprising: ho hum. And, of course, some tracks that I paid good money for are now no longer mine, because I have copied them too many times and some bunch of business creeps wants more money. Gah! But I can restore these from backup audio CDs (duh) and anyway most of the device is back to where it was, and I am well pleased. I must try not to lose this one. For about half a day I seemed to have lost the new remote, though it was really only my faulty memory about where I'd put it "safely". But this did not make me feel good.

I wonder if the other one will ever turn up, or if it really has gone for good?