I’d like to take this opportunity (5:30pm on a Tuesday sitting in a Starbucks…) to thank the techie gods for these five technological innovations I can’t imagine my life without:

1) The Laptop – I wouldn’t even be here, sitting in this Starbucks at 5:30pm on a Tuesday if it weren’t for the laptop. Mine is a black MacBook. It’s light, sleek, fast, and now that I’ve got a new battery, it holds a five-hour charge. As a writer I can’t even imagine what it must have been like to have to write papers, even novels, on typewriters. Writing a page and then realizing that there was a spelling error? The horror! Being stuck in a home office or computer lab in order to use a desktop computer? Never again!

2) The Cell Phone – My current cell is a black Motorola Razr (it matches my laptop, which was an accident), and even though I can call, text, and surf (the very slow) Internet, I can’t wait until my plan is up in September so I can upgrade to a new phone. There are so many phones now with speedy Internet capabilities, music players, digital cameras, even video cameras, you often only need this one tiny piece of plastic to get you through your day.

3) TiVo – Very few people I know actually own a TiVo machine, but most have a digital video recorder and we can thank TiVo for that. Now I get to start my day with The Daily Show and a cup of coffee, instead of having to end my evening that way. I can skip through the commercials for dishwashing liquid while watching Good Eats on the Food Network. And I can re-watch the season finale of Lost to try and figure out what the hell is going on with that wacky island. I never want to be tied down to a programming schedule or (gasp!) a VHS tape-recorded show, again.

4) The iPod – The iPhone has a music player and the iPod Touch has Internet capabilities, but I’ll take a regular iPod (now called an “iPod classic” That was fast!) any day. My life is richer now that I can walk to the subway station in New York listening to Of Montreal, and when I get in my car in Los Angeles, I scroll through my iPod to find the perfect song to drive to the beach to (Len’s “Steal My Sunshine” is a personal, pop favorite). I now have a soundtrack to my life and I can’t imagine my life without it.

5) Bluetooth – This is both a physical thing and a magical data transmission thing. I’m thankful for both. Physical Bluetooth devices, like the earpiece I carry in my car, are a life saver for two reasons: 1) I won’t kill myself while driving, and 2) I won’t get a $50 ticket now that California has a new non-handheld cell phone law. And I’m thankful for the magical powers of Bluetooth that can’t be seen, which help me to get photos from my laptop to my cell phone and visa versa. Now embarrassing photos of my sister are always around to share at the next family reunion.

Since it’s not a physical thing, I didn’t include Facebook on this list, but I think it deserves an honorable mention. There’s no reason to ever fall out of touch with someone now. I’ve got friends on Facebook that I haven’t seen since I was eight, friends that I see almost every day, and even an ex-boyfriend (or two) so I know when he has a new girlfriend (Ouch! They look so happy together! What a douchebag!). (Editor’s Note: And we can happily stalk people without ever being discovered!) It’s both a blessing and a curse, but one that I could never do without.

[Photo courtesy of pcworld.com]

During college, if I ever forgot it back at my sorority house after heading out for the day, I would somehow find a way to sprint back and get it in between classes. I was so sure I would miss the call of a lifetime during that 9 am – 10:20 am time period.

Usually, I didn’t.

Well, this addiction causes me to have frequent instances where I can swear I hear it ringing, but when I would reach into my bag and take a look, it is totally silent.

No missed calls, no new text messages, no new picture messages. What is this weird thing that I was hearing?

Am I going crazy?

Nope, just suffering from a case of Ringxiety. And yes, it is a real thing, and there has now been a study done to back it up.

According to a recent news report, “A new study found that two thirds of the people surveyed reported hearing their phone ring or feeling it vibrate when it had not actually rung. The phenomenon has been termed ringxiety…The more frequently a person uses their phone, the more often they reported hearing a phantom ring, the study found. These participants (67% of the people surveyed) had higher monthly charges, used more minutes, sent more text messages, and showed higher levels of impulsivity.”

I love seemingly meaningless studies as much as the next girl, but it’s pretty easy to see that if you’re constantly on your phone you’re going to be constantly thinking about it and therefore “hearing” it ring.

Put it this way, it’s like having a song stuck in your head. You “hear” it, but is it playing on the stereo? No, you’re just tweaking out because you’ve listened to that Kanye song all freaking day.

So, do not worry, when you experience this phantom ringing, you are not going insane from the massive amounts of coffee you drank in order to cram for that big exam. You are only suffering from a case of Ringxiety. The cure: Put down the cell phone and walk away…no picture message is that important.