In November of 2004, How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb and the special edition U2 ipod were released. I didn’t fall in love with Atomic Bomb as I had with All That You Can’t Leave Behind, but there are a few songs that I love from it including Original of the Species, Love and Peace or Else and Sometimes You Can’t Make it on Your Own. I bought the U2 special edition ipod – my first ipod. It had 20 gigs and came with 400 U2 songs called The Complete U2 on itunes.

In 2005, U2 toured in support of How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb with the Vertigo Tour. I was as disinterested in the Vertigo tour as I was interested in the Elevation Tour. Originally, I had tickets to 15 shows, but I only went to 8 – haha only. And only three of those shows were GA. I thought I hadn’t been so into Vertigo because I wasn’t that into the How to Dismantle An Atomic Bomb album, and I was very into Lisa Marie Presley who was on tour at the same time, and I had just adopted my puppy Elvis and didn’t want to leave him – plus Larry had really bad hair on Vertigo. But from reading my journal from those days, I realized that it was also because I had joined a church and gotten very involved, including leading the youth group, bought a house, and gotten a 9-5 job for the first time in my life, so I didn’t feel as free to travel all around to U2 shows. But I did make it to Philadelphia, New Jersey, New York City, Washington DC, and Las Vegas. Luckily I still kept a journal then because I don’t really remember those shows, except for Larry beating that drum in front of me during Love and Peace – more on that later.