Big Brown fell short in a bid to become the first Triple Crown winner in 30 years today, finishing last after being pulled up by jockey Kent Desormeaux in the Belmont Stakes. The overwhelming 1-4 favorite, Big Brown had been suffering from a highly publicized hoof injury for over a week, so that may have been a contributing factor in the thoroughbred’s rough outing.

Da’Tara, ridden by Alan Garcia and trained by Nick Zito, was the wire-to-wire winner of the 2008 Belmont Stakes. This horse was a 38-1 underdog, meaning that whoever bet on him walked away with a heck of a payout.

Of course, those who didn’t have money on the race were simply tuning in to see how Big Brown fared. It seemed like he was a shoe-in to win, especially when Casino Drive, Big Brown’s toughest competitor in the field, was a scratch.

But the Triple Crown simply wasn’t meant to be. Big Brown now joins a long list of horses that came up short in this final leg, including Smarty Jones, Funny Cide, War Emblem, Charismatic, Real Quiet, and Silver Charm.

(AP Photo/Denis Paquin)

I’ve mentioned several times before that I prefer to listen to books on my iPod rather than music. Nevertheless, I’ve managed to amass a decent-sized music collection over the years — enough to fill up my 8GB Nano, at any rate.

Since audiobooks generally consist of larger files requiring at least 300-400mb of space, I was in a bind. I could only keep one audiobook on my iPod at a time, and had to delete old files before loading new ones. What a pain!

Fortunately, I was recently able to get a brand-new iPod Nano for free, which means I now have two ipods at my disposal. As a result, I’m using one iPod just for music, and the other just for audiobooks. It’s a perfect solution for my situation!

Of course, my husband thinks I should just get an 80GB iPod classic so I never have to worry about storage issues, but that’s out of the question. Those models are just too big and bulky for my tastes; I’d much rather have a slim, trim Nano tucked into my pocket!