I often tell people that if they ever see me wandering aimlessly around town, looking dazed and confused, they’ll know I’ve lost my iPhone. My whole life is on that phone. Seriously. Without that calendar, I don’t know where to go next, and without the contact list I wouldn’t even know anyone’s number to call to find out where to go. Until recently, the only copy of my calendar in existence was the one on my phone. Too risky.

So a few weeks ago, I was syncing my iPhone on my shiny, new, green law school laptop, and I decided to see what would happen if I synced my iPhone calendar to Outlook 2007 for backup purposes. Sure enough, all four of my iPhone calendars (Me, Mini-Me, School, and Work) got transferred onto Outlook in all their color-coded glory. Success!

A couple of weeks later, I noticed that Google has calendar syncing software that allows you to sync your Outlook calendar with a Google calendar. Hmmmmm… vedddy inteddesting. I’ve since realized that this capability has been available for some period of time, but it was new to me. Anyhoo, I thought this would be a great idea because sometimes I’ll be talking on my iPhone and need to add something to my calendar at the same time, which requires putting the person on hold, which is sortof rude, and I hate rudeness. So, I thought, if I keep a Google calendar, I can access it anywhere, anytime, from any computer. Good idea! I installed the Google syncing software and ran it, and everything came up roses. Now today I’ve learned that this syncing program will only sync your primary Google calendar to Outlook, but I swear on my most annoying cat’s life that it transferred data from all four of my calendars. Anyway, I thought I was quite clever for figuring all this out.

Fast forward to today. I synced my iPhone calendar via iTunes to Outlook, but this time not everything worked like it was supposed to. Turns out only my primary Google calendar was syncing to Outlook (except for that first time, I swear!), so my other three calendars weren’t. I fiddled with it for a long, long time until finally I wound up completely wiping out my iPhone calendar and my Outlook calendars, leaving only the Google calendar version of my whole life in existence. It was at this point that I FREAKED OUT!

Finally, after a full day’s worth of web searching, program installing, weeping and gnashing of teeth, and sackcloth and ashes, I have conquered the calendar-killing beast once and for all. How, you ask? With Calgoo, my new BFF. This remarkable (and free!!) program syncs your Google calenders with Outlook. The catch is, you have to create a whole different calendar in Outlook for each calendar in Google that you want to sync. It’s okay, though, because in Outlook you can make your calendars overlap and view all events from all calendars at once, color-coded and all. It’s a beautiful thing. Then I proceeded to sync my iPhone with Outlook via iTunes again like usual, and — PRESTO!! — my whole life is back on my iPhone where it belongs, safe and sound.

I hope this never happens again. Next time I might end up in the psych ward for treatment of self-mutilation.