Monday, December 04, 2006

Ramblings and Random Babblings, Part 1

I've got oodles of things floating around in my brain that I've been meaning to dump here, and holy crap, it ended up being way longer than I thought so I'll split it up somewhere in the middle.

~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~

I finally got a new cell phone. I had my old one for 8 years. Yes, eight years. It drove my friends nuts. They called it either the brick or the ghetto phone. Sprint hated me 'cause I had been gloriously plan free for like six years or so. I was like the free range, wild chicken of cell phone plans.

Between the phone just not working well - I haven't had an undropped call in weeks - and Sprint making me spend an hour or so on the phone to customer service every month while they "reprogrammed" my phone so it would call out instead of calling them - "You owe... zero dollars... and must pay... zero dollars" - I finally decided that it was time.

Of course, I've tried before. Last winter, I went into a Sprint store at home. Sprint signs everywhere. Little guy in a sprint shirt came zipping over to help me, and I told 'em I wanted a new sprint phone. His whole face fell, and he informed me that he couldn't help me. He didn't have any Sprint phones. *blink* Beg pardon? It turns out that up 'till the week before, they'd been a Nextel store. They had the signs and everything, but no phones. Glad Sprint had its priorities in order, right?

When I was home for Thanksgiving, I stopped by a Radio Shack for batteries (which, btw, ended up being of a sort that they had never seen before and certainly didn't carry *sigh*), realized that they had Sprint phones, and grabbed a pretty one. I started out with a Katana or some such thing, but that had a mail in rebate and the Razor was an instant one. I now am SO trendy, with my spiffy charcoal Razor phone. Now if only I had some clue how to work it...


The part I shall really miss about the old phone is chewing on the antenna. It's a wonder I haven't fried myself.

~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~

What else? Oh, the drive home for Thanksgiving was trippy. I encountered freezing fog. My cousin lives in the mountains in Oregon and she's told me about this stuff. She's sent pictures, and it's really pretty. The drive across Indiana wasn't pretty. It was like driving through a cotton ball. A grey one. As water would condense on the Jeep, it would freeze instantly. I had to stop a couple of times and de-ice the antenna 'cause it was waving around and I was sure it was about to snap off. When I got to my brother's house, the whole front end of the truck was encased in ice. Weird.

Between that and the thundersnow, I'm really starting to wonder about our weather. (The thundersnow happens when you have thunder and lightning while it's snowing. It's really cool looking. I'm not sure what braintrust came up with the term thundersnow, but I am not mentally capable of saying it without sounding like an announcer for WWF Raw or used cars or something.)

~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~

Another thought: as you go about your gift giving this season, don't give slippers. Just don't. Given, I'm a hick and prefer to be barefoot. Also given, I LOVE shoes. Shoes do not equal slippers, people. And trying to smile and show appreciation for slippers with huge mutant Scooby heads on 'em is tough. Especially after you try to walk in them and fall flat on your face. Believe me on this one.

~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~

I can't decide whether or not to put up a tree. I have one of those pre-lit things in a box. But, most of my ornaments are glass. I haven't really posted much about my adventures with the kitten, but suffice to say, she's a demon-spawned hellchild. No ornament anywhere on the tree would be safe. Hell, the tree wouldn't be safe. And my Sophia, much as I love her, is no slouch in the tree-destroying department. Last year, I had a small tree (about 2.5 feet high), and I had to wire it to the wall and the table and then wire all of the ornaments onto it. It took me a couple of hours. And every night, I'd come home to find a glitter-covered kitty 'cause she'd spent the day whacking at it, trying for a weak spot. These aren't my cats, but the idea is the same.

~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~

I find this hilarious. People are destroying their TVs by throwing their Wii remote thingies at 'em and having the strap break. Then the remote thingie goes winging into space, until it impacts something expensive and breaks it. OMG, people, turn it off and go outside!

~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~

Solid wood furniture weighs A LOT. I brought my table and chairs back with me from Thanksgiving. The table is a pedestal-style, and we had to remove the top to get it crammed in the Jeep. Turns out that this was lucky for me 'cause there is NO way I could have pried it out of the Jeep with it still attached. As it was, I laid down blankets in a path from the Jeep to my door and rolled the table top into the apartment. Yesterday, I put it back together and hauled it upright. HEAVY! But, I now have a dining room table, and chairs! Yay!

~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~

Check out tomorrow for the rest of this brain dump.

No comments: