Thursday, December 30, 2010

Back to Your Regularly Scheduled Program of...Whatever it is I Normally Do Here

Y'all I got a Kindle for Christmas. I have not been that excited on Christmas morning since the year I got Teddy Ruxpin and all you can hear on the Christmas video for that year is what sounds like a hog being slaughtered. For two hours. (I clearly recall being way more adorable than that; unfortunately, my family video taped everything and it's very clear that I was not at all adorable. Also see that one year at Easter where I pitched a fit and fake cried loudly (and with a real tear even!) and everyone ignored me because I fake cried all the time to get my way. Even though it didn't work because everyone ignored me. Because I was not only not adorable I was also apparently mildly retarded).

The day after Christmas might go down as one of the nerdiest ever. I spent all day reading on my Kindle while my husband was determined to conquer Uncharted 2 on the PS3 (which he did, by the way). It could possibly have been nerdier had one of us written a blog post in elvish while the other spoke Klingon all day, dressed as our favorite Star Wars/Star Trek/Lord of the Rings and/or Harry Potter* characters (yes, we have one of each. Favorite characters, I mean, not costumes. I swear on whatever is holy to you that I do not own character costumes from any of those things) but just barely.

Other gifts of great excitement included hand milled vegetarian soap that has my bathroom smelling quite lovely, a pair of shoes I have been wanting for some time, a cover for the Kindle (now the precious can stay warm and protected), and money to buy things to put on the Kindle. Which I spent in about 10 minutes. But I have a bajillion things to read now plus a couple of cookbooks, one of which resulted in the best homemade macaroni in cheese ever created. And THAT is the gift that keeps on giving. Also, a lovely necklace I requested from the World of Hunger site, which funds a donation of about 25 cups of food, a few bracelets, and a sweater I will never wear except when I visit my great aunt.

I also bought myself a Christmas present. I did not actually want to do this, but I had to. I killed my cell phone with a bottle of Febreeze (they were battling to the death in my purse) and had to replace it on Christmas Eve.

So I'm at Verizon, explaining to the guy that my Febreeze and my cell phone were locked in epic battle the night before and the Febreeze was the definite victor ("No, really, smell the battery! It smells like Tropical Gain Febreeze!") And I should mention that the Kindle is something of an anomaly for me, because I am, relatively speaking, incredibly low tech. My cell phone made phone calls. That's all it did. Technically, I could text with it, but it was the kind where you hit the number button a jillion times to make letters. It could also take pictures, if one wanted an incredibly low resolution picture of something that you would be unable to identify later. I had forgotten how long lived that cell phone was until the sales guy reminded me.

The man spent a good minute looking from me to the phone in my hand back to me, with an expression of horror on his face before he finally gasped, "What...what IS that? I have not ever even SEEN a phone like that before. How...how long have you had that?"

Which hurt my feelings. That phone had longevity. And character. If I wasn't a complete moron it would have lived for who knows how long? Other people's phones break every 6 months and my phone was alive for at least 3 years. That phone totally earned some respect, and it was barely even cold in its grave before he started trash talking it).

"Uh...a few years, I guess? It's an LG flip phone."

This caused him several moments of heart palpitations. Which, okay, I get it. It's not a new phone. But it's not like it was the 20 pound Zach Morris Special, complete with 18 inch antenna or something (also, if you don't understand that reference we clearly cannot be friends anymore).

Finally he tells me I'm eligible for an upgrade and starts showing me phones, asking what I need.

"I need...to make and receive phone calls? Maybe a few texts here and there?"

"You...you don't do anything else with your phone? But you can get e-mail on your phone now and take pictures and get on the internet and..."

"Calls. Texts. The end."

So he very reluctantly sold me a phone that will be free once I get the rebate back. And the sales guy thinks I live under a rock and do not make full use of my opposable thumbs. He tried to talk me into a smartphone for a while, but I was like, "Dude. I've seen an iPhone. My husband has one growing out of his head. I use his for any emergency look-uppie things." I do have a keyboard now, which is kind of awesome and makes texting seem a lot more logical.

And that's how I bought myself a cell phone on Christmas Eve while reggae music played overhead.




*Yoda, Spock, Gandolf, and Hagrid, if you're interested.**
**Mine, I mean. His mileage may vary.

12 comments:

  1. This cracked me up. My phone is over five years old. Five years but it still works, calls and texts, despite my dropping it 596879050 times. I can only imagine your guy's expression if he got a look at my Motorola.

    Congrats on some wicked gifts!

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  2. 1. I first read that as "Vegetarian Soup" and was really confused as to why (a) this would be an exciting gift and (b) why it was going into your bathroom

    2. I probably would have had a similar reaction to the guy at the cell phone store. Sorry.

    3. I could NOT figure out what that asterick went to and I eventually figured out that scrolling down in my Reader caused me to miss an entire paragraph.

    4. In general: LOL.

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  3. Eh. I'm in the minority about the not wanting a high tech phone thing. That's cool. Also, this is not one of those "I don't watch t.v. therefore I'm better than you" things. Because for one thing I watch a lot of t.v. and for another I freely admit those phones are cool. I just think it would be a waste for me personally to own one. My husband might disagree considering the number of times I hijack his phone because I need to know something vitally important right away- things like the name of that one actess in that one thing before that we watched that time.

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  4. hee hee hee. you know that other really annoying kid who was always crying for attention all the time?

    that was me.

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  5. i was anti-cell phone before i got my first one and the only reason i got that one was because i was going to night school and didn't want to get gangraped.

    now i'm so dependent on that booshet you'd think it was my pacemaker.

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  6. I love my Kindle. I carry it in my purse EVERYWHERE.

    I still have a Zach Morris special buried in a box somewhere. I'm thinking of digging it out and carrying it around, just for effect.

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  7. Mine are R2D2/Spock/Faramir/Sirius Black. In case you were wondering!!

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  8. rescued insanity: I bow to your superior cell phone.

    Kelly: Clearly, to make the bathroom smell awesome.

    Shanner: God, we would have been an awesome team. My children will be like this as my punishment.

    Lucky: Tell me about it. I'm really just trying to keep from getting any MORE dependent on the stupid thing.

    Vic: Please take a picture of that.

    Maria: I totally was.

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  9. You should have been like, "my phone is vintage fool!" I have a blackberry but I'm seriously thinking about going back to just a regular phone. I don't need all the nonsense. I forgot my blackberry at home one day and it was one of the most relaxing days of my life. Seriously.

    P.S. 1. How big is your purse and 2. why did you have a bottle of Febreeze in it???

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  10. I die. My iPhone and I got married this summer and I've never been the same.

    You silly silly flip phone woman, you.

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  11. Lilly: My purse is really quite big. And no that's not Freudian. I just like to have a big bag so I can put things in it so I don't have to carry them in my hands. And I need my waller and my keys and my phone and my Kindle and then also BandAids because if I can cut myself I will (it's like, the third law of thermonuclear dynamics or something) and I need hand sanitizer because people are gross and touch things and I need a brush and then in winter I need somewhere for my gloves and my scarf when I'm not wearing them and my sunglasses and spare contacts and my iPod and you know, important stuff. And I needed the Febreze at my office because my office smells like bad things. Also we have a phantom farter and a phantom pooper who doesn't flush. So the Febreze is totally necessary.

    Ashley: I know, I know. It's really blasphemous of me to say these things. Please don't stone me.

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  12. I was steadfastly anti-Kindle until I finally decided one might be handy and when I got it for Christmas I was like "OHMIGOD this thing is AWESOME" and I don't think it ever left my hands the entire day. Although I did learn that, sadly, I suck at Scrabble.

    Just last night we were debating the the merits of tech phones versus trusty phones. My husband has been through 3 (4?) iPhones in less than a year. My friend has an old Nokia that got dropped in the snow, plowed over by the snowplow, and sat in a drift in someone's yard for 6 months until the snow melted. This lady then found the phone, dried it out and charged it, and IT WORKED. She called "mom" in the address book and that's how my friend got her phone back. You can't beat something like that.

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