Updates...

First of all, a very HUGE THANKS to Ken, who sent me a new phone to replace the one I baptized. Gracias, senor. Today was my first full day with the phone and I am starting to figure it out. In the meantime if you send me a text or call me you might want to say who you are... I can't tell otherwise. Unless, of course, I recognize your voice.

Second, thanks to Shane Spell, who sent me this jogging program to help me not to die while running around.

Third, I've started reading Little Pilgrim's Progress to the kids at night. They really like it. They've been begging me to read more chapters, and we've settled into a pretty good rhythm of three chapters a night. Should last us about a month at that speed!

Death of a Cell Phone

While in Hawaii I ran down to the beach to see a Ilio-holo-i-ka-uaua (that's a Hawaiian monk seal to all you mainlanders). The Hawaiian monk seals are one of the most endangered seals in the world, with less than 2,000 alive today. Anyway, one was hanging out at the beach and I wanted to see it.

The kids were not particularly impressed. Z said -- with the detachment of some delphic oracle -- "It looks dead to me." And she was right that it looked that way. Krista took some pictures in which the seal appears to have expired on the beach, and the yellow tape put up to keep people from harassing the seal makes it look like a crime scene.

It also meant that to get to the other side of the seal you had to wade through the surf to come up on the other side. Since I hadn't planned to run to the beach to see an endangered seal, I had carried my cell phone down with me. But, being a genius I knew to hold it in my hand so I could lift it up and over any waves that might crash upon me.

As I passed around the edge of the crime scene tape I noticed two giant turtles in the surf. Which of course I needed to see more closely. So I walked closer and was amazed. They are incredible creatures. And then, as if in slow motion, a wave gathered strength and slapped me five right in the cell-phone-carrying hand.

NOOOOOOOO! And it immediately shut down. It lost all signs of life. It looked, for all intents and purposes, precisely like a Hawaiian monk seal.

I took out the battery, of course, and dried it out, and kept plugging it in to see if it would work. But no luck. Lights come on, but the screen is just a glowing blankness. It can send and receive phone calls... if it's plugged in. So it's now a land line, I guess. I feel completely crippled having a phone that you just pick up and dial in a number and make a call. One other issue... the phone was on vibrate at the time of the incident, and it won't switch over to audio. So that means that it's like a land line that only jiggles instead of ringing.

I went to the Verizon cell phone people today and the guy asked me "Did you put it in a bowl of ice?"

Ice? What?

"A bowl of rice," he said. To pull the moisture out. Oh. Nope, didn't do that.

So now it's too late. Phone = dead. I'm a year into my contract with no insurance so I can buy a "cheap" phone on a one year contract (cheap meaning only a hundred dollars instead of $150 or whatever the sale is today) or switch over to an old phone.

So I switched back to my original phone. The one I had for four years. The one I dropped in a toilet and it still worked. The one that is so old it doesn't work with Bluetooth.

Which leads me to these questions:

1) Does anyone have an old Verizon compatible phone they're trying to get rid of? Not as old as the one I am using right now, preferably.

2) Anyone out there use some sort of phone resale/buying site? One where I won't get ripped off?

3) Do you think it would be weird for me to stand outside the Verizon wireless store with a sign that said I WILL BUY YOUR OLD PHONE FOR $20 IF IT WORKS!

New Cell Phone

This is a picture of my old cell phone.  I got it four years ago and it still works fine.  I dropped it in a toilet during Year Two.  I ran over it with my bicycle during Year Four, and then hit the brakes just as my tire came across it, so the bike skid across the pavement with the phone grinding beneath it.  It has traveled through many a country, been throttled by children, crushed in glove boxes and buried alive in ancient pyramids while treasure hunting. 

I had to trade it in because Washington has a new law forbidding me from driving while talking on my cell phone.  So my wonderful and generous mother went and bought me an Auditory Cybernetic Enhancement.  When I tried to "pair" it with my phone the earpiece said, "This old piece of junk is a phone?  I don't think so."  Therefore, I had to search all the brummagem and "free phones" provided by my carrier until I found one I could stomach.



I took this picture of my old phone with my new phone.  My new phone has a camera.  It can also send text messages, film movies, surf the internet, play music, give directions with its GPS, shoot grappling hooks, send out ultrasonic squeals that cause criminals to wince and drop their weapons, sonar capabilities, respond to voice commands and beat Bobby Fisher at chess.  I think it's Batman's old phone.



Of course I can't afford to activate anything on it, and I can't figure out how to make a phone call with it.  I've been hanging up on people, dropping calls, missing texts, losing messages.  It's spectacular.  And I'm keeping it for at least four years.

Can you hear me now?

I received a phone call today on my cell phone.

Me: Hello?

Woman: Hi.

Me: Hi.

Woman: Hold on a minute. Honey, take the phone.

Man: Hello?

Me: Hi.

Man (in a deep voice): Where are you located?

At this point I needed to stop and assess my world view. There are a lot of answers to a question like "Where are you located?" My first instinct would be to say, "The guest room, folding laundry." Two problems with this answer: one, "Where are you located?" makes it sound like a more specific location is being inquired about. Second, he didn't ask me what I was doing.

So I thought some more. Perhaps I should say, "I am located in the center bedroom on the southern side of my house, a room which we refer to as the guest room"? I began to suspect that he *knew* where I was located and was testing me in some way. He wanted to know if I was honest, wanted to know if I was the kind to play cat and mouse games. But no, not me. Not with strangers. I learned my lesson that time I ended up running down the streets of Las Vegas, taking instructions from a creepy disembodied voice coming from my cell phone while a cabal of criminals tried to take their ill-gotten gains back from me. Or maybe that was a movie I saw, I forget.

Man (impatient): I am located on [some streets not near your neighborhood*].

Me: I think -- Yes. I think you have the wrong number.

Man: Is this Half Price Pots?

Me: No, it is not.

Man: You dialed the wrong number.

Woman (shrieking): Honey, I dialed the same number as last time!

*Click*

Me: Good-bye.

* They were, in fact, calling from Bellevue, Washington. They had put the wrong area code in.