Priorities

I would like a new cell phone. I say would like rather than need, because I have a cell phone that works. I do not technically need a new phone. I needed a new phone in December, because my faithful old Motorola decided that she had been dropped too many times and was going to start not telling me when I had a voice mail, and other such nuisances in order to indicate that she was tired and wanted to be done. So I went to the AT&T store and got a new phone.

The problem that I have when I shop for a new phone is that my priorities are so very different from what a phone sales-person is used to hearing. Does it have a calculator? Can I set more than one alarm at a time on the alarm clock? How does it feel when I hold it to my head? It seemed to confuse the man that I did not care about things such as the megapixels in (on? of?) the camera or how quickly it could connect to the internet. He kept trying to sell me an i-phone, because store representatives work off of commission. Do you think that someone whose main concern in a cell phone is whether it has a calculator and multiple alarm capabilities needs an i-phone? I do not think so.

I finally told him I wanted the free Nokia, just to make him stop trying to convince me that I would like a touch-screen after I got used to it, because his wife had said that she would not want an i-phone for just that reason but now she is used to the touch-screen and loves it and would never want anything else. Free Nokia, please. Of course, he could not tell me anything about it, really. It is a basic use phone, and representatives do not tend to learn about the specifics of those. For the record, it does not have a calculator. Who makes a cell phone without a calculator in it? Nokia, that is who. Goodness. It also does not have multiple alarm capabilities (eh. oh well. it would not matter if that were the only thing wrong with it) and it is not a flip-phone, so it is a bit small.

I do not like it. I miss my old phone.

I am eligible for a full discount on an upgrade next August. I have found a different AT&T store, about the same distance away from my house, where the sales representatives are not nearly so pushy, where they actually listen to you and to what you want. So when I can get something new, I will go there, explain what is important to me, and be willing to spend a small amount of money in order to get something with which I will actually be happy.

Blessings on your travels,
Emily

Small things that make me happy in a somewhat depressing existance

1. Light on the river as the sun is just rising on my way to work
2. Being cut off in traffic only to discover that said vehicle has the next license plate number for which I had been looking (one-hundred-five)
3. Hummus
4. Small children lighting candles in church, especially those who are just barely tall enough to reach, and so insist on doing it all on their own without assistance
5. The space heater in my room

Blessings on your travels,
Emily

One Hundred

If you thought that the title reflected that this was my hundredth post on this blog, you were mistaken. This is my fifty-eighth post on this blog. The hundred is is in reference to a game that I play. It is called, like so many others, the license plate game. It consists of looking at license plates, and counting up from zero-zero-zero to nine-nine-nine. California license plates are #LLL###; Washington plates are ### - LLL; Idaho plates have no recognizable pattern to them. This game was stolen from one Timofy Carroll (and I have no idea if he kept going after the few times that he mentioned it on his old blog - his last post about it was on April seventh of two-thousand seven). I began playing right after Timofy's first post about it, on July twenty-first of two-thousand six, and today saw one-zero-zero. It was quite happy.

It will get very frustrating for a while, when I can not find a number for a long time, but then when I do it is so very exciting. Also, some numbers that I see which are already past have associations in my memory with images or events or people, since I have a very associative memory. Zero-five-zero (fifty) I associate with Biola facilities, because one of their vans has that number. I remember particularly because I was looking for zero-four-nine for perhaps two or three months, and it drove me toward insanity because I would see the van on campus nearly every day. Of course, once I did find forty-nine, I was able to move onto fifty-one rather quickly. Zero-zero-seven makes me think of Lindsey, because she was riding with me when I saw it, and she got excited as well because her youngest brother also plays the game (though he goes backward, beginning at nine-nine-nine). This is one of several things I do that border on obsessive, but I do not think that that is necessarily bad.

Blessings on your travels,
Emily