Fred did, in fact, get himself a smartphone. A Motorola Triumph, to be exact. He ordered it last week, and it arrived on Saturday and OH is Fred is lurve. He spent all weekend downloading games and showing me how his phone could play videos like perhaps I’d never seen the like before.
I congratulated him for joining this century.
Someone searched my site for “LG Optimus” recently, and remember back when I desperately wanted an LG Optimus, but Virgin Mobile was constantly out and so was Target, and finding the damn phone was like trying to find a damn Cabbage Patch doll back in the 80s? And THEN for a brief shining moment in time Virgin had them available again, and I quicklikeabunny ordered one and it arrived and… meh.
It wasn’t my thing. I ended up planning to sell it on eBay, but a reader emailed and asked if I’d sell it to her, and I did, and I got myself a Samsung Restore, which I’ve been using for about three months. The number one thing I use my cell phone for (almost the only thing I use it for, really) is texting, and I’ve got to have a QWERTY keyboard with actual buttons, the on-screen keyboard doesn’t work for me.
The problem with the Samsung Restore is that the keyboard is a little wider than I’d like it to be, so it’s kind of annoying to text with. I messed with the Blackberry Curve at Target last week, and I think it might work a little better for me. I’m considering switching to that, but I’m not in any hurry to do anything.
Fred called Virgin Mobile to switch phones, and asked if he could get the $25 a month 300 talk minutes and unlimited web, messaging, data and email deal that I have. That’s a monthly plan that’s no longer available (I was grandfathered in because I already had it when they eliminated it), but Fred pointed out that he’d been a “long-time loyal customer” and asked if he could get it as well. The customer service rep didn’t know if he could get it for good, but was able to give it to him for the first month anyway. The same plan is now $35 a month, which is still way cheaper than the plans at T-Mobile or Verizon, etc. Also, no contract with Virgin Mobile.
Fred spent Saturday afternoon scrolling through, and playing, ring tones to find the perfect one. He ended up with this one. As of Sunday evening, I think he’d watched that video clip about 300 times, laughing his ass off every time (it’s the dance that gets him. Me too, for that matter.)
Every day at work, Fred attends an informal meeting of all the guys on his team at 8:30. I do believe I’ll be calling Fred right around 8:35 to see what he wants to have for dinner tonight.
Lately, one thing I’ve taken upon myself to do is scrub down the pigs’ water trough and the dogs’ water dishes, because if they’re not scrubbed down at least every second or third day, they develop a nasty thick film of algae and don’t the pups and the pigs deserve clean, fresh water?
I think they do.
Last Thursday I was out there with my tools – elbow-length pink rubber gloves, a green scrubby, and a scrubbing brush – scrubbing away. After they finish their afternoon snacks, George and Gracie like to watch me work, and then drink some of that fresh, clean water. George was standing there watching me, and I had finished scrubbing the pig trough and was refilling it, when Gracie came trotting over.
“Hey, Gracie Mae,” I said, and held out my hand to her. She started toward me, and then suddenly turned around and ran off as fast as she could.
“What the -?” I said. She stopped about ten feet away, glared at the ground near my feet, and started barking.
“Gracie, what are you doing? Come here!” I said. She barked a couple more times, and then backed off another ten feet and barked furiously some more.
I looked around on the ground, trying to figure out what had her freaked. George stood there next to me, all “What’s HER problem?”, and Gracie stood twenty feet away, barking continuously.
I finally realized that she was barking at the hose, which apparently looked like a snake to her. When I wound the hose back up on the hose reel, she gave a couple more nervous barks, and then came over to drink some water.
“You know, Lassie would have thrown herself between me and the perceived threat,” I told her. “She would have picked up that snake and bitten the life out of it TO PROTECT HER HUMAN. Then she would have thrown it down a well and NOT EXPECTED A WORD OF PRAISE, you useless brat.”
And Gracie was all “Yeah, whatebs.”
“HA HA YOU ALMOST GOT BIT BY A SNAKE AND I WAS OVER THERE KEEPING SAFE, DUM-DUM!”
Ciara has finally gone off to Petsmart. She was a bit peeved to be stuffed into that carrier, and she might have called me every name in the book on the way there, but once we were there, she was a little concerned and a bit hissy, but she adjusted pretty quickly. I did take the camera with me, but didn’t take any pictures of the Spice Girls, because the morning cleaner was still cleaning, and I didn’t want to get in her way. Clove, Cilantro, and Coriander were their usual laid-back selves, and I was able to pick up and snuggle (and repeatedly kiss) each of them before I left. When I left, Ciara was sitting there looking annoyed.
As of yesterday, none of them had been adopted. Adoptions have been slow lately, likely due to school starting again. Once Labor Day is past, I’m hoping that adoptions pick up.
Ciara and the Ears of Annoyance.
She is such a gorgeous girl, isn’t she?
Harlan keeps an eye on things.
Jake enjoys the sun, while Everett takes a quick sniff of his tail.
Molly, keeping an eye on me.
Everett and Harlan confer.
And….
attack! (Kong bird is appalled.)
Lucy’s all “What’s going on over here, Mister Bird?”
Kong bird’s all “Nothing you need to see, missy. It’s appalling.”
Everett’s all “I BITE YOU BUTT.”
“I SLAP YOU FACE!”
A brief break from the fighting while Harlan confronts Mister Bird.
“Why you not come save me, Mister Bird?”
“Mister Bird doesn’t get involved, sonny. Mister Bird is Switzerland.”
Everett decides to get into it with Lucy, while Molly LEAPS out of the fray.
You know how cats stretch as they walk? We call that their monkey walk. Kara always monkey walks over to Newt, then head butts him. Then she might smack him, depending on her mood.
Newt likes hanging out on the patio in the back yard.
Note that Kara’s thinking about monkey walking over to him. You can see by her ears that she thinks he needs a smack.
::thlurrrrrp::
Previously
2010: No entry.
2009: No entry.
2008: To say the air in the kitchen is spicy is understating it – I can’t take a deep breath in there without feeling like I’m setting my lungs on fire.
2007: It was someone with a vendetta.
2006: Time to give up the raw vegetables, at least for the time being.
2005: John Cusack, however, has become suddenly completely unappealing to me.
2004: No entry.
2003: I see a little silhouetto of a Poo,
2002: Damn him.
2001: Jayzus, I can’t wait ’til I’m Supreme Ruler of the World, and I can run around ordering the death of people who annoy me.
2000: Here we see Miz Poo at the tail end of a Fancypants swish-by. She looks none too pleased.
When my mother was 7 or 8, growing up in Maryland, she picked up the old-fashioned, heavy-duty black garden hose to take a drink from it, as kids will do on a hot summer’s day. Problem was, it turned out to be an enormous black rat snake instead. Her great-grandmother, whom she called Mee-maw, was sitting in a rocking chair on the porch combing out her knee-length, snow-white hair, and Mee-maw cackled and pointed like (my mother says) some wicked witch watching her victim bite into the poisoned apple.
My mother’d already had a healthy fear of snakes, but from that day, it was a full-on phobia which didn’t lessen until she was well into her 50s. Today, in her 60s, she can – barely – stand to be in the same room as a television showing images of snakes, though she hides her face behind a pillow, and she is now content to simply drop a magazine that has a photo of a snake instead of throwing it across the room and running away, screaming.
She’s told the story of The Hose That Was a Snake so many times that I can envision it almost as clearly as if I had been there, and may I just say that with a little bit less facial hair and perhaps a bit of adjustment to the teeth and nose, Gracie would (IMO) look exactly like Mee-maw sitting there, rocking and cackling and combing out her hair.
I also had a hose/snake encounter. I was weeding my flower bed and the soaker hose was wrapped around the base of a big plant. I reached down and grabbed hold of it and gave it a good yank and about 6 feet of snake unwound from that plant. Every appendage of my body began whirling in opposite directions and I levitated out of that flower bed and landed some 20 feet away, feet still moving. Thankfully it was a simple garden variety snake and not some Texas sized rattler. Still, I buy blue hoses now. Only blue hoses. There aren’t any blue snakes, right?
Mister bird is Switzerland is cracking me up!
Our hose is a bright unnatural green I would bet no snakes are colored either.
Guess who have brown recluse spiders in their garage and (I think) the shed? Our neighbor’s son who we let use it told us last week. I had just been in there earlier that day to let a township inspecter check out our new electrical pannel. I about died when he told me. I was putting stuff in the shed before the hurricane Saturday and saw a small brown spider on a window frame my husband has stored in there. I gave it a wide bearth as I stored small stuff in there. I made my husband put the bigger stuff in the garage later. A friend who used to be an exterminator is comming over later this week to spray. I’m considering getting new gardening gloves because I’m too afraid to check inside my old ones right now. I should go out and pick up the storm debris but the stirred up pollen is making my allergies horrible. I was thinking of you and Andrea and those damn brown recluses this past week.
I loved my Blackberry Curve and miss it to this day. It was easy to use and very durable – I dropped that sucker a lot. I have an iPhone now, which is OK, but I miss the keyboard and trackball. Unfortunately, I switched service so I can’t go back to my beloved Curve without buying my way out of the contract, which is not happening. Good luck finding the right phone for you!
What happened to Jane? Do you know?