On cell phones and why I’m mad at them today

So today I went to enter an appointment in the calendar on my cell phone.  I would be so lost without it that it’s just plain ridiculous.  Anyway, I was halfway through typing in the appointment when my phone shut off.  Weird.  I’d had to turn it on when I dug it out of my purse because it was off then, too.  Double weird; I hardly ever turn my phone off.  I was in a hurry because I had to eat and run some errands, so I stuffed it in my purse and was on my way.  When I got to where I have lunch, I fiddled with it again and it just kept turning itself off.  Stupid phone.  By now I was super irritated, so I contented myself with ordering lunch and reading the new Catherine Anderson book I got last weekend, annoyed at the thought of having to cut my reading shorter than I wanted so that I could stop at the cell phone store.

After eating a very quick lunch, I headed to the post office to get something in the mail and then I hurried over to the local cell phone store.  Of course, they couldn’t really do anything to help me except suggest that I go back to the store where I bought the phone and see if they could do something with it.  I’ve only had the phone since the end of November; it’s brand new!  Apparently that’s one of its problems.  My phone had just come out in November or right around then and evidently, it had some issues at first, so either it’s that and they may have to exchange my phone, or it’s a software thing and it just needs to be updated.  I’m hoping for the software thing because they can’t switch text messages and I want to keep some of them, so I don’t want to have to turn my phone back in as part of an exchange.  So I guess I get to go to Waterloo tonight with the kids to see if I can get my phone situation taken care of.  It wouldn’t be quite so bad if it wasn’t my only phone…Okay, yes it would, but whatever.  At least if I had a land line I could still call people.  I hate being phoneless.

It’s funny how much cell phone malfunctions bother me.  It proves just exactly how dependant I am on my cell phone and when you really stop to think about it, that’s probably not a good thing.  Without my cell phone, it feels like I’m missing a limb or something, and it never used to be that way.  Then again, that was back before I had a cell phone and it’s getting harder and harder to remember those days.  The really sad thing is how I don’t know anyone’s phone number anymore.  I used to be a walking phone book, as I suspect we all were at one point.  Now, no one knows anyone’s phone number because all phone numbers are stored in our cell phones for easy, one-touch dialing.  It reminds me of what my dad always says about calculators: “That thing’ll make you stupid.”  And it’s true.  I rarely do mental math anymore because I’ve come to depend so much on my calculator’s ability to do it for me.  Any sort of addition or subtraction or anything, really, that involves carrying of numbers or anything with decimals or percents, I just can’t do without my calculator.  My brain has grown weak from lack of use.  It’s the same with phone numbers.  Unless you’re someone I talk to frequently on the phone or someone I’ve known forever and your number doesn’t change, chances are good that I no longer know your phone number.  It’s really quite sad.

But on the bright side, it’s Friday!  Hooray!  And I have a story idea!  Hooray!  And I have a book to read!  Hooray!  And possibly plans for the weekend!  Hooray! Plans that involve shopping!  Hooray!  Is anyone sick of all these exclamation marks and shouts of hooray yet?  Hooray!

🙂

I am so ready for the afternoon to be over.  Only one more hour and forty-five minutes!  Hooray!  I need to lie down…

(c) 2009.  All rights reserved.

Again with the snarkiness…

But this time it wasn’t mine.  Well, okay, it reminded me a lot of mine, but this time it wasn’t me, I swear.  This was an article from Wednesday’s Iowa Falls Times-Citizen, or rather, it was a letter to the editor of that newspaper.  Here is what Jory Rapp of Alden had to say:

It saddens me, as well as angers me, to think that it has become so “politically incorrect” to say, “Merry Christmas.”  We are so afraid of offending someone for one reason or another that stores won’t put Merry Christmas in their ads, school concerts are called “winter concerts,” and such ridiculous rot as that.  It seems like it’s wrong to offend everyone else; everyone, that is, except for the Christians.

If memory serves me right, wasn’t our country founded on Christian beliefs, values, and morals?  We trusted in God to establish, guide, and bless our country, yet now we spit in His face and are outraged at having Him be part of our country and its government.  Then we have the audacity to moan at the shape our country is in and ask why God allows certain things to happen.  If we would look to the Bible and the history of the Israelites, we would see what happens when people turn their backs on God, when they choose to worship other gods and idols.  We are headed down that path and if we continue to kick God out of everything, one day we will be standing in the midst of a disaster asking, “Where are you, God?” and His answer will be, “You didn’t want me around, so I left.”

This Christmas season, I will remind my children that we celebrate because God chose to send His Son to this earth as a baby to one day be the Savior of all mankind and that we are to share that gift with others.  I wish everyone a very blessed and “Merry Christmas.”

 I thought this was very well written and I pretty well agree with it.  If Ben Stein can stick up for “Merry Christmas” even though as a Jew, he doesn’t celebrate it, why can’t the rest of us?  “Season’s Greetings” has got to be about the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.  The holiday is Christmas.  If you have a problem with that, go back to wherever you came from.  Or celebrate Festivus.

And now, on to snarkier matters…

It appears that the Idiot Brigade is back in full force.  I swear I got stuck behind every idiot driver in Grundy County Wednesday.  I was nearly hit by someone who decided to switch lanes without making sure there was no oncoming traffic and then again by someone who decided to take his half out of the middle while I was trying to pass him.  If he’d come any further into the left lane, he could have knocked me right off the road.  And then yesterday I was nearly run over by some idiot at a stop sign who was watching around the corner instead of right in front of him, where I happened to be walking.  Jerks.  What is it about winter that brings out the idiot in people?

On a more positive note, thank God it’s Friday!  I am so looking forward to the weekend.  No getting up for work and struggling to make it through the day, no idiots to deal with on the road because I fully intend to stay home and be exceedingly lazy, nothing but chick flicks and romance novels.  Oh, and Christmas present wrapping.  And Christmas card writing.  And maybe a little bit of 4-H paperwork.  Woo!  I love weekends!

Merry Christmas, y’all, and happy Friday!

(c) 2008.  All rights reserved.

Perhaps a little more snarkiness…

…After all, I was seriously upset last night.  I suppose it’s a stupid thing to be that upset over, but I think the reason it bothers me so much is that music has always been such a huge part of my life that it really irritated me to see a performance where it looked like nobody really cared.  They were shooting for mediocrity and barely achieved even that.  I was always taught to strive for excellence.  Those kids (the fourth graders in particular) had a serious problem with projection; we sat about as far away from the singers as you could possibly get and could hardly hear them most of the time.  At one point we couldn’t even understand what they were singing because they weren’t enunciating at all.  I remember quite vividly a lesson I received once on enunciation during kids’ choir practice at church.  Let me tell you, I enunciated perfectly after that.

It also really bothers me that in so many public places, we are encouraged not to say anything even resembling a remembrance of what Christmas is really all about.  Christmas is first and foremost about celebrating the birth of Christ and his life and works.  Secondly, it is about spending time with family and friends and thanking God for the blessings you have had and continue to receive.  It is not about shopping and buying and spending and receiving.  As a kid, I remember not really caring so much about the family part and the religion part.  But now that my mom and both my grandparents are gone, I really cherish the times that I can spend with my family all together.  Those times are few and far between.  And the older I get, the more I can appreciate what God has done for me in my life and the more I find myself…apparently forgetting to take my hot water out of the microwave so I can have some hot chocolate.  Excuse me.

Okay.  Yesterday I heated up some water twice in order to make a cup of hot chocolate and I forgot about it both times.  I think I remembered it as I was leaving work for the night.  Today I’ve only done it once so far.  Let’s see if I can remember to take it out of the microwave while it’s still hot this time.

Anyway, I think I’m a little calmer now.  I am just so sick to the teeth of all this stupid political correctness garbage.  Kids don’t say the Pledge of Allegiance in school anymore because “it might infringe on someone’s right not to believe in God.”  You can’t have the Ten Commandments in courthouses anymore.  Oh, and by the way, no Christmas carols in the annual Christmas concert because someone might be offended.  Really, how much farther are we going to let them take this?  If you don’t want to hear Christmas music, don’t go to the concert.  If you don’t want to say the Pledge of Allegiance because you don’t believe in it, don’t say it!  If you don’t like the way we do things in our country, go somewhere else.  Otherwise, shut your yaps and do like the rest of us.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for the separation of Church and State, but I think in some cases we’ve taken it a bit too far and much farther than the Founding Fathers intended, Christmas concerts and prayer in school being prime examples.  I’m not saying I want to live in a religious state, but seriously, people, use some common sense.  By not allowing such expressions of faith as singing Silent Night in a school Christmas concert, we are effectively offending ourselves.  I’m offended that kids are not allowed to sing a religious Christmas song at the Christmas concert because it might offend someone else.  The community in which I live is predominantly, if not entirely, Christian, and I think it’s stupid that we are not allowed to sing Christian Christmas songs during the Christmas concert.

Okay, so maybe I wasn’t done being snarky.  I’m sure I probably just talked in circles around my main point of wow, we’re all being stupid here, folks, but oh well.  I guess I’d just like to know why what was okay for us to sing as kids in our Christmas concerts is suddenly not okay to sing now.  For crying out loud, they could have at least sung something like Silver Bells or Jingle Bell Rock or Let it Snow!  Let it Snow!  Let it Snow!  While these are all nice songs in their own way, they’re no Angels We Have Heard On High or O Holy Night, but they’re at least Christmas classics.  Where were they in the program?

Okay, okay, I promise I’ll get off my high horse now.  I’ve been looking at my archives list and I can’t believe I’ve been blogging for over a year!  I know, that’s not much for some people.  I have one friend who’s been at it regularly for the last five years.  But for me to actually keep something like this going this long is pretty cool, especially given that I haven’t been doing a whole lot of actual writing lately.  I so need a free time machine.

And in case you were wondering, yes, I remembered to retrieve my hot water from the microwave so that I can have some hot chocolate.  Yummy!

(c) 2008.  All rights reserved.

Are the shades of Pemberly to be thus polluted?

I can hear Judi Dench in my head now.  No one could have played Lady Catherine better.  Judi Dench is absolutely marvelous when she’s being imperious!

I’ve been in rather a Jane Austen kind of mood lately.  If I didn’t have class tonight, I think I would sit down and pop in P&P.  The shorter of the two versions, naturally.  And if I had the mental capacity for it, I’d sit down with the book.  Perhaps I’ll do that this weekend…

In other news, the trees have been absolutely beautiful lately.  I love fall.  There’s this one turn between Grundy and Eldora where you drive through a thicket of trees and the trees are like a patchwork quilt of color.  When you actually come into Eldora you cross over the Iowa River and the trees along the banks are the same way; it’s a patchwork quilt of color.  Lots of browns and golds and reds and oranges, with a little green mixed in to liven things up.  Gorgeous.  Gorgeous, I say, gorgeous!

In other news, it frosted last night.  Hmm, guess I used that opening already.  Oh, well.  Too tired to be terribly clever or original today.  I’ve been up late the last couple of nights.  I really need to get to bed early tonight.  I wonder if Mrs. Hayek is back yet…

I wonder if the fishies realize the futility of swimming near the edge of the tank in hopes of escape…I wonder if the flurries the lousy weatherman was predicting yesterday will arrive…I wonder if I will really eat the better part of the new package of Oreos all by myself…I wonder what would happen if I did…I wonder what will happen next…I wonder…

I wonder if I’ve bored anyone to tears yet?

I wonder if anyone really cares that I am a Jane Austen-obsessed chocoholic.  I saw a Facebook flair the other day that fits me perfectly.  It said: I need books like I need chocolate.  Desperately!  So true.  So, so true.  And so deliciously perfect!

(c) 2008.  All rights reserved.

Keep it light, keep it bright, keep it gay!

I know, I know, my poetry sucks, but I was feeling a bit on the creative side today.  And the weather is just so beautiful that I felt compelled to write something about it.  As I was sitting on a bench this noon, I just couldn’t resist writing about the gentle late-summer breeze wafting through the courthouse square, winding in and out of the trees like a dancer twirling a ribbon.  Lovely daydreams consumed my thoughts and consume them still; I really don’t want to be at work right now.  Oh, to be at home, napping in the hammock beneath the trees, preferably with company. 🙂  Such fun!

I am so excited!  My baby’s coming home tonight!  YAY!!!  I haven’t seen him in a whole week and I’ve never gone that long without seeing him before.  I can’t wait!  I missed him so much!

*yawn*  I suppose I had better get something done, but I really don’t want to…

*sigh*  Can it please be five o’clock instead of only quarter after one?

Nine days till September 3…

(c) 2008.  All rights reserved.

Facebook update

I’ve been piddling around on Facebook off and on all afternoon.  I took a break from favoriting quotes from The Simpsons to do some actual work and when I went back, the layout of the whole site had been changed!  It’s so weird!  I’ve been on Facebook for close to a year, but it’s amazing how quickly you get used to a certain layout.  I suppose that probably doesn’t make much sense, but I’m in training for the Junior Space Cadets right now, so nanner nanner boo boo.

Anyway, it’s weird!  I can’t get used to it!  Granted, I’ve only taken about five seconds to wrap my mind around the concept and who knows?  Maybe once I adjust to the new layout, I’ll even like it better than the old one.  But I miss seeing my flair board…And they should really make that tiny little board bigger!  Must display more flair!

Okay, perhaps I should lay off the sugar…Or maybe just take a nap…

I guess that qualifies as my whining for the day.  The weather has really been nice the last couple of days.  It’s a little bit humid, but the temperature is staying down, so it’s not too bad outside.  Unless, of course, you’re carrying mail all day, and then I suppose it probably is…

Nine days till August 1…

(c) 2008.  All rights reserved.

Why must morning come so early?

Ah, yes…my old archenemy, Morning.  I see you’ve partnered up with my other nemesis, The Copy Machine. *shoots evil glare to the copy machine in the corner*

I know I said earlier that I would shut up now, but seriously, why couldn’t morning just hold off for a couple of hours?  Six fifteen comes way, way too early.  Why, I ask you?  Because it delights in torturing me, along with the copier.  I was so nice and relaxed this morning when my stupid alarm clock went off…the last thing I wanted to do was get out of bed.

Grrrrr.

You know, joining my son in a seven o’clock bedtime tonight is sounding more and more appealing…

(c) 2008.  All rights reserved.