Love Them Days Off

As always, a day off from work is a nice thing. (Yes, yes, I remember how glad I was to get back to work when I was sick. That was because I was sick.) *sigh* It was such a nice day.

I slept until 7.30, which is two hours past my normal weekday wake-up time. I had a leisurely cup of coffee, then got dressed and went to Target. I swear I was in and out of there in ten minutes, tops, filled up a little basket with what I needed and nothing else. (Burner bibs for the stove, two pair of croc-like flip-flops, paper plates.) By the time I got home, K went out for a walk and then a doctor's appointment, and I got all my weekly cleaning done. (But no laundry.) And when she got back, we did our food shopping. Then she left for the dentist and I took a nap.

Every day should be like this, eh?

Oh, I've decided what I want to do when I retire. I want to Twitter all day long. By that time, I'll probably have an iPhone or some kind of smart phone with a decent size screen and a full-time Internet connection, so I'll just keep the Twitter home page up all day long wherever I am. It's my new goal.

Speaking of cellphones, I am apparently the one idiot in America who is incapable of using one. Although I have taught myself to text into Twitter, it would seem that I am not so good at making or receiving actual calls. Listen to this one. K called while I was on my way home from Target; I didn't answer while I was driving, because a) I prefer not to, and b) we have a fairly harsh no-cell-phone-while-driving law here. Now, I was actually wearing a bluetooth headset, but I am inept with that as well, and disconnected the call instead of answering it. Ahem. I pulled off the road into the totally empty parking lot of an office building, and into a space. I tried calling her back, didn't work. She called me back, I disconnected her. I finally saw that she texted me that it wasn't important, don't call back, and there was a tap on my window. A woman was standing outside her running car, right next to me, and said "You're in my space." Yes, in a totally empty lot, I parked in the one space of the worker who arrives obsessively early. Anyway, I couldn't make or receive a call even though I had a million bars showing. Because I am just that inept with cellphones. And headsets, it would appear.

I just finished my leftover seafood lasagna for dinner and it was, again, delish, but now I am starving again. I've been snacking a lot less in general, but right now, I want foooooood.

WATCHING MASH :: ENTRY #1724

Incommunicado

We had a torrential downpour last night, and, as always happens, the telephone went out. Or more precisely, when it rains, the line develops a loud buzz, but this time it's so loud that the phone is unusable. People call and it doesn't ring, and we can't make calls out. It's usually better by the next day, but so far, no luck. I've actually had this fixed a few times over the twenty years we've lived here -- they have to replace wires or connections at the pole and at the house -- but it's very hard to make clear to the repair people what's wrong, because they always send someone days after the rain, and then, of course, everything is fine. So this should be fun.

In the meantime, I was feeling very cut off. Here it was, pouring, and I was waiting for a call from R to let me know she was home, and it was over an hour after I expected to hear from her. I was trying to be patient and good, because her train runs late in bad weather, and hey, she could have gone out for a drink with work people. But when I finally picked up the phone to leave her a message and found out we had no phone, I was not happy. Remember, my cell phone -- TMobile, btw -- does not get reception in my own house. It's a great phone and works great everywhere else, however.

I borrowed the Hubs' cell -- Verizon -- and called R, who said she had been trying to get us, had left messages, etc., on the house phone, which never rang. And then I tried my sister.

Well. My sister does not answer her phone, as a rule. If she happens to be near it, and she sees my name or one of her kids' names on the caller I.D., she answers. Maybe there's one or two other people she answers for. Otherwise, she lets it ring. And she never ever ever checks her messages. This makes it extremely difficult to reach her, as you might imagine, especially from an odd phone number. So of course she didn't answer, and although I left a detailed message explaining what was going on, I knew she wouldn't hear it.

So this morning I decided the phone situation was insane, and I went to Verizon and got a new phone that works in my house. I only have two months left on the old phone contract, and I have the cheapest plan on it, so I'll pay it out and then it'll be done. I couldn't keep my phone number because that would have been early termination and would have cost me like $300, instead of the $50 or so the next two months will cost. It's a fine little phone -- purple -- and it turns out that there's a discount o the monthly cost for teachers, so that's all good. Unfortunately, now I have to program my whole phonebook into it, ugh, but it's nice talking on the phone in my house.

On my way home from the phone store, I stopped in a parking lot and called my sister again (on my old cellphone), hoping she would recognize the number and pick up. No luck. When I get home, I emailed her -- she checks that once a week, maybe -- and explained the whole thing and gave her my new number so she would pick up the phone when I call her. Not that I expected anything to come of that, either.

I started working on the phone, but I got very, very tired, and crashed for a nap from about 2 to 4.40. Imagine my surprise when I got up and saw that I had voicemail on the new phone! First I had to set up the voicemail, but then to my delight, there was a message from my sister, and so then I got to call her back -- she answered -- and we caught up. At one point, I thought to ask if she had listened to her messages or checked her email. Oh, she said, her husband had checked her email, and he gave her the message.

Oh, good, thanks .... WHAT? YOUR HUSBAND CHECKS YOUR EMAIL? DO YOU THINK MAYBE YOU COULD TELL PEOPLE THAT?

Am I wrong here? If I send email to someone, shouldn't I have the expectation that that is the person who's going to read it, unless I'm told otherwise? Not that I'm planning to email her and say "You know, your husband's a dick" -- which he's not, just an example -- but I certainly could say a variety of personal things about her or about myself that aren't for anyone else's eyes. Jeez. Now I'm really glad that we don't email that much. I just found that very, very weird.

But I'm back in the world, sort of. House phone still not working; I'll see if I can call the repair people tomorrow on the new cell. The Hubs' parents know that our phone is down and they have his cell number, and my kids and the Sibs know. That should cover us for a couple of days, I think.

WATCHING FRIENDS :: ENTRY #1669

A Real Entry

[copied from dland]

Maybe if I start to write at school, I'll manage to get a whole entry in.

As for Idol, I agree with Yvonne -- too many little girls with cell phones voted for Sanjaya, who, as Jane pointed out, seems to be only technically a boy. But very sweet; as a teacher I would love to have him in a class and he's probably a wonderful son and brother. But it's a singing contest, folks. I don't know that any of the boys are really that good, except maybe Chris and whatsisname, the one that beat boxes. Many more talented girls this year. And that's all I have to say about that.

Aids. Well. I am already adjusting to them some, but I have a long list of things I need to talk to the audiologist about when I see him on Wednesday, a lot of adjustments for him to make. In general, they fit well and feel fine, but internal sounds are magnified beyond belief and although I can hear external sounds, I still can't pick out conversation when more than one person is talking, and I can't turn up the volume. The internal sounds are things like my own breathing, and chewing something crunchy is just a nightmare. Sounds that are close to me are also too loud, like the computer keys clicking, although some of that I know is what everyone hears and I just have to get used to it. Anyway, I have a list. I expect to go back with them every week or two for at least a month, maybe more, until they're fine-tuned for me. That's what you do when you get hearing aids.

I did realize this morning, though, that I can talk on the phone on my right side! That's something I haven't done in a very, very long time, and it means that not only is the microphone on the right side working, it works well, and that when the left side is properly tweaked, they should work in tandem very well. Listening to music on headphones, is, as I think I mentioned already, WONDERFUL. If I can, I'd like to get headphones that clip on my ears, since now I can wear those, and they'll be easier to carry around that headband phones; even though I have folding ones of those, they still take up space in my bag.

Using the phone on my left side is not great at home, because my phones don't have earpiece sections that are concave, if you know what I mean. The phone at work is fine over the hearing aid, but the home phone keeps smacking into it and causing feedback. I may try the home phone with a headset I have that I usually only use when I know I'm going to be on a long call, like tech support. I wonder if you can get a bluetooth wireless earpiece for a regular house phone? Wouldn't that be weird. I know someone who uses only a cellphone (I guess she's in a good reception area, unlike I am) and she has little kids, so she just sticks her bluetooth earpiece on when she gets up in the morning and she can answer the phone whenever she needs to, even carrying a baby. It's the future, man.

Oh, the reason I can't turn up the volume on the hearing aids is that I asked the audiologist to disable that control for now. Yes, this was stupid, but I was trying something. The volume is set by the computer program on these -- it's on this actually; only the left one is technically a hearing aid and the other one is a microphone and transmitter -- to be at the optimum level for me according to my hearing test. So I thought I'd try it at first with that setting. Okay, so maybe I didn't thrink it through. He can fix that on Wednesday in a trice.

Anyway, the school day is drawing to a close. (I've been writing this in dribs and drabs throughout the day. .... That's it! Good names for the hearing aids? Drib and Drab? Maybe it still needs work.)

I'm leaving in about 15 minutes, and then off to the ever-delightful Radio Shack for a weird little battery I can't find anywhere else (it's for the car CD remote), and then to the nearby teacher store for a good, old-fashioned pointer. I hope they still make them. Due to an odd series of high-tech circumstances, it looks like I'm going to need one. (Or else I need the stick from a classroom flag. Hmm. They've probably got those laying around the school someplace.)

Okay, okay, I'm turning off. (I'll post later from home.)


WATCHING DR. PHIL :: ENTRY #1396