The saga of the (damn) phone continues and blah blah blah

Before my first day of nursery school, my parents made sure that I knew my phone number: 20588. There was an area code (had been for almost ten years), but there wasn't any reason to use it, well, not for a four year old. A few years later, we got an exchange, and our number became RAymond 20588.

(As I write this I am somehow resisting the temptation to call the complete 10 digit number and introduce myself. "Hi, my name is Noodles and I had your phone number in 1956.")

I'm obsessing about this today because I spent waaaay too long yesterday making over my cell phone contacts list. When I got my first cell phone, I entered local seven digit numbers, sans area code, because there was only one local code. Then, about a year ago, a second one was added, and it became necessary to do 10 digit dialing here.

I redid my phone list, and a mighty big pain in the ass it was.

Yesterday, we Canadians finally got a working Skype client for Android phones, and I soon realized that while the powers that be in Red Deer, Alberta were fine with 10 digits, the rest of the world wanted country codes, and, for some reason, a plus sign.

So, when I had a young facile brain, I only had to deal with 5 numerals, and now that I am losing brain cells like a hairy dog sheds his coat in April, I have to mess around with 11 and the damn +.

Maybe I will call Katie and Scott P in my hometown and bitch about it--after all, they have my oldest phone number now, so they owe me.

sick, but not too sick to be digital

I have spent the last two days at home with a seriously bad cold. Going to work was out of the question.

I spent a whole lot of my time off messing with technology and now have my phone tricked out with Layar and Flyscreen. Not that my old eyes can actually see much on that small screen, but I feel less out of the loop. My friend Howard is sendingme a wave invite, so I will get to hang with the kewl kids for sure.

I do have to wonder though what changes in technology we will see when the 30 somethings are 50 something and are as visually impaired as most old farts are.

It's 2006 (again)

I just spent waaaay too much of a three day weekend rebuilding my computer. Over the past 3+ years, it had done what even the most meticulously maintained digi-friend does, becoming first creaky and then a bit unpredictable. The final straw was a bad reinstall of Internet Explorer 7, a program I need for a work thingee that will not run on FireFox. It also will not run on IE8, thus the attempt to return to IE7.

Normally this whole reinstall the OS business takes the better part of a day. I managed to stretch it out to three days because I have become increasingly stupid as the years have progressed. It's the noodles.

It was almost enough to make a quit grrl start smoking. Almost.

Your Quit Date is: 7/8/2009 6:00:00 AM
Time Smoke-Free: 62 days, 2 minutes and 16 seconds
Cigarettes NOT smoked: 2480
Lifetime Saved: 18 days, 22 hours
Money Saved: $496.00

He stinks, but I think I'll keep him

Today is the one month anniversary of my quit.

Your Quit Date is: 7/8/2009 6:00:00 AM, time smoke free - 31 days, 15 hours, 26 minutes and 32 seconds, Cigarettes NOT smoked: 1266, Lifetime Saved: 9 days, 16 hours, Money Saved: $248.00 .

Ron did not quit, but he is only smoking about 1/2 a pack a day--a huge change. I assume he smells a whole lot better than I smelled a month ago, but sheesh...

OTOH, it is also the 38th anniversary of my first wedding. That husband never smoked, but our marriage sure was stinky. I think I'll keep husband number 2 (well, as long as he doesn't smoke in the house).

Drunk, stoned, pregnant (or all three)

We went to an afternoon showing of the new Harry Potter movie and then stopped at A&W and brought home burgers and fries. Even though we did it on the cheap (matinee rates, shared popcorn, no sodas), we blew through $50.

No wonder teenagers find someplace to get buzzed and have sex on date night. What 16 year old can afford dinner and a show these days?

TMI

It felt like I had won the lottery when a friend from work recommended a hair salon walking distance from my house. It was not only convenient, but for the first time in years I was able to get a consistently good cut. It became my every six week splurge, and although it felt pricey for Red Deer, it also made me feel like a grown up to actually have a regular hairdresser again.

A few days ago, I walked into the place expecting to spend 40 minutes talking about my hairdresser's athletically inclined children and the weather whilst "Angela" cut my hair. As I entered the salon, my spidey sense told me all was not right in Angie-land: she looked gawd awful.

One of the things I like about Angela is that she doesn't torture her own hair. There are no peculiarly coloured curly bits and she doesn't look like a country music singer. She looks like a happy 40 something woman with a good haircut. As I walked into the salon it was clear that the only thing that hadn't changed about Angela is her hair. I suppose that is because her own hairdresser is fine; it's Angie who is a mess.

Spidey sense aside, I definitely knew something was wrong when she seemed to forget that my tender head was on the other end of her finger tips as she dug into my scalp. Stupid me, I could have claimed a faux phone vibration and taken off, but did I do that...oh no...that would be too sensible. Instead, I asked her what was wrong. And as she pounded my scalp, she proceeded to tell me all about it.

The "it" was a story about her husband who was going to Thailand for six weeks of sex with someone he had met online.

I stayed not just through the shampoo, but continued to sit in her chair when she picked up the scissors. Heck, I even stayed when she switched to an electric razor of some sort and proceeded to buzz my neck. In truth, the hair cut is fine, though I had neck burn for a few days. What wasn't so fine is that I now know waaay more about this woman and her life than I should.

I can no longer go into her salon and let my mind wander as she chats about what she's making for dinner or her kids. I can no longer have anonymous stranger haircuts. My only hope is that in six weeks time she will have forgotten that she has burdened me with her confidence. Of course that is about when her husband is coming back from Thailand, so chances are, if I show up, I'll hear about that as well.

Damn, I'm glad I never told her I blog or friended her on Facebook. Sometimes it seems like the Internet is the only place I can wander around relatively anonymously.

Old is good

Ron is a thoughtful man. On June 3, which is both my birthday and our anniversary, he brought home my favourite flowers, a pound of mighty good dark chocolate, and a bottle of champagne. The flowers lasted a full week. We savoured the chocolate for about three days. We never did get around to drinking the bubbly.

Tonight we were having (frozen) chicken pot pie and broccoli for dinner. We looooove (frozen) chicken pot pie and broccoli. We love it so much, we broke out the champagne.

And it was good.

Until that happened I was going to write about another dream. It seemed like I would be going slightly overboard to write two dream posts in a row, so I was very glad to have the opportunity to write about our dinner instead.

Assuming though only my friends will have read this far, I am going to add in the dream thing. It's something that young people dare not do.

In the dream, I was a contestant on a local TV reality show. The challenge of the week was to create an International Festival in Red Deer. Each contestant was dropped, by helicopter, on a different downtown corner. We were only allowed to use nearby individuals and items available for sale within 300 feet of where we were dropped.

At first it seemed as if I was handed an impossible situation. I recognized that the chance that anyone would be truly successful lay somewhere between pretty slim and totally non-existent, but I was dropped off on a particularly boring block, with nothing even vaguely international in sight. As I was standing there feeling sorry for myself, a city bus pulled up. I quickly decided that grabbing people off of the bus was entirely within the rules.

I never really did see the people on the bus, but apparently it was the immigrant express. I was able to create a festival with 11 colourful booths, each one representing a different culture. The food we created was wonderful, especially the pulled goat. I don't think there was any champagne--city bylaws you know.