The Blackberry

When I got my Blackberry cell phone back in November, it was by far, the nicest phone I've ever had. I don't use cell phones much. I don't text. I rarely call people (I think it took me a whole month to figure out how to make an outgoing call). People don't call me. I get more wrong numbers than actual friends or family calling me. I use the nifty connection to the internet (for which I pay an exorbitant fee), on average, once a month. So, you may ask, why did I buy a Blackberry?

Well, besides the fact that it makes me feel like no matter what I'm doing, I'm a professional, I bought it for the calendar. After one black week in November, in which I forgot to pick up McKay (and his entire car pool, thus making one of them miss his scout trip to the Bean Museum, something I still feel guilty about), forgot Gabie's scouts entirely, missed an important meeting at BYU, and committed about a dozen other acts of flakyness, I vowed to get a phone that would help me be more organized. And the one feature that won me over in the Blackberry was its calendar system. Now, when I'm about to forget something important, the most obnoxious alert tone ever goes off for about 3 solid minutes. This is hard to ignore. It has saved my life several times since November. It's hard living a busy life and micromanaging the busy lives of my children at the same time. I'll take all the techno help I can get.

Plus it's really shiny.

Oh yeah, and it also has a pretty nice camera. I know this because I have used it to take a grand total of three pictures thus far.

Let me mention that buying my Blackberry was an agonizing decision as most decisions are for me. I debated various phones for over a month, visited my local cell phone store so many times I knew the employees' names, their phone preferences, their wives' names and their kids' favorite TV characters. I tested out a bunch of phones. I researched all the features. I fumed over the fascist dictate that you must commit to a data plan if you want a phone with a half-decent calendar function. Anyway, in the end, I bought the Blackberry and then promptly suffered buyer's remorse, which wore off about 2 months later.

I haven't named my Blackberry yet. I hear this is customary. Names I'm considering: Halle, Chuck, Wendell.

One night only a couple of days after buying the phone and signing two years of my life away to a dastardly, extortionate service plan, I was in bed, listening to music on my phone with my headphones. I had turned on my electric blanket and had it pulled up to my neck because I was chilly. I was trying to figure out the volume button on my phone when suddenly something flashed and the music stopped. I jumped out of bed, totally panicked. When I looked at the phone, this is what had happened to the screen.


You can imagine my horror. I knew I had fried the phone. It must have been the electric blanket. I was absolutely sick.

I tried pushing all the buttons to see if just the screen was burned but nothing happened. I pushed the buttons on the sides of the phone and suddenly the image of doom disappeared and the regular screen came back. This was when I realized that somehow I had just taken a picture of the edge of my electric blanket. I hadn't fried my phone after all. Being a new Blackberry owner, I have to ask: is it unusual to shed tears of joy over an electronic device?

Photo number two needs little explanation. I drove past this sign for a month before finally pulling over to take a picture.


Poor Hugh.

I'll just say about the photo I took last night that whoever designed the chairs at Coneys clearly never had a child, never met a child and maybe even never WAS a child. Can't you just see exactly where this is going?


Let me clarify that it was NOT one of my own kids who stuck his fingers into the holes and had them so securely wedged that no amount of Pam sprayed by employees, ice rubbed on the fingers, nor twisting, pulling, or yanking by parents, police or the paramedics who eventually arrived could free the poor child. A cop finally pulled the chair seat off its frame (whacking himself pretty badly in the nose in the process). Last we saw them, the family was loading the boy, seat still attached, into a van to drive to the emergency room.

I just had to take a picture of the scene of the crime. See how my Blackberry comes in handy?

No product placement bribes were accepted in the making of this post.