Sad? Lonely?? Go Pick Up A DROID

Yesterday I took Thing One to Verizon because his cell phone’s space-key doesn’t work anymore and the connection between his charger & phone has completely fizzled.  He’s going back to school soon and his phone has become essentially worthless.

Remember Thing One goes to Virginia Tech? He’s enrolled in the School of Engineering, majoring in Computer Science, and has a 4.0 so far. Naturally I’m quite proud, even more relieved, and completely bamboozled as to where he gets his good sense from ……..

In any case, into the cell phone store yesterday, he & I traipse. I know that in some sly fashion, or else in a blatantly un-sly fashion (they don’t care!), I always get “had” at Verizon every time I cross its threshold. So I’m not nearly as enthused as Thing One is on this errand.

It’s been a rough week for me as many of you who have kindly sent your kind regards my way (I am so very appreciative, please know) are aware. I’m rather “just going through the motions” which is completely normal after a >four-year relationship comes to an end so let’s not indulge me too much. As a matter of fact, in the “things could be much worse” department, the morning after my sad-sack-last-post, I was off to work when I saw that a home in my neighborhood had gone up in flames!!!!!!!!! There’s crime scene tape everywhere and blackened, broken windows that have been wide open this whole 20 degree weather weekend, replete with singed draperies flapping in and out of the frigid breeze. Awful. From what I gather, no one was hurt and the stove had been left on. But seriously, in that light, I was humbled.

Still …..I’m sad.

But at Verizon I am cheerfully informed that my contract is up for renewal which means that I can buy a new phone at an insanely inflated price, but wait!! It’s a good deal because without the new contract the new phone costs $10 million dollars! So it’s a STEAL!!!!!!???

Now I’ve been happy with my nifty phone—it’s only two years old. It’s working fine and only shows signs of wear where the salt water literally “burned off” the pretty chrome parts when me & my book club girlfriends (Hi you guys!) were caught out in a hurricane-style, sudden thunderstorm one, initially, lovely summer evening at the beach this past August. Suffice to say it became a rather dripping wet keystone cops affair and we were quite lucky that we weren’t struck by lightening, and that in the end, it was only my pretty phone that gave away the rather insane aspects of the ordeal. (read: my phone spent the evening swimming around in the tidal pool created in my beach bag along with my sunscreen and sunglasses that naturally had been rendered completely useless by the current state of affairs—i.e. a hurricane). And naturally, as these brushes with danger go, we laughed ourselves silly when it was all over and broke open countless bottles of wine to celebrate our aliveness.

The salesman at Verizon began taking Thing One & I around the store on a tour of every inflated-priced phone they are currently offering (read: all of them). Now I have been mildly flirting with the idea of my next phone being a Smartphone; particularly since I started blogging in October and even more particularly since everyone else seems to be having so much fun Tweeting and me & my pretty phone just look at each other and say “Tweet” …what?

So I say to the salesman, what about this phone?

Long story short-ish, not only did I end up with the world’s currently most spectacular cell phone—YEP!!!! The Motorola DROID! But so did Thing One! (he used his own money) And he & I have been out of our minds obsessed with our new phones now for the past 32 hours!

Me & Thing One

I was playing with it in bed at 4:30 this morning and I got only approximately four hours of sleep last night.

I’ve had to fully charge it three times already—its only drawback-so far.

Thing One and I keep running through the house to tell each other about something new & amazing we just discovered our new phones do, or some ridiculous cool App we found. We’re texting & tweeting & emailing each other constantly. Did you know that all the smiley emoticons (there are like fifty different one’s right on the keyboard!) are smiley’s, but they’re little smiley DROIDS??????? Cute! (turns out you only see them as droids if you have a DROID, but who cares?!)

And the Apps!!!!!! OMG!!!!!!!! There’s an App to make your phone a vibrator!!! (no! I did not download that …) There’s an App, in case you don’t have a coin handy, for flipping a coin—it puts a virtual coin on your screen and with a flick of your wrist, it’s heads or tails!! There is a Fartdroid App that makes numerous different fart noises with names like “poot”, “ker-plop!”, “sqeeky”, and (ick) “rim shot”. I know this because I did download Fartdroid. The icon is the cutest little droid farting and I couldn’t resist it.

Oh there are really practical Apps too. How about the Google Places App, Thing One found? Which for any attraction, bank, bar, coffee shop, gas station, hotel, hospital, movie theater, parking lot, restaurant, shopping mall, & taxi stand, will alert you to it’s nearby existence and literally point the way! As if you would, in Frankenstein-with-a-divining-rod fashion, stumble your way there! But seriously, how cool!

I may have to write just a few more posts on the subject because I haven’t even touched on how hilarious the chasm is between the speed at which Thing One had his DROID up & humming along, already running fifty Apps, while I’m still quizzically turning my DROID over & over trying to find the “on” switch.

Needless to say, Thing One has been more helpful to me than I have been to him. (I did tell him about the Fartdroid App though)

And can you imagine poor Thing Two—who managed to lose his phone a year ago and then, quite fortunately under the circumstances, received a new one because it was such a pain in his mother’s a** that he didn’t have a phone anymore. Now his “new” phone is a year old and he is not eligible for a “new-new” phone. The shenanigans between Thing One & I this past day are about to make him, I’m guessing, puke. He now has to cope with merely owning a plain phone that was once the envy of Thing One’s eye (who couldn’t believe his brother lost a phone and then promptly gets it replaced with a new, cooler phone)(but I explained that already), but sadly one year later pales in comparison to our DROIDS. He's coping by playing non-stop Grand Theft Auto IV which I allowed him to use his own money to buy yesterday while I was in my “looky my new phone!” haze. I can hear it downstairs right now honking and crashing into guardrails and spewing out lots of bad words that I would normally not tolerate except I’m so in love with my new phone that I’m walking into walls instead of making sure my child is playing a more suitable game.

Overview:

Nothing soothes a broken heart better than a new cell phone.

Thing One and I have bonded over said phones and he’s a genius in the “technology" department to my “dunce-cap” level of knowledge in said department.

Thing Two has been spoiled in the past but is now paying the price by not having the coolest phone on the planet (anymore) and having to witness Thing One’s and my googly-eyed obsessions with our new phones. At least he has the consolation prize of being left alone with his violent, potty-mouthed X-Box game.

I’ll try not to write ad-nauseum too much more about DROID ….but it’s hard because there is so much more to tell and I admit, I focused too much today on the silliness and not enough on the many seriously respectable qualities of my new boyfriend.

And finally, definitely on a serious note, let’s pray for the nice people in the burned-out house and remind ourselves not to accidentally leave the stove on.