2005-04-02 - 10:06 p.m.

On the internal soundtrack: "Baba O'Riley", The Who

Sunday, March 27th, 2005

This is a question for the LJ brain trust. You are all a bunch of gadget geeks and I am hoping you can point me in the right direction for what we're looking for.

Poindexter and I are considering getting a cell phone as our primary phone and switching to pay-as-you-go local service for the landline (we need it for our alarm system).

The catch, of course, is that I am deaf and can't use a normal phone. Nowadays, however, it appears that you can do e-mail, text messaging, and even instant messaging with a phone or phone-like device.

I've heard about Blackberries, the Treo, and uh ... yeah.

Poindexter will use it like a regular phone. I will use it like portable AIM, EXCEPT that I will use it for brief messaging only (to tell Poindexter I'm going to be late, for Poindexter to IM me and ask why I'm late, that sort of thing). I will not be using it for lengthy chatting, so technically a QUERTY keyboard is not necessary, although not having one might really irritate me.

I am not sure that we need more than one phone. Text messaging, I assume, requires two phones. If one person can use the phone/PDA with YM or AIM while the other is at home on the computer, that might work out with just one phone. If one of us is out alone, the other is almost always at home near a computer. If we're together, P can just use it like a regular phone.

There is a chance I might be able to use the walkie-talkie feature (on speakerphone) with some difficulty, but I'm not sure. I'd have to test it.

Any information y'all can give me about gadgets, plans, prices, capabilities, etc. would be enormously helpful. Thanks!

Monday, March 28th, 2005

Thank you to everyone who gave me info about your devices. I was overwhelmed with all the options, and your comments gave me jumping-off points and a way to focus the options.

At the present time, data-only services and devices on the east coast seem a little spotty service-wise and my internet addiction is such that I'd like to limit its accessibility to me when I am out of the house. So I think we're gonna go with regular phones for now and see how that goes. T-Mobile offers the Nokia 6800 free with a 1-year service plan, and it has a QWERTY keyboard and AIM already installed. T-Mobile also has very basic plans that are good for our limited usage. I think I'm going to get the $19.99 Basic plan, which gives me almost no voice minutes (which I'm not going to use anyway), and tack on a text-messaging plan as well (300 msgs a month to start, $3.99 I think -- this is for brief "I'm at 16th & Walnut, will be home at 7" messages, not chatting). Poindexter will get the Basic Plus plan ($29.99) and a text messaging add-on.

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On Saturday I went to a baby shower for a family friend in Jersey. These are the friends we've known forever. I call his parents "Aunt" and "Uncle" and he and his sister reciprocate. His sister Alicia and her husband Mike are the ones with the 5yo twins and the 3yo who live up the street from my parents. Those kids love my parents, and I'm eternally grateful to them for serving as surrogate grandchildren, since I'm not planning on providing any and my brother (who, last I heard, wants kids) hasn't found the right woman yet.

Much to my amusement, I was asked by two different people at the party if I felt "safe" in Philadelphia. I keep forgetting that we are having what Poindexter calls a "statistical anomaly" and had a rash of murders early this year. The local media is, predictably, trumpeting this information in a sensationalized way and almost making me wish it was election season again. I explained about the neighborhoods and how most of the bad stuff you hear about on the news is happening in the city equivalent of suburbia's "three towns over".

I wonder if people in the suburbs think of me as some sort of pioneer, living in the wild city, fraught with danger. I don't worry about my safety a whole lot more than I did in the suburbs -- being a small female, I've always tried to be aware of my surroundings no matter where I am. At least there are always people around me when I am out and about in the city -- I feel more uncomfortable in a deserted parking lot. I get the impression that the city is most dangerous when you're isolated or living near a drug corner. Incidents in "safe areas" certainly do happen, but then, my parents live in an extremely safe town and neighborhood, but a woman once encountered a man with a gun in her yard and my parents' next door neighbor's house was burgled and their car stolen while they slept. Nobody's truly safe anywhere, are they?

Anyway. The guests of honor live in a house in the woods in the middle of nowhere, outside Fredericksburg, VA. I asked him how far civilization was and he said there is a Food Lion nine miles away, as though this is a perfectly reasonable, desirable distance to be from a supermarket. Not bad at all. And to him, indeed it is, and I am delighted for him. It's a nice house and the woods are nice, and he doesn't like people at all so it's perfect for him.

To me, however, this is appalling. I looked at him in horror, and repeated, "NINE MILES!?" He was amused.

I could walk there, but it would take all day.

After the party, I sat around the kitchen table with my mom and brother for a while. We were discussing where I could stop on my way home to purchase some children's books for the twins' party which I attended on Sunday, before the family Easter party. My mom was explaining where the bookstore was and my brother said, "It's in that place that's like a prison. There are box stores on all sides and only two ways in and out." When he said that, I knew the place he meant.

My brother is also a city mouse. After a hellish year in suburban Maryland, he moved to DC, which he loved, then lived in Manhattan for a while, and expects to be moving back there this summer. When he was recuperating from a broken leg, he stayed with us in Philadelphia and practiced walking. He was giddy to be here, after spending a 2-3 months healing at my parents' house, where the nearest ANYTHING is a mile away.

I told him about the nine miles and he sort of twitched and made a Robinson face. Then I mentioned Phoenix and he twitched again. These are just not the places for people who like to get around on foot. I read once that there are walking people and there are driving people, and he and I are both clearly "walking people".

Tuesday, March 29th, 2005

So, I met Poindexter at the T-Mobile place and we got us some cell phones.

Then we got home and sat down on the couch to figure them out. I figured out making regular calls first, and used the speakerphone, and I went outside and closed the door, and I COULD UNDERSTAND HIM!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Then I tried the regular phone and I COULD UNDERSTAND THAT TOO!!!

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It just never occurred to me that this would be possible, although now that I think about it, it makes sense -- it's all digital (the phone and my hearing aids). It's not PERFECT, and I still have the usual troubles with needing him to repeat and rephrase and such -- this does NOT mean I'm going to become a regular cell phone user -- but his voice is amazingly clear, much better than the speakerphone we have at home. I'm extremely impressed.

Of course, I need a perfectly quiet environment for that to work, but that'll be good when we're apart, when I'm visiting somebody and he's home and we want to chat. And we have the text messaging for when I'm in noisy places, which is usually where I'm trying to call him from.

Speaking of noisy places, I'm headed to a coffee shop to meet [info]squirrella, so off I go.

Wednesday, March 30th, 2005

In case you didn't know already, I refer to my internet friends collectively and individually in conversation as "the freaks". Poindexter was asked once why he didn't have an LJ (or something to that effect) and he said jokingly, "Because you're all FREAKS!" Hence the term. It's a shorthand with people who know me for "people I met on the internet before I met them in real life." For example, "I have some freaks from Minnesota staying with me this weekend."

Had a conversation with my mom on IM this morning:

Evelynne: I went for a walk for over an hour last night with a freak in East Falls
Evelynne: It was lovely.
Evelynne: East Falls is neat.
Evelynne: And I liked the freak.
Mom: Does that mean you're a "freak" too?
Evelynne: Of course.
Evelynne: I'm the freakiest freak of them all.

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I forgot to mention my first text message to Poindexter: "U r so hot i'd bang you". I'll save that in the phone's memory for posterity.

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Over the weekend and through yesterday afternoon, I got essentially no exercise. I didn't walk anywhere -- I drove up to Jersey and then sat around on my ass all day at parties.

Around Monday I noticed that my appetite had completely disappeared. This continued into Tuesday. My body is a fussy little thing and I can clearly recognize "I'm hungry" as opposed to "I'm thirsty" or "I feel like eating" or "IF I DON'T GET SOME FOOD NOW I'M GOING TO KILL SOMEONE". But I wasn't getting any variation on a wanting-food feeling. I'd get to the point where my blood sugar would get low and I'd get the shakes, but I still wouldn't have the "I'm hungry" feeling.

I'm a hypochondriac, so my first thought was, "OMIGOD I HAVE OVARIAN CANCER AND I'M GONNA DIE!!!!" Because you know one of the symptoms of cancer is a loss of appetite. And ovarian cancer is "the silent killer", you know. Hard to detect until it's too late.

Fortunately I have a "treatment" for panicky thoughts like this: I give myself two weeks to watch the symptoms. If, after two weeks, they are just as bad, I go to the doctor. Otherwise, I wait and see.

Guess how many times I've ended up at the doctor. Snort. Usually after a day or two at most I've forgotten I ever had the symptom.

ANYWAY. Yesterday afternoon when I went out to get the cell phone I walked about a mile roundtrip and was delighted to realize when I got home that I was hungry. Then I went out walking with Squirrella, who was kind enough to give me a hilly, informative, highly enjoyable tour of East Falls, and was hungry at dinnertime. Hungry when I got back too, wherein I had another dumpling and sampled Poindexter's sesame chicken.

But it was really weird, having my appetite disappear. Usually I use it as a gauge of when to eat, unlike Poindexter, who eats at prescribed times of the day and makes me batty doing it. We've had several IM conversations that went something like this:

11:30am
Poindexter: I'm hungry.
Evelynne: Eat something.
Poindexter: It's not lunchtime yet.
Evelynne: So? Have a granola bar.
Poindexter: I don't have any.
Evelynne: Go get something from the snack machine.
Poindexter: It's almost lunchtime. I'll wait.
Evelynne: Fine.
[five minutes pass]
Poindexter: I'm hungry.
Evelynne: JUST FUCKING EAT SOMETHING ALREADY!
Poindexter: It isn't noon yet.
Evelynne: YOU CAN STARVE TO DEATH FOR ALL I CARE!

So when I was talking about this to Poindexter, he gleefully suggested, "Maybe you need to just eat regularly [to prevent the low blood sugar]. Like, say, lunch at noon."

-----

The visit with Squirrella was lovely, as I mentioned. I am insanely jealous of her hair. Insanely. If it were possible to steal it I would have done it, although she was up for a trade. It is the PERFECT CURLY HAIR. Not a hint of frizz, and a gorgeous deep dark shiny brown. ARGH. Someday they will be able to do whole-head hair transplants and I will have her hair, dammit.

She took me on an hour-plus tour of East Falls, including but not limited to stops at the creepy run-down mansion I love so much, Grace Kelly's house, a row of three houses that used to be a saloon/inn, the community gardens where a brewery (I think) once stood, her own house with its fabulous garage and deck and patio and huge front porch. It was fabulous. She knows a lot about the history of her neighborhood.

There's a particular detail that she pointed out to me -- a small structure at the very corner of a corner lot, with a concrete base and an iron spike with some iron frilliness at the bottom. She said she didn't know what it was for, but she'd seen them around, and speculated that they once had lamps at the top.

But, dude, an IRON SPIKE. It was two feet long at least, and dangerously pointy at the top and everything. I said, "It looks like something, you know, after your behead your enemy you put his head on that spike."

Clearly I have spent way too much time around Poindexter.

After our walk, we had dinner at a local Chinese restaurant -- YUMMY!! -- and I put her through the "interview". At one point I had something like six questions, all interrelated, and I listed them all out for her at once: "Why did you decide to be come a librarian? What do you like best about being a librarian? And those three types of librarian positions you mentioned -- what about them is interesting to you?" plus a couple others, I think. Poor Squirrella.

Thursday, March 31st, 2005

Ike and the Wonderbunny are here. I am SO EXCITED. We had cheesesteaks -- WB's first -- and they liked 'em.

They are so cute curled up cuddling on my couch. They went to bed WAY too early, dammit!!

I suppose it's just as well since I've been dealing with things related to our little trip tomorrow. G'night!

Saturday, April 2nd, 2005

Thanks to all the NVIFs who drove in the rain to meet us last night! We all had an absolutely fantastic time!! I'm sorry about the lack of warning about the per-person charge -- if I'd known about that in advance I would have made it clear beforehand.

Thanks to the folks at my end of the table for being so patient and helpful when my ears got tired. I'm so used to being lost in group conversations, and I do understand how people get caught up in the momentum of a conversation. To have you all being so attentive and enunciating so carefully and taking the time to repeat things for me (or type them into my cell phone, like Altruistic D did!) really meant a lot to me.

To the folks at the other end of the table: I'm sorry I didn't get to talk to you more! I hate that! I had hoped to switch seats at some point but everybody ran out suddenly all at once. At least I got to spend some time chatting in the foyer. I think next time I "organize" an event I'm going to insist on a seat-shuffle between the appetizer and the entree.

You are a fantastic group of people and I am very lucky to know you. :)

Visgoth said there was a discussion that next time there is a group that big, we have a catered event at somebody's house. I think that is a fantastic idea. Or even just doing a huge takeout order would work for me. I volunteer to help fetch!

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