She Lost It... Literally

Oh, you should have seen it!

First, there was a sudden silence. My daughter had been watching some cartoons, having a snack, and chatting away to herself. Then... nothing. If you're a parent, you know exactly what I mean by silence. It's not like the TV quits making noise, or the hum of the refrigerator stops, but there's that eerie lack of sound from the direction of your child that makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand up. Either something bad has happened, or your little one is about to be caught doing something they shouldn't be.

In this case, it was the former.

She turned to me, hand clasped over her mouth, eyes as big as saucers, and I could tell she was terrified. She moved jerkily toward me, like some miniature cast member from Night of the Living Dead, holding her other fist out in front of her. As she slowly opened her fingers, I saw the blood. And so did she. I watched the color completely drain from her face as she began to tremble, then to do a panicky, tip-toe dance screeching, "Daaaaa-ddyyyyy!"

I looked back to her still-outstretched hand and, looking past the blood and slobber, saw what had caused this commotion.

It took a while to calm her down, to remind her she wasn't going to die, and to get her cleaned up. She was still pretty shaken by the whole event, but it was nothing a $4 visit from the Tooth Fairy couldn't fix, apparently.

The R&D Dept. Must Have Been Asleep

Chana and I both had our cellular contracts come up for renewal last month. She's with Telus and I had been with Rogers. I said "had been" because I dropped them like a hot potato as soon as I could! The service had been absolutely horrible over the last 2 years, and I was ready for a change.

Because she's so good at it, I left the negotiations of the new contracts up to Chana, knowing that she'd end up getting us the best deal possible... which she did. I now pay about half what I was paying, and I've got so many new features it's not even funny!

One of the coolest things (or geekiest, if you look at it that way) is that we were able to get matching Motorola Razr phones, mine in "Charcoal" and her's in "Metallic Pink". They are so much better than what we had been using!

Although I was excited about the new phone, I quickly became worried about its quality when I noticed I needed to charge it almost every day! And I hardly use it because I work at a desk all day where there's a perfectly good land line! I figured if the battery was that bad when the phone's brand new, what would it be like in a month? A year? How much money was I going to have to sink into this thing before I could afford to get a better unit?

Then, I noticed something... I had just taken the phone, in it's handy leather carrying case, off my belt, and I could see a glow coming from the crack where the flip folds over. The display was on and fully lit! And this despite the fact that I have the settings set to turn the backlight off after 10 seconds and the display off after 2 minutes. If I hadn't even opened the phone yet, why was it on?

It turns out that this cool little phone has an Achilles Heal in the form of an external menu button, located on the side. There's actually 3 of these little silver devils, conveniently placed right where your thumb or finger can reach when you're holding the phone, open or closed. Unfortunately, the button in question is in just the right spot to get pressed constantly by the tight interior of the above-mentioned leather carrying case! All this time I thought the battery was crap, and it was a simple little button!

So, I charged the phone up on Sunday night, carried the phone in my pocket instead of in the case, and today (Thursday) was the first day that the power indicator dropped below FULL. How sweet is that?

I'm still kind of choked because I need a way to carry the phone around, but all the cases I've seen create the same problem. I find it curious that Motorola didn't notice this and alter the design of the phone or the case to eliminate it.

Oh well, on the bright side, I suppose it's going to end up being easier and cheaper to find an alternate carrying solution than it would have been to replace the phone...

A Fellow Addict

I read this just yesterday in Anne Rice's novel "Lasher":

"Yuri loved the coffee. A pot of it. His hands would soon be trembling and he would have indigestion, but he didn't care. When you love coffee you abandon everything to that love."

I've been a fan of her writing for years, but this single paragraph has clinched it for me!

Way to go, Anne!