This & That

in one more day i am free from work for 4 days! woot… most of them will be spent in Webster, NY, home to teagy and the zoe project. i think i am going to try to leave right from work to rochester, so i’m going to grab p-head at lunch and keep her under my desk for a few hours. she’ll love it. she has always wanted to be a corporate lady.. often i come home to see her working on her resume on my laptop.. you’d think that she’d be happy to be a stay at home dog.. but she is VERY career focused…

i’ve been trying out a new mousse because the store didn’t have my regular mousse when i went to buy it this weekend… i’ve been using garnier fructis “wonder waves”… it’s total shit. don’t waste your $4. i use two GENEROUS handfuls and by about 1pm, my hair looks like i am strung out and homeless.. i look like rosanna rosanna danna, or cathy the cartoon. horrible.. i’m going back to my standby herbal essences totally twisted mousse.

so.. don’t buy this..

happy thanksgiving everybody!

so i did it.. i finally upgraded from my crazy old phone (i think my contract was expired by over a year) to a fancy new smart phone. in doing this, i will triple my monthly cell phone bill. i hope it’s worth it.

my first reactions to the phone are:

1. it’s heavy… it probably weighs 2-3 times what my old phone weighed. and it’s big. bigger than my ipod in length and thickness.
2. it has a slide out keyboard. i’ve never really used a keyboard and the jury is still out on this one. at first i hated it, and lucky for me there is also a virtual keyboard that i can use if i don’t want to slide the keyboard down. i’m so used to the ipod virtual keyboard that it’s frustrating to me to try to go back to a word and edit the spelling… there is no zoom bubble that appears like on the ipod. so that’s been a learning experience.. also, the keyboard is off center due to some touch pad or something that i can’t figure out how to use. so typing with my right thumb is hard. if i place the device on a flat surface i can type on it much better with my index fingers.
3. it doesn’t have a physical call button, so if i am talking and want to hang up with someone abruptly, i need to move the phone vertical and wait for the “end call” button to appear… that’s strange.
4. the speakers are great… i listened to some music on it and it was quite loud.
5. setting my brownshu.com account as my main account was very easy. even though it’s not technically a gmail account.. i was psyched.
6. i was pissing and moaning that there wasn’t a native facebook app for it in the “market” (app store), but then i realized some time later that it comes pre-installed. i actually kind of like it better than i do the ipod app. also… i had the option of pulling all my facebook contacts into my contact app.. so everyone’s email address that facebook knows automagically appeared in my contacts, and merged with the contacts that i had already set up. there is also a facebook “widget” that you can stick to one of your 3 screens that scrolls through the top 10-20 latest facebook updates and gives you the ability to update your status from right there.
7. the 9wsyr app is available for android. woot! i heart those crazy entertainment stories.
8. putting music on the phone is kind of a pain, but putting podcasts is beyond a pain… because the phone mounts a drive, you need to drag files from your computer to the phone rather than “synching” like you do with an ipod.. well. podcast file names are not what the display names are in itunes, AND there is no way to tell if you’ve already listened to it or not when you are looking at the file in windows explorer. i’m also losing the smart playlist ability to queue my podcasts in chronological order.. an ipod is something i will still definitely need. but i’m thinking a nano will be sufficient for my podcasts.
9. i downloaded this app called shopsavvy. it’s supposed to be able to read barcodes and let you know where the product can be purchased online or near you cheaper.. it’s not worked for me so far.
10. the camera seems pretty decent. i like that there is a light. i’ve not tested the video camera yet.
11. i have only gotten one phone call, so i am curious to see how it works when i am not staring at it, waiting for it to ring, and what it will do when i have a voicemail.
12. it’s only frozen on me once when i was copying music to it.. i just reseated the battery and it worked again. the internet seems a little flakey, but when i switch from wifi to g3 it usually gets on the stick.
13. i kind of enjoy the slight vibration when you push buttons…
14. i am not sure about the text messaging.. i *think* i’ve been text messaging and not gmail messaging… but as spotted pointed out, if i set up a google voice account to it i won’t need the text messaging package.
15. i’ve been using twitdroid for twitter.. i like it, it’s light and i can look at trends right form the interface.
16. i bought the body glove phone protector… and it’s going back. it made it even bigger than it actually is and made opening the keyboard kinda hard… it was a bitch to remove after the guy put it on in the store… i hope the phone is not so delicate that it will break being unprotected in my purse… good thing i opted for the insurance.

this thursday i am going to see Mike Doughty here in syracuse. i’ve seen mike a handful of times, sometimes with friends i drag along, sometimes by myself, and once when i won tickets to see his band soul coughing.

i don’t recall how i won the tickets to see soul coughing play at Syracuse University in 1998. They had just released Circles, I dragged WZ with me to the show, it was so intimate and mesmerizing, it’s the concert by which i compare all others to. honestly i don’t think i’ll ever attend a show that great again.

this is a video from the tour i went to, he’s even playing the green guitar.

it was in the gymnasium, mike doughty (m. doughty at the time) wore black geek glasses, he was a skinny guy (as heroin addicts typically are) that played a few different guitars, but most notably this green guitar. he wore a white tshirt and some shell toed sneakers, he smoked cigarettes the whole show. his glasses slid down his nose and he peered over them while he sang.

another great thing about the show was the sampling that went on. one guy in the band was a sampler.. so he played clips from other songs and even some dialog from the smurfs during the songs.. someone in the crowd had made a sign that read “donna martin graduates”. it was a reference to the online journal/blog that mike doughty used to keep about 90210.

after the show WZ and i had to drive back up to oswego, but we hung around out back for a few minutes and talked (WZ did) some of the band members. they invited us to an after hours on euclid somewhere.. we didn’t go.

the last time i saw them was in MA with KW, JBP and DE. it was the “question jar show” where the audience members put their questions in a jar that was on the stage, and between songs, mike read them and answered them.

i kind of hope there is another question jar at this show…

i spent a great deal of time in the car thinking on my way home from MA… i was also listening to the savage lovecast where someone called in and wanted dan’s advice on whether or not she should have children with her boyfriend. she is 35 years old and has good points on either side of the children coin, and eventually asked dan if having children was similar to having a dog.

his advice was if you are on the fence about having kids, don’t have them.

a great deal of my boston friends are childless by choice and intend to stay that way. i don’t fall into that category, i’ve always imagined i’d be married and have 3 children just like my parents did. my kids would play lacrosse and be well behaved, they’d grow up to be hardworking, responsible members of society and i’d enjoy their company into old age. i’m starting to think that my dreams of having children are just that, dreams. i’m going to be 34 in a few months and single.. the simple truth of the matter is i’m running out of time to achieve that dream. i’m coming to the realization that i need to start reframing my future and start accepting the fact that biological children just aren’t going to happen for me.

i hope i can see that the other side of the children coin is just as shiny as the one with children… this is what i’ve got so far.  i’ll be more wealthy and should always have more disposable income than my friends that are parents, especially if i ever do get married. i’ll be much more flexible/spontaneous, which is something that i enjoy immensely. traveling can continue. i do have a  plethora of nieces already, and can always be the “cool aunt” and spoil them… i can drive an expensive car and won’t have to drive an SUV. i might even be able to buy real estate for investment purposes and have a vacation home. i can keep on keeping in touch and visiting the friends and family i’ve been collecting all these years.

the main thing i worry about is that i feel like i would really regret not reaching a goal i’ve had since i was a little girl… how is old age going to be for me if i don’t have children? i guess i’d just be closer to my sisters… i wonder if my mom would have moved to be closer to her siblings if she didn’t have children? if i don’t have children, will i be ostracized by my friends that DO have children because eventually our lives would be on completely different trajectories and you can only talk about “old times” for so long? would i  be that creepy family friend that never had children? will i alienate myself and seek friendship in other non-reproducers? will “the change” come early for me if i don’t have children? will i be a spin-stress?

these are things i worry about when i drive by myself for long periods of time. *sigh*

i actually saw a huge fat one sitting on my step feasting on ones of these pumpkins as i was pulling out of the driveway saturday morning.

i hate these squirrels. maybe i need to get an outdoor cat.