This is strange for so many reasons:
a) We are at the beach. It should be well over 100 degrees.
b) All summer long- in Chicago, mind you- it's been well over 100 degrees.
c) I only packed halter tops. For Nora.
That said, our digs this week are a stunning "cottage" with three floors of window seats, wraparound porches and mind-boggling amounts of alcohol. Even more mind-boggling is how quickly the supply will be decimated with three sisters, two parents, two husbands, a boyfriend or two and a plethora of pals. (There's also four kiddos, but they aren't hitting the stash yet. Overmuch.)
Nora, for her part, has been chasing her big cousins, shoving objects (sand, shoes, mini front-loader trucks) into her mouth, and passing out each night with a sleepy giggle. She has effectively been aired out.
My new obsession: looking up real-time star charts and pretending to see them in the cloudy sky. P.J.'s? Listening to an CD he found in the TV room called "Angela's Bachelorette." The gentlemen residing here initially hoped for a DVD. No such luck.
I also have my new gadget to keep me outta trouble: a refurbished iPhone 3Gs. This a big deal. A really big deal. I've been a loyal, tried and true Blackberry Pearl user for the past four and a half years. I love the Blackberry Pearl. I love it. Sure, it has a limited capacity for web browsing, memory storage and camera speed. And absolutely, the trackball tends to implode, rendering the entire cell phone a useless mini brick. (But it's so cute!)
Regardless of its shortcomings, I've come to acknowledge the BBerry as a general extension of my right hand. I am disgustingly good at texting on the thing. I ask things of it that it cannot possibly deliver- accurate GPS, an updated blog, etc.- yet, somehow, it does. Slowly, but it does.
But the other day, the trackball on the phone died. Again. Stuck itself so far inside the phone that it became a pebble. And about as helpful as one. Suddenly, I was unable to make calls, answer calls, look up numbers or addresses, text, email, take or receive or view pictures, or do anything generally associated with an actual phone. It became a lovely object with which to thwack things- precisely the activity in which I engaged for the full day I was without any means of communication.
And I was embarrassingly inept at dealing with this. Could. Not. Handle. It.
So I needed a new phone- pronto. Peej thought that I could do without a cell- smart phone or otherwise- for the week we were on vacation. He was sorely mistaken...and won't be making such inane and unhelpful assumptions again any time soon, I promise you this.
And we looked at comparable phones on T-Mobile (which I love) and found that even the nicest ones were iPhone ripoffs- for about two hundred more dollars. So we contemplated the iPhone, even though:
AT&T Has Terrible Reception In Chicago, and
We Don't Need An iPhone, and
The Data Charges Are Crazy, and
It Is Trendy.
But it turned out that it would be cheaper to get a refurbed phone (named The Furb) on a comparable data plan with a phone that- get this- allowed me to ask waaay too much of it, media and communication-wise.
Which is good. And bad.
And very bad.
But I'm in good company. Nothing says Family Time like six Flynns and their various family members attached to a laptop and iPhone apiece. We've actually played word games in person (on paper) and across the room (on Facebook.)
As soon as the sun comes back out I'm sure it'll be a little different.
At least outfit-wise.
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