Phone Notes II: Electric Boogaloo

Hey, Friends.

You might remember a while back when I decided to share some of the nonsense from my phone before I deleted it.  (You can read the post here if you are just dying of curiosity.)  You probably don't remember, and why should you?  Your head is very busy remembering much more important things -- like the password that you made for a website and you were sure it was so easy you would never forget it and didn't need to write it down anywhere.  I don't expect you to make space in your brain to recall my ramblings -- that password is probably much more useful to you.

Why am I bringing this up?  Fair question.  It is once again that magical time when my phone is getting too full, and I need to purge and free up some storage space.  I should probably upgrade from my iPhone 4s at some point as well, but that's not the point.

"But why do we care about your petty phone issues?"  You don't, Friends.  I realize this.  Consider this your cue to stop reading right now, as the rest of this post is going to be made entirely of the drivel that went through my head, or things that happened that I jotted down.  Stuff I meant to follow up on and do something with here, but it never happened.  Little moments that were meant for greater things and have now been relegated to being dumped here before disappearing forever.  A last gasp for relevance, if you will.

That might not have been the best way to convince you to read this, but whatever.  It's happening whether you stick around to read it or not. On to the phone purge!

1) When you have to delete pictures from your phone, and you essentially have to give yourself a pep talk to do it.  "It's okay.  You can do this!  They have already gone on to live on social media.  It's okay to let go."

2) Dear Amazon,
         
          I know you have to install updates at times.  I'm all for updates and keeping things running smoothly.  I'm not a fan of how you do it.

         There is no warning.  Suddenly -- boom!  Shit just stops working.  I eventually figure out that the internet access on my Kindle Fire isn't loading, and it isn't a problem with my wifi.  No.  You updated shit, and until I figure out to reboot nothing is going to work.

          Same deal with Fire TV.  I was in the middle of watching a show when boom!  Everything freezes, and then it says I have no connection.  Once again, my wifi is fine.  You decided that was the optimum time to issue an update and f^*k you to anyone using the service at that moment.  No message.  No warning.  Do you have any idea how annoying it is to repeatedly type in the wifi password with the weird little remote?  Very.  And I did it repeatedly until I figured out to just unplug the damn thing and let it reboot.

3)  That moment when you know exactly what you should say, but you can't do it.  You know that if you say the right thing and tell the person what they want to hear, you will get whatever you want.  And you just can't do it.  It would make life a lot easier if you could just suck it up and spew the necessary words, but you cannot kiss that much ass without going insane.  Especially when it is undeserved.  Would rather be recognized for competence than the ability to lie.

4)  

When you see the sign warning about hunters, but figure it's not too serious because you are in a park.  About half an hour later, off in the distance a bit, you hear a gun shot.  Then another.  You've just reached the midpoint on your hiking trail, so there is no "quick" way to get back.  Screw it.  Any hunters in the area should realize that a deer would not be frolicking about in the woods wearing a bright red fleece.  But please don't shoot me on accident, okay?

5)  Putting on new socks can be such a magnificently decadent feeling.  I don't even like to wear socks that much -- barefoot is much better -- but new sock softness can be the coziest thing.  Like soft little hugs on your tired feet.

6)  That moment when you are in bed, half asleep, and suddenly can't remember if you locked the doors or just thought about having to lock the doors.  You're 99.9% sure you did, because you are a little OCD about that, but you know you have to get up and check anyway just to be sure.  You won't sleep unless you do.  If you don't check then it will probably turn out to be the one time you didn't lock the doors, and that will be when someone breaks in and axe murders you.  That would suck.  Big time.

7) Conversation between two girls, overheard in a coffee shop...

Girl 1: Look what he said there!  Isn't it funny?  I swear I've found my soul mate on Twitter!

Girl 2:  *Takes phone*  Too bad he lives on the other side of the country.  And has a few thousand followers.  Who is the person?

Girl 1: Just some guy.  I don't think he's famous or anything.  And he follows me!

Girl 2: You and 1,013 other people.

Girl 1: Hey!  He followed me first!  He obviously must see what I post and likes it.

Girl 2: Please.  He doesn't see shit that you post.  He just wants people to see his stuff.

Girl 1: He does too.  Can't you just be excited for me?

Girl 2:  Sure, if that makes you happy.  We'll just pretend you get a little tingle every time you see that someone looked at your tweet because you instinctively know it must be your soul mate reading your 140-words-or-less moments of brilliance.

Girl 1: I hate you.

Girl 2: You just hate my voice of reason.

** Yeah, that is a legit conversation.  I went into total creeper mode and took notes while they were talking.  Shut up.**

8)  That moment when you cannot remember the word "pilot", so you refer to the person as the "airplane driver".  Not even a little embarrassed when everyone laughs at you, because at least they knew what you were talking about.  Although, being called out and corrected by a 7 year old was something you could have lived without.

9) Work moments...

Coworker: Okay, I'm leaving.

Me: (while checking out a patron's items) Okay.

Coworker: See you tomorrow.

Me: I'll be here with bells on.

Coworker leaves...

Patron: Did you just tell her you would be here with bells on?

Me: Yup.

Patron: *laughs* Shit!  Sorry!  You're too funny.

Me: Thanks.

Patron: I'm going to have you check my stuff out from now on.

Me: Alright.  I'll see you in a week, same place.

Patron: I'll be here with bells on.

10)  More work moments...

Patron: I'm so glad the library moved!  That old area wasn't very nice.  And there are so many of those people over there.

Me: You mean the Vassar students?  It's a nice area -- lots of shops and restaurants to walk to.

Patron: Yes, it has things to walk to, but the people -- not the students, but the other people who live there.  You know, in the other direction.  Toward Main Street and the more city area.

Me: *blank stare*  I'm not sure that I do.

Patron: You know....the riff-raff.  

Me: There are a lot of nice, good people who live in that area.  Sure, there are some that have problems --

Patron: You have to say that because you work here.  You probably only saw the nicer segment of the population who actually know what a library is.

I was pissed off at this point.  Not going to lie.  Is there a polite way to tell someone to fuck off?  

Me: No, I can say that because I know those people.  I live two blocks from the old location.  You know, in the "other" direction.  Toward Main Street.

Patron: *looks stunned*

Me: I guess that makes me part of the riff-raff.  Your books are due in three weeks.  Have a good night.

Knowing my luck this woman will turn out to be a total witch who will file a complaint about me.

11) You know when you have a song stuck in your head?  Not even the whole song, just a snippet of it....okay really just the melody, and you can't think of any of the lyrics that go to it.  And it's way too late to be awake (around 2am) but this is going to drive you insane and keep you from sleeping until you figure out what song is stuck in your head.

    I got a little desperate.  What if I sing it to Siri?  Siri has Shazaam powers.  I wonder if I can sing the tune to Siri and she can identify it and put me out of my misery?  Is that even a thing?  Does Siri have the power to do that?

There are three possibilities here:

-- Siri does not, in fact, have the ability to recognize a song when you sing the tune to her.

-- Siri does have the ability, but just thought my singing was so terrible that she had no idea what to do about it and tried to let me down gently

-- I am a much worse singer than my shower has led me to believe all these years, especially at 2 am when I should be sleeping.

I still don't know what song it was.  

And that concludes our fun time with the random stuff I saved on my phone.  We'll probably do this again in a few months, Friends.  I hope you were mildly amused.  At the very least you will now know not to bother reading Phone Notes III when you see it posted, right?

In Which I Have a Ridiculous Theory

Hi, Friends.

I know, it's been a while since I bothered to update here.  I suck.  Let's all just agree on that and move on, okay?

So, weird things have been afoot around here lately, and it kind of led me to a ridiculous and totally implausible theory.  It's absolute nonsense, but it amuses me and hopefully will amuse you as well.  Maybe not -- I don't know.  It's a long story, so grab yourself your beverage of choice and snuggle in, because this is going to take a while.  (And if you get bored, stop reading.  I will never know the difference.)

Need a bit more convincing?  The other title I almost went with for this post:  Like I'm Living in a Weird Bermuda Triangle.  Does that make it more enticing?

Let us begin.

My ridiculous theory: I'm starting to think my street has taken on the status of an imaginary place.

Lately, it's almost as if people have collectively decided to pretend that my house, and even my entire street, no longer exists -- or maybe we are under some kind of mystical field that only lets our presence be noted at certain times.  You know, like Hamunaptra in the movie The Mummy, except we are nowhere near as fancy or important.

Let me try to explain the weirdness.  I promise I haven't gone off the deep end.  I just like my crazy theory better than whatever the mundane explanation eventually turns out to be.

It all started with the postal service, of all things.  At first I thought it was just me and that the post office had some secret vendetta against me.  I had been waiting for a few things to come in the mail, and they all should have arrived long ago -- the most important was my car registration and my loan payment book, amongst a few other things.  I eventually got my car registration, and I can't even blame the post office for how long that took.  I'm sure the great state of New York played a role in its delay as well.  My loan book showed up after the first payment was due, and looked like it had come to me via Alaska.  Other things never arrived at all.

I chalked it up to just being a weird glitch in the system.  That was followed by quite a few days where I got absolutely no mail at all.  Nada.  No junk mail, no seasonally popular political mailings, nothing.  I'm not counting the holidays, either.

That might not seem too strange.  It's not.  The weird part was the mail that I did receive.

I have gotten mail addressed to a gentleman who hasn't lived here in over 20 years.  He's not even the previous owner that I bought the house from.  I know he lived here at some point because he wrote his name in the cement in the cellar floor.

He gets mail.  I don't.

I've also gotten mail addressed to a Walgreens pharmacy.  I readily admit my love for Walgreens, and I stop in there way too often.  My house is not now, nor has it ever been, a Walgreens pharmacy.  I also do not live in Freedom Plains, so I really don't understand how this wound up in my mailbox.

Already delivered to a different wrong address!

The address is not even remotely close to mine....well, the part of the address that is even there.  The return address on the back was for some health science lab near Albany.  This I get delivered to my house?  I did not open it, of course.  It's none of my business.  I put it back out so it can continue its magical voyage through the postal system.  Who knows where it has been, or what exciting destination it may visit next!  I just hope it's not something important, like someone's prescription for desperately needed medication.

Side note:  Friends, if your pharmacist tells you that they never received your prescription -- don't bite their head off or assume they are incompetent.  That is doubly true if your prescription is going through the mail.  It might well be on a magical mystery tour of its very own.

Why was this happening?  Had I somehow pissed off the postal service?  I didn't think I had.  I don't get a lot of large, heavy packages delivered.  I participate in their food drives. I even give them homemade cookies at Christmas time!  I'm a freaking awesome customer, damn it.  I did consider filing a complaint with the post office, but did I really want to piss them off?  Things were weird enough already.

I decided to ask one of my neighbors if they were having the same problem.  Friends, if you have been following along on my blog (or Facebook or Twitter) for any amount of time, you know that I have some interesting neighbors, and they like to be very involved in my life.  As the youngest person on my street, I think I somehow became their vicarious form of entertainment when I moved in.  I'm cool with that.  I'd rather have neighbors that are friendly, and chat, and keep an eye out for each other.  

Back to my point....

My neighbor tells me that her mail has been sketchy lately also.  At least it wasn't just me!  We decided that maybe we just had a temporary mailman while the normal dude was on vacation or something, and things were backlogged.

Then she told me the story  about her friend and her GPS.  That's when my ridiculous theory really started to form in my brain.

Her friend was coming to visit from out of the area and hadn't been here in a few years.  She was relying on her GPS to get her to her destination.  Apparently she drove most of the way here without needing directions.  When she got closer she tried to plug in the address and it told her that there was no such street.  Say what?  This is not a new street.  We are not in some fancy new development.  My house has been here since the 1930s.  The poor lady ended up having to park at a restaurant and call my neighbor to get directions.

Eventually they were united, and they tried to figure out what happened to the GPS.  Turns out the GPS did not believe our street existed in Poughkeepsie, but in the non-existent town of Arlington.  Arlington is a school district.  It is a fire district.  It is a "population center" in Poughkeepsie for the census data.  It is not a separate town.  Just ask Wikipedia.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arlington,_New_York

I wonder if my mail is getting screwed up by this as well?  I have gotten some things with an address of Arlington, NY.  On the other hand, my brother had no problems with his GPS when he came to visit.  It knew my street existed.  

That, Friends, is the weirdness that has been going on lately.  I'm starting to think my street has taken on the status of an imaginary place.  Maybe it can only be found by people who already know it is here -- like Diagon Alley or 12 Grimmauld Place.  

I'd be totally cool with having wizards for neighbors, for the record.

Phone Notes

It occurred to me earlier today that I should really clear a lot of the flotsam off of my phone -- apps I never use, tons of photos that have already gone to live on Instagram, etc.  Might explain why my phone seems so sluggish at times.  What else could I clear out?  All of the notes -- probably don't need most of them any more, either.

Honestly, I did not realize how much drivel I had saved as a note at some point. Some were obvious, like the ones with the time, date, and a police officer's name:  incident reports at work.  I don't call the police that often, so I know why I had made those notes.  I'm talking about the rest of it.  Two years worth of random sentences, jots of thoughts I think I probably meant to write about here but then never actually got around to fleshing out, partial grocery lists, my brother's last two addresses -- a really weird assembly of things.

So I decided, before just purging the stuff off of my phone, I might as well post some of it here, since I obviously thought it was interesting and/or amusing enough to document at the time.  Why not let you, Friends, see the nonsense that goes on in my head before it goes through the process of landing here?  Yes, there is a process.  I do actually make an effort here, although I don't know if that makes it better or worse.  Guess that  depends on whether you like reading my blathering or not.

I digress.

Onto the notes.  I'll start with the one that I can actually explain and give you background on, as you sort of know about it already, although you don't know that you know.

1) Ridiculous One Direction Phone Poll:  You already know about this because I did actually write about it here, but then I deleted it later.  I got a phone poll, and it was all about One Direction and Zayn leaving and went on forever, rarely changing topics.  The tl;dr recap:  I felt bad for the dude as he has been under public scrutiny for years and hoped he was okay, I could really not care less about One Direction, I know exactly one of their songs, I don't care if the band breaks up, and I was horrified that the chick giving the poll didn't seem to know who the Beastie Boys are.  (That still irks me.)

"But why delete it?" you might be wondering.  Well, I rarely get get comments actually posted to my blog -- most people respond on Facebook.  That one I actually got an anonymous comment on, explaining how some people were actually really upset about it all, and it hurt their feelings that I was kind of making fun of them -- you get the drift.

My intention here isn't to hurt anyone's feelings or make them feel bad.  Also, I kind of already had a run-in with the insanity that is the 1D fandom on Twitter, and that was more than enough for me.  I watched them perform on Saturday Night Live once, and I posted something on Twitter about it -- I forget my exact words, it was something like, "They weren't as bad as I thought they might be." I was pleasantly surprised, was the gist.  I know I absolutely did NOT tag One Direction in it, and the 1D fans somehow found me anyways.  They were all very nice and polite -- I'm not saying otherwise.  It was a little startling though to suddenly have a shit-ton of attention headed my way, with people recommending YouTube clips of concerts I should watch, thanking me for giving them a chance, telling me how awesome they are, etc.  My point is, I did not need one anonymous person to send out into the fandom that I was in some way making fun of them, ending up with a One Direction shit-storm headed my way.  So I deleted it.

Now onto the other notes that I have no real frame of reference to give you, although some seem pretty clear on their own.

2) "Store -- get weird beers and spiders."  Thankfully, the date-stamp on this one is from October 2013, so I'm guessing Halloween. Not my usual shopping list.   I don't generally buy spider-related anything, as I hate them.  HATE THEM!!

3) "Super long red light.  Is it broken?  Did I unwittingly just participate in a performance art piece on the virtue of patience?"

4) "That moment when the alarm goes off & you wake up & go to put on your glasses but they aren't where you always leave them.  Feeling around blindly, half asleep in the dark & feeling like something would totally reach out from under the bed and grab your hand if this was a horror movie. Stumble blindly to bathroom and jam contacts into bleary eyes.  Try to describe what a pain in the ass it is to someone later, and they say 'Didn't you just look for them?'  Yeah.  If I could f*$king see well enough to look for them then I wouldn't need them in the first place. Just agree that it sucks next time."

5) "12:53 am  The internet tells me that my left ear ringing at this time means that a loved one is thinking about me.  Pretty sure all my loved ones are asleep, unless I have a secret admirer in another time zone.  The internet should tell me to go to sleep & not surf random nonsense at this hour."

6) "Handicap parking vs. bathroom stalls.  Why make parking spots so close, then put stalls all the way at the far end of the bathroom?  Why not put handicap stalls first?  Seems rude."

7) "Rhode Island".  *I really have no idea.

I think we shall end this here.  Consider this the Best of the Notes on My Phone.  The rest is really not worth anyone having to read.  Maybe we will do this again in a few months, kids.  Maybe not.  I don't know how much you really need to know about the thoughts that flitter through my head.

An Eggscellent Find

So I was in the store the other day, and I came across the oddest candy:

Yeah, that's right:  Gummi Fried Eggs!  Who comes up with these ideas?  I can understand the cola bottles, cherries, peach rings -- those are all things that are already sweet.  The traditional bear shape makes sense if you think teddy bears and trying to appeal to children.  I'm even down the with gummi severed body parts they sell around Halloween.  They are macabre, a little twisted, and I buy them every year.  

Of course I had to buy these immediately.  Who knows when I will see gummi fried eggs again?  I'm not sure why they are out now.  I'm guessing anything egg related is supposed to be associated with Easter.  They were strangely alluring in their weirdness.  

I decided the best way to showcase my special find was to make cupcakes.  I have no good reason to make them; they are purely to celebrate the magnificence of the candy.  I'm taking them to work tomorrow because what the heck am I going to do with that many cupcakes?  They would petrify into little cupcake paperweights.

Behold!

For the record (and to keep my coworkers from being grossed out at the idea of what they might be asked to ingest): the gummi fried eggs taste vaguely like vanilla, or marshmallow.  I can't really put my finger on it.  

While awesome, it still seems like a strange choice of food to recreate in gummi form.

What Does It Mean?

Normally I don't remember all that much about my dreams.  I might vaguely recall part of it that is totally confusing, or just a feeling.

This morning I remember the whole thing, and it was strange.  Not bad, just...odd, for lack of a better word.  It was peaceful and relaxing overall.

I was mountain climbing with the three other people -- none of whom I actually know.  This is odd for starters because, while I have gone hiking in the mountains, I have never strapped on gear and decided to literally climb a mountain.  And we were climbing in just regular t-shirts, shorts and sneakers.

I was with 3 other people, but they weren't people that I know.  There was one guy who was like my partner/friend/buddy-to-make-sure-I-didn't-kill-myself.  I don't know where he came from, as he isn't even anyone I recognize in passing, like having seen him at work or on television or anything.  Then there was a woman with short, curly blonde hair and glasses -- like groovy glasses.  I remember thinking she looked like a picture from an old yearbook.  There was another guy as well, but he didn't even have a face, that I can recall.  He was just like " random place holder guy", but he seemed to know the most about what we were doing.  Well, all of them knew more about mountain climbing than I did.

We got to the top without any problems, and sat around checking out the view for a while.  It was just bare rocks on the top -- no trees or snow or anything.  A few wild flowers were growing between the cracks in the rocks.  We could look down over a mountain range at the trees below.  It was sunny and warm.

Magically, a picnic appeared and we had lunch.  I mean full-on picnic with a blanket, basket full of food, dishes, etc.  None of us had backpacks, or had carried anything up other than ourselves and we each had a bottle of water.  No one else was up there with us.  It just appeared, and we were all like, "Oh yeah!  It's time to eat lunch now!" and just started eating and chatting like it was perfectly normal for a fancy picnic to appear out of nowhere.

After that we just hung out on top of the mountains for a while.  The picnic magically disappeared, and we were all comfy just lying on the warm stones, feeling the gentle wind blowing over us, watching birds fly overhead.  We stayed up there lounging and hanging around until someone realized it was going to be sunset soon, and we should head back down.

We were repelling down, which was trickier than climbing up -- and that's when I woke up.

My phone woke me up, and I have no idea how the dream ended.

Now, I've tried looking up dream interpretation websites.  They all seem to agree that mountains represent obstacles, and climbing it is overcoming it.  Climbing down seems to mean giving up, or depression.  None of those seem to fit with the happy feeling of the dream.

None of them say anything about climbing a mountain and having a magically-appearing picnic with three people you don't know.

So that was weird.  But I did wake up in a really good mood, feeling very optimistic today.