Writing from work to fill y'all in on the bloggy silence. We've had no voice line for a couple of days, except A. did manage to call me, very staticky, from work this morning. But when you pick up the phone, there's no dial tone, just a little lonely crackling.
Oddly, we do have some DSL service, but it's extremely patchy and liable to vanish and leave you stranded on the side of the information highway.
We checked the box with an old-fashioned plug-in phone, and the trouble is outside the house and therefore the phone company's problem. Hooray! They're supposed to fix it Friday while we're still at my in-laws. Anyone want to make a bet on it? The day after Thanksgiving?
Meanwhile, for Mom and anyone else who might be calling, our phone is being forwarded to my cell, which spends 95% of its life both misplaced somewhere or other and turned off so you can't call it to figure out where it is. But I dug it out when we figured out the landline was down and I've had it with me since. Yeah, ambivalent about the cellphone revolution, that's me: if cellphones didn't so obviously solve the problem of staying in contact while in transit, I might be perfectly happy for it to pass me by.
It's kind of funny, having it with me. It's like there's a phone in my pocket, or something. I feel a little bit "on" all the time. There's also a phone at my elbow, the store's phone, and objectively speaking it rings much more often. Why having a phone in my pocket should make me feel more keyed up for it to ring, I don't know.
Any thoughts on cellphones, or am I just a decade too late on this one?
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9 comments:
I find that the best and highest use for my cellphone is as an oversized pocket watch.
I'm with Niobe. I make and receive hardly any calls on it. And, its "wallpaper" is an ANALOG clock. So yes, pocket watch. But I have it on and around, most of the time. You know, in case I need to know what time it is. Because I've given up wearing a watch.
You know, I'm usually facing a clock or wearing a wristwatch, so I've never gotten into that habit, even when I'm carrying it while I'm traveling. But in the car driving to my in-laws I found a fabulous new function: mine has a flashlight feature, which is perfect when you're trying to figure out if it's time to switch colors on your knitting and you don't want to disturb the driver with the overhead light.
When I take my students camping, they use their cell phones as flashlights ....
I am very attached to my phone's internet capability. Very, very attached.
Wishing you a speedy landline recovery.
I have a love-hate relationship with mine. I do pet-sitting so need it for security. I originally got it for a 900-mile (one way) trip -- it's getting hard to find pay phones.
I use it for my long distance because of the free minutes I get, and I use it for friends who live just across the stateline, because they'd be long distance, too.
I still have a landline at home, complete with a phone manufactured in 1983 (just before the Bell system break-up). If you ever need to whack somebody up the head, this phone is the thing to use, and it probably won't even hurt the phone.
I do tend to use my phone as a talk (it has a very big screen). And i haven't worn a watch for about ten years. Actually, I seem to have dropped the habit around the time I got my first mobile.
Like you, I have been very resistant to the cell phone thing. Moving from Philly to London, I realized people here do it a LOT more. They text and call and often don't even have landlines.
Emily R, welcome! The UK's been way ahead of us on cell phones (mobiles) for at least a decade--I think because landline service there is so expensive.
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