Loaner Phone Part 1: Contact list

Last June I jumped feet first into the world of smart phones with my Samsung Moment. It was love at first touch. Over the next few months, my Samsung Moment failed me again and again while I became increasingly dependent on it. I feel like my Samsung Moment and I need to go to couples therapy.

The first problem was last summer when the plug port became bent because I dropped it too many times when it was plugged in for no obvious reason. Sprint replaced it with a refurbished phone.

The second time was a right after I got back from maternity leave. The phone was often unresponsive and wouldn't hold a charge for more than an hour. I took it in and Sprint replaced it with a refurbished phone.

Three or so weeks ago, my Samsung Moment was unresponsive again and would power down for no reason and then take hours to restart (even plugged in). Once at work I waited two hours for it to restart. A few nights later I plugged it in while it was restarting, woke up with Baby Blogworthy at 3 am and it still wasn't charged after four hours and had pretty much set my pillow on fire with the overheated battery. I pulled out the battery and it finally started.

The next night it crashed for real. After my phone tried to load for almost 12 straight hours, the battery died and it sort of gave up on life.

Although I'm only 18 days from an upgrade, Sprint wouldn't let me go ahead and give them my cash monies for a new phone. Instead, they sent my Samsung Moment away YET AGAIN. I get it back today, but for the weekend I was stuck with a loaner phone.

Oh, people, this loaner phone. It wasn't so much the phone as the condition of the phone. It's as if the Sprint people were like, "crap, this woman's phone is DONE and we need to get her something fast. Quick, check the back. Nothing? Seriously? Ok, think. Think. Wait, didn't someone just turn in a phone? Yeah, yeah, yeah, get that one! where is it? Oh here it is, in the trash, right under this banana peel. Brush the coffee grinds off it and I'll get it set up for her."

My sister has this phone because she has an iPad for awesomeness and doesn't need a smart phone.

However, I'm sure her's doesn't include the following:

- A hole in the casing
- A crack in the camera lens
- Half the keypad missing
- A contact list that contains the following names: Jit;  Kevin White Boy; Mikey Crip Walk; Moneek; No Hands; Nu Nu Nu; Toy Shipmate Sis and; Unc Bucket; B Smooth; Back Door; Cuz Boo; Black Ass; Fatboy; Rolemodel Lil Chris; Roo Block; and Spank. (All typed directly from the contact list on my Loaner Phone)


By the way, I guess I didn't mention they had forgotten to erase all the other person's information from the phone? Yeah. That happened. Creepy, huh? 


There was a work number in it and I called it. It was a KFC. Take from that what you will.


The Loaner Phone took on a new life at work Friday. My work friend, who was one work day away from a vacation and was stressed became instantly obsessed with Loaner Phone and we collectively spent the rest of the day inputting the contacts them into the Royal Name Generator. 

Marchioness White Girl Lulu Tcott of Alachuashire.

 

Marchioness Toy Shipmate Ticky Sis Andberton of Gainesvilleshire.

 

Prince Back Fearnsley Doorskitt of Gainesvilleford.

Now, tell me, how can a person be sad about their non-smart Loaner Phone when it provides that kind of entertainment? But I didn't know exactly how entertaining that phone was until I discovered the text messages....


Dun, dun DUUNNNN!! Come back tomorrow for the conclusion to my Loaner Phone saga.

Meanwhile, what do you think the text messages said, based on the contacts list?

Celebrity Weekly Round-up: Royally Distracted

Happy Friday, y'all!

I'm really sorry to disappoint you, but I have nothing whatsoever to write about for the celebrity weekly round-up. I haven't heard any good celebrity news this week and nothing appears to be going on, so I'm just gonna call it a day. Have a good weekend folks...

SIKE!!!!

Unless you live under a hollow log, you know that today is the WEDDING OF THE DECADE. Prince William and Kate are going to the "chapel" and getting married. I can almost guarantee their wedding makes yours look like a shotgun wedding held at the barn. Sorry for your crappy wedding. Hope their fabulousness didn't make you feel too inferior.

Hubby can't figure out why I was so excited for this, and to be honest, I wasn't sure why I was so excited either. Maybe it's because my Mom watched the wedding with me when I was just a wee tyke and now I can watch this one with my son. Or maybe it's because deep down inside, a lot of little girls and grown women alike wonder what it would be like to be a real, honest to God princess.

Although the Royal Wedding ceremony is over, the coverage will live on for weeks and weeks on the internet, as all the best stories do. Lots of others have written about the royal wedding much better than I (like, for instance, Chalupa's Mom , who wrote the funniest Royal Wedding post of the week). So I'm here to just throw together my favorite links I've been collecting all week.

First, you have to go to the E! Online Royal Name Generator and get yourself a Royal name post haste. You can refer to me as the Duchess Amanda Arabella Austinton of Gainesvilleham for now on. Or just The Duchess for short, because I'm not stuffy.

Then after that, go on and Princess Yourself.

Ignore that excessively long neck, but other than that, I look pretty legit, huh? Or more like prom queen. Nowhere near as sophisticated as Kate looked.

Also related: How glad are we, collectively, that this technology exists? (Super glad!)

Let's talk about hats. Facinators, is what they are called. And I'm fascinated har har har. First time that joke's been made, I'm sure! Give me a second while I pat myself on the back for cleverness. Here, why don't you check out the best hats at the Royal Wedding while I give myself the "GURL UR SO FUNNY!" blog award.

Anyway, fascinators are big business here in the US since Kate Princess Catherine rocks them on the regular. The article says they sell from $35 to $100, but I betcha you could search Etsy and get one for a song. Or, you could always fashion one from a headband and feather like my friend at work.

All this Royal Wedding hoopla makes me realize how very little I know about English royalty. I mean, more or less everything I've learned about it is from The Tudors, and I hardly think they are still chopping off people's heads for sport anymore. So, will Kate really be queen someday? Here's the scoop from E! Online, in which they go into detail about the royal succession. For some more royal fun, check out People's gallery of royal family look-alikes through history. And then there is the A-Z of Royalty from People.

You're welcome for giving you all these links to waste time this Friday.

On to the actual wedding. She looked gorgeous and her dress was both modern and traditional (is what I learned this morning from Guiliana Rancic) and Grace Kelly-esque. If you weren't one of the 1000 some odd people invited, US Weekly gives you a glimpse inside the ceremony. Then after she said her "I DO"s, Kate automatically became Princess Catherine and a few hours before was bequeathed some other fancy pants titles. Not bad for a regular Jane.

Then they made history by kissing TWO TIMES while e'rybody and their brother got drunk in the streets below them. BEFORE NOON. They ain't playin'. I missed the kiss by 5 minutes, but you don't have to because E! wrote all about it.

Click on any of those links and it will lead you down the rabbit hole of thousands upon thousands of articles, galleries and fun facts. Enjoy.

Have a happy weekend!

Did you do your royal name? Leave it in the comments!

Operation Sleep Like a Baby

Dear Baby Blogworthy,
This past few months has been fun, hasn't it? We've done so many fun things together as a family. We've visited Downtown Disney, got strawberry-fied at the Strawberry Festival, smelled the stinky animals at the zoo, walked around Gainesville for babies.

You know what else has been fun? The five-month sleepover we've been having! It's great! Remember that time you would only sleep for 1 hour at a time? How about the month you slept in your carseat because you wouldn't sit anywhere else? Oh, we've had a blast, especially around five AM. Let's see....you've been in your swaddle blanket for about four of these five months, and I re-swaddle you about three times every night, so that means I've tightened up your sleep sack 360 times! Wow, it only feels like 250!

All good things must come to an end. It's better you start learning that now before you have too many disappointments in life. That's why it's time for you to mosey along to your own room.

Listen, Baby Blogworthy, we basically spent the better part of six months getting that room ready for you. It has everything a baby could need: darkness; white noise; a small nightlight; a soft, cozy crib. A FAN. You know, Mommy never had a fan growing up. Just color yourself spoiled.

Basically, Mommy wants her room back. She wants to get ready for bed without tiptoeing around your basinette. She wants to read in bed with the light on. She wants to watch a few minutes of TV before she hits the hay. She wants to be able to say goodnight to Daddy without having to SHHH him for being too loud. She wants to sleep at night without hearing you thrash around, trying to stick your toes in your mouth in your sleep.

No, no, no. Just stop it right now with the big, sad eyes. It's for your own good. I'm sure you'll sleep much better without Daddy snoring three feet away from you.

On second thought, maybe I'll move to your room, too.

I also think it's time for you to think about maybe possibly considering a move outside your swaddle blanket. What do you say? I mean, as much as I'd enjoy another 100 re-swaddles, I just have this gut feeling that you'd really enjoy sprawling out and rolling around. I mean, really, you're missing 10 or more hours of putting your feet in your mouth. Those toes won't suck themselves.

And say! While we're on the subject, hows about reverting back to the way you slept about three weeks ago? You know, all, go to bed at 8:30, wake up at 5 to nurse, go back to sleep until I wake you up for the day. Those were good times! Why do you want to get up every three hours and scream at me? Is it because I'm so beautiful? I bet it is. Don't worry, Mommy will be beautiful in the morning, too. In fact, I'm going out a limb here, but I might even be MORE beautiful when it's not 1 am!

So your take aways are: sleep in your own crib, without a swaddle, for several hours un-interrupted. Operation Sleep Like a Baby is commencing. Ready? GO!

Love,

Mommy

So this is where y'all come in. I need to wean him off his swaddle and help him soothe himself to sleep when he wakes up. I've tried soothing him without picking him up to try and "coach" him to put himself back to sleep, but he just gets hysterical and makes it worse. I'm worried the longer this goes on, the harder it will be to break the habit. And I feel like maybe he's playing me a tiny bit.

Please no judgys here, just want to know WWTID (what would the internet do)?

3.) What is going on in the bedroom? Describe a memorable sleeper.

How YOU doin'?

Baby Blogworthy is giving a shout out to all you lovely ladies out there.

Baby wearing is the new black.

See ID

Hubby and I went out on a lunch date yesterday to Fridays.

Remember back in the day when Fridays had super peppy servers with all the flair? Our server was a throwback to the golden days of Fridays flair. Flair = fun, right? That's what we learned from Office Space. What he lacked in actual flair (because Fridays is far to upscale for flair these days) he made up for in enthusiasm. Flair aura, if you will.

"Hey guys, I'm Todd, I'll be takin' care of ya today. Can I start you off with somethin' to drink? Perhaps one of our famous lemonade slushes [editors note: famous in what circles?]."

"Water for me." "Sweet tea, please."

"Good good! I'll be right out with those beverages, guys!" *knocks on the table with his fingertips*

You know. One of those guys. And if he was legally able to buy an adult beverage, I'd be shocked, is how young he looked. Clearly he took his Fridays training very seriously. He probably took notes. He probably keeps a training crib sheet tucked safely inside his notebook he uses to write down people's orders.

Anyway, we order, he brings our food, we eat, it's good and all. He checks on us 14 million times and refills our drink and does everything right, even if he's sort of driving me crazy with all the fake enthusiasm for the state of our lunch.

He brings the check and my hubby pulls out the Discover (card that pays you back).

This is where I need to tell you a critical piece of information about my husband. He has a name that has become popular as a girls name in the recent past. Often, if you do a search for his name, several young teenage girls will also show up in the results. He's used to it by now, but I still get real pissy about it the same way I do when someone calls me Allison or Amber instead of Amanda.

Todd the server comes back with the card and stands next to me while looking at my husband and says the following:

"So, does [insert my husband's name here] know she is paying for your lunch today?"

Silence.

Crickets.

You could hear a pin drop.

We weren't sure what to say. Was he suggesting we stole the credit card? Was he trying to be funny because my husband handed him the card with what he thought had my name?

Hubby said slowly, "well. That....is...me...."

The kid turned about 18 shades of red and asked to see my husband's ID, since the credit card does say "See ID" on the back. I'm not sure why he didn't just see ID to start out with. Maybe he was just trying to be personable. Maybe he knew I was getting the afternoon sleepies and I needed something to get my blood boiling. He definitely failed at the first and succeeded at the second.

Here is how I felt about it:

The take-away here? Use your context clues. If a man pulls a credit card with a basketball design on it out of his wallet, it's probably his. Sometimes men have girlie sounding names and always see ID first, just in case.

Celebrity Week Round-up: The one where I give the Internet a stern talking to

Another Friday is upon us! It's a good Friday for two reasons:

1. It's actually Good Friday.
2. I'm took a Paid Time Off day slash mental health day slash if I have to fix another broken link on the website at work, someone will have to lock me up day.

In fact, while you're reading this, I might either be still sleeping (not likely if you're reading this after about 8 am), lounging on the couch or dipping my baby's toes in the Atlantic Ocean for the VERY FIRST TIME. How's that for a Friday?

via

Speaking of Friday, remember Rebecca Black? Of course you do. If you could hear that atrocious song and get away with it NOT burnt permanently into your brain, you're a stronger person than I. She's only been trending on Twitter for, like, 14 years. Although her only achievement thus far are being famous for singing a crappy song that went viral, she's not under police protection after recieving death threats.

Ok. What? I don't condone death threats. At all. I'm what you'd call anti-death threat. So, what special kind of cray-cray (I'm going to keep using this phrase until it's a thing) wastes their time threatening a girl who probably has nothing and has done nothing. I threw together this handy-dandy death-threat flow chart to demonstrate my point:

Try to get that song out of your head now. And.....Tangent time! 

I had a conversation not long ago with Jenn on Twitter about viral videos and other Internet fueled ridiculousness. Using Friday as an example: you have the early adopters who originally found this video and sent it to their other early adopter friends. Then a few other people pick it up. Then you have the early majority (like your best friend who didn't check her email all week) and the late majority (like when your Mom says, "say, have you seen this funny video? ahahahaha, so cute!") 

It's the diffusion of innovation theory, sort of.

Except on the internet, it goes to another level. Suddenly something that was a huge joke, (Friday, Charlie Sheen, as two examples) is now mainstream. I saw somewhere that Rebecca Black's song was sampled in a real artists' song? I mean ridiculous.

That's when I get simultaneously embarrassed to be a part of the Internet and mad at every single person who mashed the "Share link" button on YouTube. I'm mad at Yahoo for picking it up, or Good Morning America for doing an interview with her. I just want to hit the Internet on the nose with a rolled up newspaper and say "BAD INTERNET!" I want to rub it's nose in the crap it produced and tell the Internet sternly, "Don't you dare do that again!" 

But it always does.

Wait, there's more!

LeeAnn "homewrecker" Rimes decided the double standard in country music is to blame with her breaking up two marriages (hers and Cibian's).

 "[Country music] has such a double standard. You know, Willie Nelson and Johnny Cash and all these guys. God knows what they did back in the day? And if a woman did it, you never were accepted or forgiven. But if it was a guy, it was just their life… It's quite interesting to have to navigate those waters as a woman in this business."

Yeah. I'm sure that's it.

via

Finally, are reality stars ever going to stop getting rich just by being awful people on TV? Bethenny Frankel used reality TV to spawn a $120 million media empire, so until that stops happening? The answer is no.

Enjoy your weekends, folks!

Four Year Anniversary: Now with 90% less Disney

Thank you to Log Cabin for sponsoring my post about updated traditions in my household. To learn more about Log Cabin Syrups (which are all free of High Fructose Corn Syrup), breakfast for dinner, and other new ways to update traditions in your home, click here. I was selected for this sponsorship by the Clever Girls Collective, which endorses Blog With Integrity, as I do.


Hubby and I moved to Florida exactly three months before our first anniversary.

Our first year of marriage hadn't been easy. We experienced layoffs, difficulty finding jobs, the unexpected death of our first cat and the biggest move either of us had ever experienced. We decided to celebrate our first year with a trip to Disney World, a short drive from where we'd moved.

Four years younger and ten pounds lighter.

We splurged on a season pass, knowing we'd take full advantage of everything Disney had to offer. Yes, two adults can have fun at Disney without a child in tow. We booked a hotel outside the park, but one with a fancy breakfast and transportation to the park. Not only were we celebrating our first year of marriage, but a new life in a new state where we could grow where we were planted.

Sharing the world's most expensive Coke.

When our season passes ran out the next year, we decided to continue this tradition for year two. It wasn't quite as fancy. We probably stayed in a terrible hotel because it's sort of our thing. We probably yelled at some people for cutting front of us in line. We probably looked like wilted flowers by the end of the day.

We definitely had a great time.

Last year was more of the same, but took on a much larger meaning: last May was the last anniversary trip we'd take to Disney on our own. I was about 12 weeks pregnant and only showing in my face and hips. I personally had been infected with Baby Fever, and although I'm speaking for him, I'm pretty sure he was too. Did you know a substantial amount of children go to Disney? Up until that point, when my little squirt had just only allowed me to eat real food again, we hadn't noticed how many beautiful babies visited the parks. It's all we talked about.

We were in line for Snow White and started a conversation with the woman behind us, mother of a cute two-year-old girl. We told her I was pregnant and due in November.

"That's so great!" she said. "Your lives are going to change. For the better!"

We asked her to take our picture with our little anniversary pins to remember our last trip as a family of two.

This year our family tradition of heading to Orlando for a weekend with Mickey is going to be very different. Instead of park-hopping with a season pass, we'll be shopping at Downtown Disney. Instead of standing in line for $4 Cokes, we'll be cooking pancakes for breakfast in our suite (generously gifted to us by my sweet sister). Instead of eagerly awaiting another ride on Pirates of the Caribbean, we'll be splashing in the hotel pool with our six-month-old baby boy.

Today is one month until our fourth anniversary, and something tells me this year will be the best one yet.

What are some of your favorite family traditions?