Mah’s Neighborhood

I broke down and got an iPhone. I have had it with Verizon.

After Verizon dropped a call I was on yesterday for the third time in 5 minutes, I had had it. I was talking with a freelance illustrator for a job I need done, and he was not happy with me. I get dropped calls ALL the time, it's awful. It's at the point where I will avoid calling if/when I need to until the last possible minute. The only place I can use my phone and have a 50-60% chance of not getting dropped is right in the middle of my living room.

The bad:

• another credit inquiry on my record, 3 months after the other one for Verizon. Grrr.
• lots of money spent at Verizon to fix the problem and change phones, cancel the contract. Grrr.
• a higher monthly phone bill, which was the reason I switched in the first place.

The good:

• new phone
• no more dropped calls. (hopefully!)
• gonna sell my touch on one of those buy-back sites (which I've used before) so the start up cost for this is only going to end up being only about half. 
• more pictures to post! (iPhone's camera is way better than the one i had)
  

My kid went to his dad's this morning. Flew from Seattle to SanFran at the asscrack of dawn 6am. Since this is one of the busiest travel days of the year, we signed him up for the Unaccompanied Minor service on Virgin America. (That's an additional $160, it ain't free.)  My whole reasoning is that I wanted them to be accountable for him if anything happened on this busy travel day and when he comes back -- reroutes due to weather, bad plane, whatever. They introduced him to the airline attendant, and even made me set up a password for me, the kid, and the exhusband. And hey! He gets free movies, free tv, free food... cool, right?

THEY LOST HIM.

My ex called me after everything was over, and told me what happened. He had spent over an hour with the Virgin America people trying to find out what the hell happened to him, Aside from the fact that THEY DIDN'T EVEN REALIZE HE WAS LOST - no one knew, no one had an answer, no one even instigated any kind of search until he started yelling (and my ex can YELL) and he just happened to see my kid walk by, looking for him as well. Lots more details to the story than that, but basically you get the gist. Their general take on the incident... they can't do anything, you're just SOL if they lose your kid.

FUCKERS. VIRGIN AMERICAN CAN GO FUCK THEMSELVES.*

*Bad pun strenuously intended.

It takes a bit of commitment and patience to watch all 3 minutes, but it really is a good bit.

For the record, my father's favorite expression while driving when I was a kid: Get the fuck out of the way, NumNuts!

(I love the package design though.)

A long time ago, I signed up for match.com. I'm talking YEARS ago... like 7 or 8 years. The account is still there but my profile is not visible. But I've just left it sit there for the most part.

At the time I was dating back then, I did manage to find someone reasonable on the site to date for a lengthy amount of time. And for the most part, the guys were nice or at least relatively normal. But I have been over the novelty of online dating for quite a few years. I think the rest of the 'normal' people in my region are too, because what's on that site nowadays is downright scary. At least in my area, in my age bracket.

Match must have changed their email settings because over the past couple of weeks I've been getting these "here are your matches for the day!" emails. I never used to get these.

All I have to say is what the hell are these guys on? Look at who they sent me over the past few days*....

Hi y'all, it's me again on me soapbox.

It's Sudden Cardiac Arrest Awareness Month!

Learn CPR! You'll never know when someone may go into cardiac arrest (that's why it's "sudden"), and will need your help to survive. (Technically, learning how to use an AED is much better, but CPR can help until someone arrives with the portable machine. Anything is better than nothing.)

And no pun intended, but this issue is near and dear to my heart ever since learning about the heart disease in my family. I'm being selfish in my request to get y'all to learn CPR. It increases the chance of someone like my kid surviving a SCA. And you never know.... someone in your family may have heart disease and not even know it. Wouldn't you want to do your very best to ensure their chance of survival if they have an SCA event in your presence? Learn CPR.

There. Did I lay the guilt on thick enough? ;) I am a mother you know....

Today is my mom's funeral. I want to scratch everyone's eyes out – I am so pissed off at everything. And it's pms time too. Yeefuckinghaw.

Yesterday I took the kid and his girlfriend to lunch at the ONLY Puerto Rican restaurant in Seattle – in western washington too, I think. The irony is that it's located in Ballard, which is a huge Norweigan pocket of town.

Anyway... I completely went off my diet plan for that day. I planned to though, so I'm not upset about it. I am not going to go to a corner of heaven and not indulge. I had some awesome pollo guisado, and now I want to know how to make it. I tried to make flan the other day and it turned out awful.

Sometimes I wish I had a little Puerto Rican mother somewhere that I could call up to teach me these things. My mother didn't teach me a damn thing about anything other than "don't ever set yourself up to have to depend on a man". That's all she taught me.

Well okay, I guess that makes up for it. :)