BeigeJournal

Inspired by ohiblather’s recently-posted Handwritten entry, I’ve put up my own effort. I think you’ll agree that my handwriting, for all of Debbie’s complaining about her handwriting, is a lot worse.

One of the things I noticed during my recent visit to Arizona was the prevalence of speed bumps. We have speed bumps here in Wisconsin here and there, but they really love them in Arizona. They build them bigger over there, too. Here we just have little humps, out there, perhaps desensitized to height by all the mountains, they build mini-mountains. If an Arizona-style speed bump was built in central Illinois, people would climb to the summit of the speed bump to enjoy the view.

The assisted living home where my grandmother lives has a giant speed bump right on a tight turn in the tiny parking lot. Do the old people speed there? Since it is on a turn, each of the four wheels of the car rolls over it separately, causing a vigorous rolling motion. That must be great when one of the residents is carried away in an ambulance, which I imagine is not so uncommon at such a facility.

While visiting Green Valley, Arizona, I ended up finding 2nd Look Books. It’s a nice, small shop in a small town, or at least what certainly looks like a small town to someone from Cook County Illinois and currently residing in the small city of Milwaukee (just under 600,000 in the city itself). I found a copy of Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris. I’ve only read twenty-odd pages so far, and it is hilarious, as you’d expect if you’ve heard him on public radio.

I went out walking in the city today. Rolling my Scalex Map Wheel along the route on a city map indicates about 15km, down the Hank Aaron trail, out to the lake shore and out on the harbor breakwater, a stop at the Alterra Coffee shop for a mocha shake, past the art museum, and eventually back to the car.

I decided that I didn’t want to carry my camera on the walk. A 35mm SLR is a bulky and heavy thing to carry, and I’ve photographed much of this area before, after all, so why bother? Well, crossing the Menomonee River at Emmber Lane, I saw a truck driving down the river. It was some sort of ex-military amphibious truck, with some people in the back having a good time and using their camcorders. Guess I should have taken my camera.

I’ve used AT&T long distance for some time now, but I’ve not been using enough long-distance service recently to exceed their monthly minimum, so I’ve been hit with a fee for that. Therefore, I switched to an SBC plan with no minimum.

SBC sent me a $25 gift card as part of their long distance service promotion of the moment. It works like a credit card, but but is a sufficient hassle to actually use that probably lots of people fail to use the full amount, if they use it at all. How clever of them.

Now, one reason that I’m not using much long distance service on my home POTS line is that I’ve switched my Verizon wireless phone to the America’s Choice 400 plan, which is only a few dollars a month more than the plan I was on before but which includes, as the name implies, 400 peak minutes, which is plenty for me, unlimited night and weekend minutes, unlimited mobile-to-mobile minutes, and domestic long distance. Thus I can now make lots of long distance calls on my cell phone now without any effect on my bill. I’ll add that I’ve been very happy with Verizon. The phone works, the coverage is good, and there are no surprises on the bill.

Verizon has a handy web site on which you can pay your bill, or, if you choose, part of it. So I used my SBC gift card to pay part of my cell phone bill, the cell phone that I use instead of the POTS landline. So for signing up for long distance service I plan to use very rarely, I got money to pay for the service, from another company, that I actually do use. Works for me.