Why T-Mobile can Suck (the proverbial) It

I’ve been with T-Mobile since 2003.  I’ve seen the cost of my service go up, and the quality of the phones go down.  I considered it an anecdotal part of my cross country road trip when I couldn’t get service throughout most of South Dakota.  Well, pretty much anywhere past Sioux Falls (which really is most of it).  When the charger for my previous phone simply stopped working, it took some finagling and cajoling, but my local T-Mobile store was able to help me replace the charger and carry on my life as usual within the same day.

Yes, this is a purely emotional reaction to a situation that should have been a nonissue.  However, after three visits to a T-Mobile store with an unsatisfactory result and having to eat my angry feelings in the form of two cupcakes – I am no longer amused with T-Mobile and am going to jump ship as soon as my current contract is up.

While I was at a pirate wedding last Saturday (in case you were wondering, yes, there was a moat), one half of The Gato Twins decided to bite through my cell phone charger cord.  So, on Sunday I went to the T-Mobile store, sucked it up, and shelled out $29.99 for a new charger with a USB port and detachable wall charger.  Until last Saturday, whenever I used my original charger, my battery would stay charged for about three days.  (I don’t have a busy social calendar, and therefore don’t quickly exhaust my cell phone battery.)  With the new charger, my battery wouldn’t even last 24 hours. 

So, last night I went back to the T-Mobile store for round two.  I exchanged the charger, and mentioned to the sales clerk that my phone kept telling me to insert a memory card.  She mentioned that it was weird, but did nothing more than swap out Saturday’s charger for Tuesday’s charger.

Tuesday’s charger wouldn’t charge my phone.  Period.  I spent this morning looking into the cell phone plans from the other big providers, and there wasn’t much difference between all of the big names.  (Sure, AT&T’s monthly plans are in the same neighborhood as T-Mobile and rollover sounds great, but who wants to pay $20 per month for texting?  You almost had me AT&T, but I don’t need unlimited texts!  I’m a girl who’s spent 29 minutes on the phone and sent 297 texts this past month.  Sure, I still have a week to go until the new cycle begins, but I’m thinking Sprint’s $29.99 plan with the 1,000 messages add on is going to be my new plan.  If I talked more maybe I’d go with Verizon, but I don’t so I won’t.) 

Today during lunch, I took it back to the store and walk out totally defeated after 20 minutes of conversations like the following:

Me: The newest charger won’t even charge my phone.  I’m open to any and all suggestions you may have.

T-Mobile Clerk:  (After trying the newest charger and determining that it isn’t charging.)  It may be your battery, but let me see what we have in back…

(He comes back with two different chargers.  One won’t fit my phone, and the other starts to magically charge my phone.)

Me:  Yes!  That’s great!  Can I buy that charger or trade you my fancy new charger?

Him:  I can’t.  This charger belongs to a loaner phone.  It’s a different product.

Me:  But…  That charger works for my phone, and these don’t.  These chargers are official T-Mobile products and should work with the loaner phone.

Him:  I can’t.  It’s a different product.

Me:  Okay…  What can we do?

Him:  Well, your contract isn’t up until April 2012, but you can get the full trade in amount in November…

Me:  But, I’d be without a phone for several months!

Him:  If you can wait until September 23, you’ll get what we call trade in “plus”…

Me:  That’s over three weeks away!  I can’t wait THAT long.

Him:  (hushed voice)  You can go to 7-Eleven and buy a prepaid phone and put your SIM card in it…

Me:  Umm…  Okay…  Thanks for your help…

Go Big or Go Home

The plan might blow up in my face, but the good news is that I have one. 

This all came about after I realized that the following events had or will shortly occur: As of June 14, I have been temping/working as a receptionist for my employer for a year; I celebrate my “official” one year anniversary with my employer tomorrow; I’ve been speaking to my manager off and on about transitioning into another position within the company since November and I know a smidgen more now than I did ten months ago; I have been in the process of consolidating my student loans since May and while Direct Loans calculates my income contingent payments, I’ve been asked to pay just the monthly interest on most (not all) of my student loans which amounts to $1,316.33 per month; after taxes and other deductions, I make about $1,800 per month; a month ago I signed up for eHarmony.  I have gone out on one date since then and the guy was very nice, but seemed to experience rolling bouts of physical and verbal manifestations of nervousness (see: blank stares and rapid blinking during prolonged pauses, and occasional stuttering); I haven’t been laid in nearly a year and considering the standard Portland Dude makes my lady parts retreat further inside of me – I don’t see my Sahara spell ending any time soon;  earlier this week I spoke with a cashier at Trader Joe’s who is thinking about applying to law school and I realized that my brain has started to atrophy, which gave me some motivation to retake the bar; and, the initial plan was to take a month off to study for and take the Oregon bar and then spend a long weekend in Chicago to recover.

Here is the most recent version of the plan – if I’m still in my current position next January, I’m going to take the July 2012 Illinois bar.  There’s a February 1 deadline to apply for the July bar, so once I shell out the $700 to take the test plus the extra $895 to $3,375 for the prep course there’s no turning back. 

So, folks, come 2013 this girl could be Chicago bound!

Freaking Dolly Parton...

For the last three days I have had a Dolly Parton CD stuck in my MacBook Pro.  Sure, other CDs have been stuck in there, but this was the first CD to take up residence.  This was also the first CD that has needed more than just a wiggle of a business card in the disk drive.

I tried rebooting with the computer turned upside down.  And then it was on to just holding the eject button down while the computer was upside down and over my head.  Then I tried rebooting while holding down the mouse button, rebooting while holding down the eject button, and finally rebooting while holding down the Command-Option-O-F keys, which were supposed to get me into the Open Firmware but didn't do a damned thing.  Then I found the Silvermac website (http://www.silvermac.com/2006/dvd-stuck-in-macbook-pro/), which really did work like a charm (the second time around.

Anyway, now that Dolly has moved on I can finally move on to the Super Stars of Seventies Soul.  Oh, Multnomah County Library, if one of your other CDs causes me this much of a headache I will be forced to punch one of your librarians right in the kisser!  Consider yourself warned.

Borrowing Other Peoples' Interests

Sure, I have my own interests, but I’ve also been known to fill my time with other peoples' interests just so I can hang out with them.  

Thanks to my many ex-roommates, I’ve watched a lot television shows that I otherwise wouldn’t.  (See: Boy Meets World and Who’s the Boss?)  When it comes to Jaimee, I go to The Gypsy more often than I should, and end up tipsy on rum and Cokes, hearing a lot of bad karaoke, less than a block from my house and glad that I let her talk me into another night out.    With Robyn, I end up consuming a lot of vegan food all the while thinking how much better it would be with meat and/or cheese, but discover Blossoming Lotus‘ amazing Coconut Chai.  Alexis takes me into the world of Vietnamese barbecues and Asian eateries, and I happen upon Frank’s Noodle House (fresh noodles make a HUGH difference) three weeks before I move out of the neighborhood.  

I've come to enjoy trying new things and spending time with my friends and family members, which is why I jumped at the chance to join Halley at a Tally Hall concert and Allie’s organized outing to Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2.  Needless to say, it was busier than my average weekend.

Halley LOVES her some Tally Hall.  And, when I say “love,” I mean she likes them more than the 35-year-old mother I met at their Mississippi Studios concert who was bribed with a free concert ticket by her teenage daughter to chauffer the daughter’s posse to and from the concert, but less than Kathy Bates’ character in Misery.  To put it another way, if Tally Hall was Phish, Halley would have spent the last five years selling veggie burritos out of a Volkswagen van.  But, since we’re talking Tally Hall  – not only was I able to wear shoes to the concert, but my deodorant was also a welcome tagalong.

Mississippi Studios is an adorable venue with a capacity in the neighborhood of 250, which I would consider intimate.  Casey Shea opened the show.  It was either the balcony full of minors calling out amorous phrases or it could have been the two audience members he pulled on to the stage, dressed them up in animal masks and gave them party poppers – either way, he worked that venue like it was nobody’s business.

Speak followed and if I had been 14-years-old I might have thought they were dreamy, instead they gave me a reason to drink – more.  If I learned anything from Airheads (other than Adam Sandler can be strangely hot) it is this, “If it’s too loud, you’re too old.”  And, it appears that I’m too old for Speak.  Of course, this feeling could have been the result of Halley referring to my “Thirty, flirty, and loving it” phase of life as “middle age,” but since the two coincided – I may never know for certain.

While talking me into the show, Halley described Tally Hall as Indie Rock and Power Pop.  Now that I've heard them, I agree with the description but it feels like an over generalization.  It’s kind of like categorizing both The Radio Active Boy Scout and Chelsea Handler’s My Horizontal Life as nonfiction – it’s true, but you could say so much more.  Maybe it’s the suits or maybe it’s their harmonies, but Tally Hall sounds like a throwback to the rock bands from the 1950s and ‘60s.  Let’s try it another way, if The Monkees were reboot with a touch of The Everly Brothers and took a few writing tips from Wally Pleasant  – I believe the result would be something like Tally Hall.

Their songs are catchy.  Some are catchy in their repetitiveness.  (See: &).  Others are catchy in their quirkiness.  (See: Banana Man).  However, and I'm just going to put this out there, there are other songs that are intriguing because of their pairing of bubblegum pop beats with lyrics I would describe, in literary terms, as rooted in the same zip code as Gothic horror.  (See: Cannibal).

Halley told me  the main reasons she likes Tally Hall – it’s a tie between their nerderiffic music and they’re appreciation for their fans.  And, Halley’s right.  Members of the band circulated through the crowd before and after the concert.  Halley hobnobbed and introduced me to all of them except, “Ross, Gray Tie, because he’s quite.”  (That's actually how she talked about the band members.  "Rob, Yellow Tie, postponed med school to stay with the band."  And, "Andrew, Green Tie, is over there," even though Andrew was in his civvies and no where near a tie.)

It was great to experience Halley’s favorite band through her eyes.  I kept forgetting that I was with Halley and would do things, like a whole head eye roll when she suggested that I not put my beer down on a table when the closest person was 20 paces away.  Well, that was when Halley thought I was having a seizure.  You'd think I'd know better by now and not use things like sarcasm or exaggerated facial expressions around Halley.  But, then again, last week I was told not to color my hair without her (even though it turned out super kick ass).  But, I digress.  I can see why Halley adores Tally Hall.  They had witty banter.  And, they had not so witty banter, (e.g., Andrew trying to start a game of Truth or Dare when all he had in mind was a dare and Joe, Zubin, and Rob all wanted Truth.  So, instead they played a song).   

The problem is that Halley's not the only one who likes these guys.  Looking at my fellow audience members, I'd say that they're a hot ticket with teenage girls and the over 50 market.  I'm glad that I was able to borrow her interest before I had to do something like shell out $8.50 for a beer or stand in line for 20 minutes to use the restroom, because I'm pretty sure that it’s only a matter of time until they move out of the sweet and adorable venues like Mississippi Studios and into the likes of the Crystal Ballroom and then Edgefield* where the crowds would be  too large to allow for the one-on-one attention that Halley has come to love.  When that day comes, I hope she’ll take comfort in knowing that it’s Tally Hallmanacs like her who moved Tally Hall out of New Jersey Spring Fling gigs  and into the Portland, Ore. Mississippi Studios in the first place.

* Maybe I have McMenamins' Cajun tots on my mind.

As it turns out – My Neck Didn’t Eat My Twin

The dermatologist and her physician’s assistant have decided that my leaky neck is a branchial cleft cycst, which has resulted in several versions of the following conversation:

                                                  

Me:  What records do you need sent to offsite storage?

Co-worker:  The four boxes along that wall and… and…  Your neck is wet.

Me:  It’s a birth defect.  So, you needed to send these four boxes, and what else?

That’s right, my leaky neck is a birth defect dating back to my embryonic development.*  Oh, and the good news is that the liquid, I habitually dry with my fingertips 20… 80… a billion times a day, is probably fluid draining from one of my sinuses.+

Also, my leaky neck may provide helpful clues to my past life or lives!^  But, then again, maybe it’s nothing more than a weird neck thing that makes me a special and unique snowflake.  Either way, it’s nice to know that it’s not leaking something horrible like spinal fluid~ or tears from a parasitic twin. =

* Maybe something did go wrong when my mom smoked that marijuana laced with opium while she was knocked up with THIS GIRL.  (True story.  My mom decided to purge her soul of this deep, dark secret when I was in college.  Because, she knew by then that it hadn’t “messed” me up too terribly.)

+ I’m not sure whether feel more disgusted by the fluid or less disgusted when I run out of Kleenex and am forced to wipe snot on my hand.  Or, maybe I need to embrace the fact that I’m 65-years-old and buy more pocket packets of Kleenex.

^ Okay, I’m torn on the topic of reincarnations.  Similarly, I’m undecided on aliens, ghosts, and marriage (homo- and heterosexual).  But, right now I’m reading Mary Roach’s Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife, and she points out:  “Among cultures that believe in reincarnation, congenital abnormalities are commonly viewed as clues to a child’s past life.  Often they are tied in with the death of the supposed previous personality.”  (Roach 37)  So, maybe in a past life I was shot in the neck.  OR, EVEN BETTER!  Maybe I was a Native American and in the heat of battle, I was stabbed in the neck with an arrow.

Of course, Roach goes on to say,

Facets of a past life are suggested as explanations for complexion irregularities, stockiness, third nipples, albinism, posture, gait, fear of women, fondness for toy airplanes, cleft lip, pimples, speech impediments, widely separated upper medial incisors, and “a fondness for eels, cheroots and alcohol.”  Viewed through such a broad eyepiece, reincarnation is an easy sell.  Take a child and all her hundreds of unique features: How hard would it be to find one or two that seem linked to a feature of someone you know who has died?

(Roach 39).  Okay, maybe my leaky neck is nothing more than a birth defect.  But, now that I’ve been thinking about Native Americans, I have a jonesing to hit up the Spirit Mountain buffet…

~ There’s a distinct possibility that I watch too much TV and that medical shows like House leave too much of an impression on me.

= It’s been confirmed – I watch too much TV, and that appears to include movies such as The Dark Half and Basket Case.