Eenager

Today Husband asked me, "what's a 'tween'?  A cross between a teenager and a weenager?"  Niiiice.

Moving to a 2009 Mobile Life

I needed a new cell phone for a while as mine was 2.5 years old and started "expiring" like Sam Bell in the movie, Moon. The ear piece speaker busted so all my friends and family started hearing was, "WHAT? Can you repeat that?!" I don't know why I would yell... their speakers worked just fine I'm sure. My cell phone calls finally turned into, "sorry, my phone is a piece of garbage.. can I call you back in about 10 minutes when I get to a land line?" Enough was enough so Husband and I stopped into a Bell Mobility store at the Eaton Centre after a delicious breakfast at Senator's. I had the Senator breakfast; two fresh Ontario farmed Omega3 eggs fried over-medium with pure unsalted butter, perfectly crispy bacon, mouth-watering baked beans and thickly slicked Challah toast and a coffee... oh sorry, this isn't about food. So, I took my full stomach over to the mall and asked for something called a "smart phone". Have you heard of this new term? I thought my Samsung m500 was prreeeety smart but apparently they come even smarter now.

There were a few things I knew I did and didn't want so it was a matter of narrowing my choices down. I didn't want an iPhone. In fact, I could have used Husbands old 2G iPhone but even the prospect of having a free iPhone didn't even tempt me. I need a keyboard, end of story. I did want html web browsing because that's what I loved most about the iPhone. Drum roll please...

3G Palm Pre

This sweet puppy has everything. It syncs with just about everything (Outlook, iTunes, Google), has full html web browsing, touch screen and slide-out keyboard. I feel like I have finally entered the 2009 mobile world. I know I'm fashionably late but it's nice to be here.

The Hangover = Platitudinous Pabulum

The pretentious title of this post was made possible with the help of a thesaurus. It needed that extra little umph to get across my snobbery for this movie. I swear I've never used either of those words in real conversation in my life.

The night started with french onion soups at The Keg. After I told the waitress we need the bill asap because Husband and I were catching a movie, she asked "what movie are you going to see?" I found myself embarrassed to tell her. I answered sheepishly, "The Hangover" with a roll of my eyes. I was bracing for her to scold me and ask why I didn't have better things to do with my time. Instead, her eyes lit up and she said "oh, it's so good! You're going to have a great time." This was, it turned out, a very common feeling. Husband and I had been hearing buzz about The Hangover from friends to strangers at the gym. One acquaintance said she woke up in the middle of the night still laughing. Normally, this is not the kind of movie we would voluntarily attend but since it was getting "good reviews", we were game.

It was exactly what I was dreading it was going to be. Garbage. This movie played out EXACTLY how I thought it would (juvenile, ridiculous and gratuitous) and nothing more. It was predictable, badly acted and we found the jokes forced. I got no belly laughs. Just chuckles. Chuckles don't pass the muster.

Don't misjudge me here. I love stupid movies as much as the next guy. One of my recent faves was Tropic Thunder. I was laughing long after the movie ended. Now, I know this was not the common consensus. That's why I have appreciation for the wide spectrum of movie fancies out there. And therefore, I will not judge others for their crappy taste.

Now who will sell me OxyClean?

Finally Billy will stop yelling at me. My condolences to his family. Doesn't it seem that there are a crazy number of high-profile deaths this month?

David Carradine (June 3)
Ed McMahon (June 23)
Farrah Fawcett (June 25)
Michael Jackson (June 25)
Billy Mays (June 28)

And the big winner is... South Carolina Governor Sanford. Sorry - I know I'm being cheeky.

Thanks for hanging in there, all you readers out there. I've been blogger MIA for a few weeks but I'm back now and I have plenty of wonderfully useless things to write about.

Talk again shortly.

iLemon

I'm on the top floor of the Mac store on 9th Ave and 14th St. I'm killing time with Husband and Sister while we wait for a genius to become available.

My sister has been using a BlackBerry for the last 6 years. She was the first person I knew who owned a smart phone. My sister is the type of person who is loyal when she likes a brand. She has been using Canon Elf cameras since the ancient times when they used film. This month something amazing happened. She got an iPhone.

Her first impressions were, let's say, not good. "How do I cut and paste on this thing?!?" To which Husband (the iPhone user) replied, "um, yah, you can't. Not yet." He's the eternal iOptimist. Then she asked, "how do I search for a phrase in my emails?" "You can't do that either," Husband replied. My sister then said, "were they asleep at Apple?"

What happens next is really bad so skip the next part if you're a Apple "fanboy/girl" prone to queasiness. Her calls started failing. Once in a while, and now every single call. She tried making a restaurant reservation and had to call them 27 times, one word at a time. She also noticed her battery life was unusually short. Last but not least, the speed was at a crawl and then froze several times.

Now she's at the genius bar getting it swapped out. Her phone will be replaced but I don't know if her faith in the iPhone will ever be restored.

This is not a vacation

We're 2 weeks into this month long New York adventure and you'd think there would be adventures a-plenty to blog about. Apparently, not - since you've been hearing the sounds of crickets from the Debbie from Toronto blog for the last 14 days!

The problem with a month long vacation is that it's not really a vacation at all. We have not taken a break from our responsibilities because we're not retired. We run a business with employees and overhead and a bookkeeper and all. Running it from the front lines in Toronto has its challenges but running it from 767 km (477 miles - are we cool?) away can be very frustrating at times. Our employees are doing a fantastic job handling everything but sometimes you just need to be in front of one another bouncing ideas off of each other. It's just not the same on Gtalk.

Well, that feels better. I think a paragraph of complaining did the trick.

I'm actually having a fantastic time. My girlfriend came for the weekend and just left. It's a long weekend in Canada so that means I'm on a mental long weekend.

Random Update

We left Toronto yesterday at 11:30am (a tad behind our original 5am schedule - lol) and are now here in New York living in Greenwich Village for the month. The cat was a little angel on the 9 hour drive and she's acclimatized pretty well to the new apartment. It's been raining and damp here and will probably continue to be the rest of the week. I don't mind!

Side note, we're returning the Dell Mini. It is PAINFULLY SLOW. It's simply not worth having. It wasn't even that cheap. Unfortunately, Dell makes it far from easy to return. Husband was on the phone with them for an hour (which he doesn't have to spare) while they passed him around from one department to another and back again. The verdict after all that time? "We'll send you an email." We've been waiting for DAYS to get that email now. Are they trying to run out our 30 day return window? I've always used Dell but this is enough to detour me. I like to know that a company is there for you not only during the good times (buying) but the bad times too (returning).

We parked the car here last night so we're going to drive it out to Jersey now and leave it there.

I hope we have a story worthy week so you can read about something interesting!
Lates.