Excuse Me While I Answer My Brick

I have said a fond farewell.

Goodbye

Adios

Seeya!

To my well loved, small and gently aging iPhone 4s. We had been together for 2.5 years, which in terms of phone technology might be equal to a 50+ year marriage. HHBL and I don’t tend to run out and get the latest iPhone when it is announced. We like to think about these things for a while and wait for a sale.

On Saturday HHBL, the most fabulous husband that any girl could have, announced that he had something to ask me. We have been married for 29.5 years so I knew he wasn’t going to get down on one knee but I was puzzled as to what the question was.

He wanted to know if I wanted my Christmas present a bit early. Normally I would demure on this and say that I wanted to wait for the BIG DAY with all the ripping of wrapping paper and exclamations of excitement.

At our house there are exclamations of excitement at the presents but there is no orgy of wrapping ripping. We are so anal about Christmas gift unwrapping that we start with the youngest of the group, who unwraps ONE package, and then move on to the next oldest, who unwraps ONE package and so on and so on and so on.

Strangely anally retentive and overly constrained in the gift unwrapping department? I have no earthly idea what you are talking about…….and we ALWAYS save all the gift bags for another year……but not the paper. THAT would be strangely obsessive.

Where was I? Oh yes, the Christmas gift. The REAL question that HHBL wanted to ask me was if I wanted a new iPhone for Christmas. Target was having a sale which got us money off, gift cards and more data all for the same price we were paying now.

Hmmmmmmmmmm. Let me think about this. Do I want to stay with my 2.5 year old iPhone 4s which was actually the older model when we got them. A phone that isn’t very compatible with anything that Apple does these days and one that is slowly losing its umph. Or do I want to get a new iPhone 6…or dare I dream….an iPhone 6 Plus.

YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!

I had to wait for 48 hours though because Target was having a sale starting on Sunday so we planned to go on Monday after work. Can I tell you that Monday was the longest work day I can remember. Did you know that you can get a new cell phone at Target as well as deal with all the paperwork for reupping for two more years with Verizon….all at Target? I had no clue. The very nice and extremely young Nick helped us out. We thought it would take oh like 30 minutes or so to get it all done. We knew what we wanted. There wasn’t anyone else waiting around. We were Nick’s sole focus, as well we should be.

And yet it took 90 minutes.

Thank goodness we weren’t trying to do this at the Verizon store. We might still have been there through the night just trying to get the paperwork done.

At 7pm last night I walked out of Target the proud owner of an iPhone 6 plus, or as I lovingly call it…..The Apple Brick. I don’t know whether I should happily watch a movie on this thing or club a Grizzly Bear to death with it. Both are equal possibilities. In actual size, but not weight thank goodness, it is about the same dimensions as HHBL’s long ago Jornada which he had back in 1997. A state of the art Personal Digital Assistant that needed it’s own forklift by today’s standards. I don’t want you to think I am complaining. I LOVE this iPhone with a fierce and maternal passion. I can actually SEE what is on the screen. And the camera is pretty darn amazing.

The thing that I will complain about is all the pain in the buttockishness that you have to go through AFTER you have a new smart phone. You have to get a new case for the phone. In this instance we invested in Otter Box cases because, you know, drop that thing and Apple gives a huge hurrah and says, “Sure we will give you a new phone because you wisely paid for Apple Care but it will still cost you another $79”. You have to take the phone home and have iTunes put everything back on it that Nice Nick wiped off the old one and that you hopefully remembered to back up before you switched phones, which we all know that I did, to my computer AND the cloud because I am a belt and suspenders kind of girl. But before you do that you have to download the latest version of iTunes which you might not have done for awhile. Then you have to play fiddlyface with the email setting to get and receive emails. I got the receiving part down without HHBL’s help….and then the iCloud decided to download to my new iPhone 996 OLD emails, some of which were from 2012. Yeah, just what I wanted to do was to get rid of very old emails. But finally everything was all done.

I want to call myself just so I can answer that thing.