Facie’s Ramblings

On Thursday evening, the first day of "The Verizon Plan," the kid and I walked into a local Verizon store ready to make my soon-to-be 7th grader a smartphone owner. A woman greeted us, and I proceeded to tell her exactly what we wanted: the new plan for two smartphones for $20 each monthly one new smartphone for my kid, a Galaxy Core Prime, which I wanted to pay for outright 1 gig of shared data for $30 monthly Nicole mentioned a cool phone case she had, and I told her we would look at it, but we had already found something on Amazon we liked. Then she went to the back to get the stuff. After a few minutes, Nicole returned with the phone, a case, and a cover, and explained the plan she recommended, which contained 3 gig. I said that I had yet to use 1 gig in any given month, and my child would be using wifi only at home, so there was no need to spend the additional money ($30 versus $45, not including the 20% off the bigger plan with my Pitt discount). She then mentio...

J will be 12 in just over a week. We decided now was a good time to get her a cell phone. The vast majority of kids in her class have a phone; some have had one for years. J never needed one until this past school year, when she joined the drama club, which sometimes resulted in play practices being cancelled, added, or ending early or late. During those occasions, she had to borrow someone else's phone, which was not so convenient, to text the hubby, who, like many of us, hates to answer his phone for a number he does not recognize. What solidified the decision was last month, when J spent a week at a Carnegie Museum day camp. I signed her up as a self-sign out, which meant, as the name suggests, that she could sign herself out each day, rather than wait for me. I had no intention of her actually doing that, but I figured if I ever ran late getting there (I was a 5-minute drive or a 9-minute walk), then I could just meet her at the entrance. Unfortunately, her very first day the...

This post doesn't have anything to do with my being kind, which I mostly am. But I was pretty sure I had already used the post title I really wanted, "Make a decision already." Yep, just checked now, and I wrote a post with that very name three years ago, ironically about the topic this post is going to be about! But I digress. The real story? Ladies and gentleman: Facie bought a smart phone! This is monumental for me! Can you tell?! I am using a lot of exclamation points! The details: My over-three-year-old phone had been dying a slow death for quite some time. It couldn't hold a charge for an entire day. To make matters worse, my car phone charger died, but it seemed silly to replace that, knowing I was going to replace the phone soon. Or so I told myself for the past six or eight months. But despite my stopping into the Verizon store a few times in the past five months, I just couldn't pull the trigger. Last week, when my phone decided to shut its...

It is pretty rare for me to write a post not even 24 hours after I posted my last one. But I read a supremely annoying article on Yahoo today (from the New York Times ), and I had to comment on it. Here is the link, if you want to read it for yourself. In the meantime, let me summarize: You can apparently do almost everything you would ever want to do (and things you probably did not even know were possible) with a smart phone. Therefore, you don't need a point-and-shoot digital camera, a camcorder, a GPS system, or a digital music player. And apparently the desktop computer and thumb drive have gone the way of the dinosaurs. Excuse me while I go throw out all of those things and go directly to nearest Apple store so I can buy a super-smart phone. I also need to burn my desktop computer, but how about if I finish this post first, okay? We have a quite-old desktop computer. This may be a bad example, because the computer is now at the point where it turns itself off several tim...

If you have ever read That's Church, you know that Ginny over there hates pigeons. Hate is not a strong enough word, actually. Me? I never had much of an opinion either way regarding those birds. Until today. According to several people, one of whom works for Duquesne Light, this morning a pigeon ran into an electrical wire in my neighborhood and caused a power surge (which also caused said pigeon's wings to go up in flames), our second in just over eight months. (By second, I am referring to second power surge, not second occurrence of burning pigeon wings.) According to a recording, Duquesne Light first said there was an equipment malfunction. Just before the power came back on about 2.5 hours later, the reason changed to an animal. Regardless, we lost a computer, two cable (FiOS) boxes, a TV, a radio/CD/cassette player (hey, I still play cassettes sometimes), and about eight light bulbs. I am hoping since our AC works, the furnace will too (that was our big l...

I am not the best when it comes to making decisions, sometimes even simple ones. But in my defense, I am also pretty easy-going, so for most things, I could really go either way. I have been a Verizon customer for years. Probably since before Al Gore invented the internet. At some point during our long-term relationship, Verizon rewarded customers with a "new-every-two" deal. I swear years ago it was better, that you pretty much could get any phone you wanted once your two years were up and you signed on for two more. But phones today are so much more glitzy and complicated that there is no way they would do that now. So you get 50 bucks towards something. Fortunately, for what I want, that and whatever special they have pretty much hooks me up. I was up for a new phone this past October. Since my phone had been working fine, I waited until just before Christmas to see what my options were. But after looking at the array of choices and pretty much becoming overwhelmed, I ...

This Christmas turned out to be one of our more eventful ones. It started off with no electricity when we arrived at Brian's mom's house early that afternoon and ended with a power surge in our neighborhood soon after we arrived home later that evening. Brian, Jordan, and I were sitting at the dining room table at about 8 p.m. when the lights went out. While Brian went downstairs to check the circuit breaker, the lights came back on, accompanied by a popping sound, complete with light bulbs popping out over our heads! A lovely burning smell ensued, and, alas, our dinner became inedible thanks to the bits of light bulbs scattered across the table. Within moments, I could hear people talking outside, and I noticed many houses were dark. I went outside to talk to some neighborhoods, and a couple minutes later, two fire trucks were on the scene. Apparently a transformer/wires (no idea exactly) were burnt. All in all, it made for an exciting, electrifying evening. I was pretty freak...

Today we took down our past-its-prime Christmas tree. I normally like to keep it up the weekend after New Year's Day, but it was looking pretty pathetic, and it was my last weekday off, so I figured I might as well get it done. Besides, with live Christmas trees (at least in our house), we will be discovering needles probably through the middle of February, so the season will keep going! I did manage to stay up until midnight for NY's Eve this year, and it felt good and bad. I am trying to be hopeful for this year, and I am somewhat, but the pessimist in me thinks things will probably get worse before they get better. Penn State started off the year in the wrong way, but what can you do. Hopefully the Steelers will do better, but I am not so sure there either. Mostly I am just glad the Steelers end up in the playoffs more often that not. Like most of Steeler Nation, I expect it. I also ended up coming in third for fantasy football, but you can't win the Super Bowl every yea...

After months of yapping about a flat-screen TV, we finally broke down and bought one. A lovely, well-reviewed, 42", high-definition, plasma Panasonic model. When Brian, Jordan, and I picked it out at Sears last night, I said something like, "Meet your new little brother, Jordan." Sure, we are pretty much in a recession, but I figured I should do my part in stimulating the economy and spreading my own wealth. Because we paid for it with gift cards purchased at Giant Eagle, our next two plus fill-ups will be free. And apparently buying Sears gift cards qualified us for $5 off our next order. How can you argue with that, the $200-off sale price, and three free months of an HD DVR receiver from Verizon FiOS?! As I have been explaining to friends over the past few weeks, watching our 19" TV in bed has put a strain on my eyes. Most people's vision improves as they get older. Me? Not so much. I have really noticed my squinting when I try to read the guide on TV. And wh...

Thought I would throw out a few (and by a few, I am sure I will end up with well over a dozen) thoughts running around that brain of mine. I have a lot of meaningful people in my life from family, friends, relatives, and casual acquaintances. If you are reading this blog, you are probably one of those people (unless you just happened by), and I thank you for occupying some part of my heart and mind. I think the world is too materialistic. If you have been to my house, you know we are not into nice, expensive things. I just don't care about that stuff. True, I am still debating about that flat-screen TV (leaning more towards no), but mostly what I have is just fine. I think this may be the year I am going to have to retire my almost 15-year old skirt. And I have been wearing the same PSU winter coat for years. Unless I get a job where fashion matters (and clearly it does not at my office), I see no reason to spend a lot of money on clothes or keep up with the latest styles. I think ...