maybe it will make me cool!

I just ordered a pink RAZR.  A PINK one – and I am SO not a pink person. It also did occur to me that Baker B might be a tad hesitant to use my pink phone in public, so I really had no intention of going for pink — but I kept going back to it. Longingly. They had silver and pink. And they had a bunch of other phones too, which I was researching as if I were choosing a life partner instead of a cellphone that, based on my previous cellphone experience, will have to be replaced in a couple of years anyhow. Which is why I’m ordering a new phone when my old one still seems new – it won’t hold a charge, and for the price of a new battery – $39 – I can get a whole new phone. Gotta love our rampant consumerism! I LIKE my old phone. I didn’t WANT a new phone. But, why would I buy a battery for an already obsolete phone when I can get a whole new, and much cooler one, for the same price! I was quite surprised at the price, because I just changed my plan and got added to the thing where you get a new phone every two years, so I wasn’t up for a new one till 2009. But I can still upgrade for a price, and the price is pretty darned good.

You can tell I’ve agonized over this. I don’t even USE my phone that much. I kept reminding myself that it isn’t a lifetime commitment. I’m not, like, marrying this phone. In two years I’ll be up for another one. But I have to agonize and weigh the options and do all kinds of research and see how everyone ELSE likes theirs. And then I went to our local Verizon store at lunch because I’d narrowed it down to four phones, and I realized it might help to go see them. And I might even be able to get one then and there and not have to wait! Because I do hate to wait once I’ve made up my mind to do something all daring and radical like upgrade my phone.

I was glad I went, because even though I couldn’t get the phone there – well, I could have gotten it, if I wanted to pay $100 and get a rebate and have it still be $59 instead of $39, for some reason that made no sense and the eight year old customer service kid couldn’t explain – but I DID get to see the phones in person and decide that the RAZR was not only my favorite, the PINK one was my very favorite.

And it’s NOT all that pink – in person it’s more of a dusty rose. Actually this picture is closer than Verizon’s which looked very very very pink. And it plays music and has a camera. Not that I need either feature at all – well, a cell camera IS fun, although I’m never without my real camera – but it will be a fun toy. And hey, I can walk around using it and wearing my new bifocals and just be the cat’s pajamas!

So I came back to work and ordered it. And shipping is free, to my shock, and I’ll get it in a day or so, to my further shock, so who cares that the store didn’t know what it was doing.

I did have a lot more to say – no, really, I did!! But I keep being rudely interrupted by people obsessing over graduation audits. We’ve just gotten the applications from people who intend to graduate in December, and now all other work stops until we go through them with fine tooth combs and see what they lack. And I don’t know what else, as I’m new to this part of it. I do know our computer system is really really really screwed up and everything takes ten times as long as it should now. So I better get back to work – I will leave with some photos of this weekend, when I went to Asheville AGAIN and came back via the Parkway because it was a gorgeous day.

The lovely Craggy Gardens:

Mt Mitchell, where all the trees are dying. I did feel much better about them after seeing some photos years ago that were taken in the early 1900s, and the trees were dying then too. In fact, it looked pretty much like it does now.

 And I’m just SO arty!

And finally, this is out my office window in the afternoon. The light is wonderful – and it looks very fallish right now. As well it SHOULD, but we seriously have very little fall weather or leaf color. All these high-altitude parkway pictures demonstrate that the leaves just aren’t doing much.