No iPhone for Me

No, I am not going to get an iPhone. First, the cell phone I have (and it's even a new one; my old one cracked, and my plan was up, so I just got a new one) is perfectly adequate for my uses. It doesn't web surf (though it could; I just refuse to pay for that service), and i don't send text messages, but it works fine for the purpose for which I want to use it, i.e., as a mobile phone.*

Second, this whole "mobile me" rollout has just sucked. I had no webmail at all for two days, service has been spotty since then, and it doesn't work well (it says) with the version of Safari I have on my iMac. I cannot upgrade Safari without upgrading the OS, and I'm not going to do that, either. If it were free, sure, why not, but I'm not going to pay to do it. That is, the fine folks at Apple were so intent on getting their iPhones out the door, they just screwed the rest of us. Look, people, I PAY for my email account and its accouterments, so I expect it to fucking WORK. Do not sacrifice it because you're rolling out a new product and haven't worked out the bugs yet; that is so not my problem.

Third, though, the only service provider in this country is AT&T, and I loathe them with the white-hot heat of a thousand suns. In additional to the unbelievably crappy service they provide, they have been running one of the all-time most offensive commercials of late; it makes me grit my teeth whenever I hear it. Seriously: I should send them my dentist bills. It's the one where these two guys say they're "so going to that concert" (it's an AT&T blue room commercial), and Guy 1 says he's going to tell Lisa (spouse or girlfriend), and he calls out to her that he's going to a three-day music festival and she calls back, "No you're not," and he says to Guy 2 that he can't go, and Guy 1 says, "Dude--it's like THAT?" And then Lisa calls back, "And pick up your socks."

I am so fucking sick of men being portrayed as these wonderful, fun-loving-if-sometimes-a-little-irresponsible beings and women being portrayed as the mommy/meanie who has to tell them what to do. The other commercial running right now has the guy wanting to play all kinds of music for his wife, and she says, not right now, while I'm giving birth, and he says, "Wait--drum solo!" First off, what the fuck is she doing reproducing with that man? On what planet will he actually help raise the children? Yeah, I know, it's supposed to be a joke, but it is not a fucking joke: he's an ass, and she leaps right into the patriarchally prepared spot.

One of the old tropes from Ms. magazine was, when you're wondering if something is sexist, reverse the sexes in the situation and see what that does. If you take my first example, if a woman said, honey, I'm going to this three-day music festival, and her husband said no you're not, and pick up your socks, we'd think she was probably in an abusive/controlling relationship. It takes on a creepy tone that, IMHO, points to the underlying creepiness of the actual commercial. What person wants to control someone else's life like that? What person wants to BE controlled like that? And, perhaps most important, the commercial makes it sound like it's women who are running things. I'm here to tell you that women are not, in fact, running things.

Anyway.

It turns out that most of my birthday celebrations are going to be after my actual birthday (which was Sunday--I am now a half century old). Friend and I had sort-of-maybe tentative plans that depended in part on the weather (for the camping and music option) and in part on a friend (who wanted to come down to join us), but you know about the best-laid plans. Friend played hockey Friday night and got hit in the ankle with a puck; when he woke up Saturday morning, he couldn't put any weight on it at all.

I eventually meandered over to his place Saturday afternoon, and spent Saturday and Sunday waiting on him, basically. (He's very low maintenance, so this was not a problem; I brought him food, and ice packs for his ankle, and occasionally sat on the couch with him while we watched something.) After I finished my editing, I baked a lemon blueberry tart and some cookies.

So, for my actual-birthday breakfast, I made us fruit pancakes (Joy of Cooking recipe that has become a total fave--it is incredibly easy, and pretty healthy, and really really good; I used blueberries and strawberries on Sunday, which is spectacular), and for my actual-birthday dinner, we ordered pizza and drank good wine. He wished that he could have made breakfast for me, but that would not have been a good idea. He gave me a wonderful pair of dangly earrings and it turns out he got tickets for a beer-tasting festival in early August, so that is part of the birthday celebration, too. All in all, a wonderful day. Not quite the big bash that I'd occasionally thought about assembling (and even made a few tentative plans to assemble, but then didn't), but I just didn't feel like doing that. I couldn't figure out all the reasons why not, but just decided to go with how I was feeling about it. Not that the celebrations are over, however.

Thursday I'm taking Friend and K out to dinner at VeryFancyPlace. Next Sunday, the friend from last Sunday will probably come down and join me and Friend for dinner, and later in the month, Brazen Tart and another pastry school friend are making dinner for me. I'm hoping to take the Tart out to dinner, too, at a Different VeryFancyPlace. So, all in all, lots of little celebrations, which sounds like a fine way to do things. The other thing that's nice is that the beer festival is the weekend after the proposal has to be submitted, and the weekend after all my editing has to be submitted, so I'll really be able to take off with impunity.
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*On the 3rd of July, Friend and I were grabbing some food prior to the fireworks, at a bar/restaurant near where he'd parked the vehicle. At the table next to us were a late-20s man and woman, seemingly on a date. However, they kept taking these moments to surf the web on their respective mobile devices (the ones that are phones but have the keyboard for texting), and text as well, for all I know. I find this bizarre, to say the least. What can you possibly be doing that is more compelling than the actual live person six inches away from you? Even if they weren't on a date, per se, it's just rude.