Hey Jakey,

We've both done a little bit of growing up in the past couple of days. You: eating out of a bowl with a spoon like a big boy, and adding a few more words to your vocabulary, like "Hot! Hot! Hot!" Me: I got a cell phone today. And I "took a meeting."

I hate cell phones. I had one a couple years ago, for maybe a month. I think the sound quality sux ass. I hate phones and detest talking on the phone in general, so why would I want to avail myself to the evils of cellular. I guess it was just time. Pay phones are virtually a thing of the past. I'm tired of pulling over at gas stations to make a phone call on the road. I'm sick of people asking me, "Where ya gonna be, I'll call you on your cell..." and the resultant look of shock and awe when I tell them that I don't have one. Plus, the unreasonable rates are prohibitive. Especially when I don't plan on using it all that much anyway. Feh.

So I settled on this little number:



It's got all sorts of nifty doo-dads, like a crappy little camera, text messaging and "superphonic ringtones!"... whatever the hell that means. And it's pay-as-you-go. Which is perfect, cuz I'll probably only ever use it once in a blue moon. But-- there you have it. I'm wired into the whole cellular generation now. Yay me.

Here's one of the first pictures that I took with it today. It's T, who sits across from me at work. He's looking kinda porky this day. I love him, though. He's like a cranky little brother.



Oh, and that meeting today. Right as I'm starting my little cup o' oatmeal for breakfast at my desk this morning, M grabs me and pulls me into a meeting, "just for an hour..." Yeah. I think the only reason she wanted me there was because she needed the comfort of someone who's even more insecure than she is.

So I'm sitting at this big conference table with a bunch of old white men, plus M. Everyone's got their laptop sitting in front of them, but I'm scribbling notes in a hot pink notebook with a cartoon of a monkey on it. While they discussed marketing strategies and competitive on-line classified ad pricing, I mused about the following:

* My intense, immediate need for lip balm
* How cloudy it was getting outside, and so quickly, too! (Must be a storm brewing.)
* Lip balm
* Hoping that my new phone wouldn't ring, cuz I haven't read how to answer it yet
* My poor, hardening cup of oatmeal, abandoned on my desk
* Johnny's tongue
* How much the guy sitting across from me looked like "Paul" (a very infrequent character) on Cheers
* And oh yeah--lip balm

And I chewed a hangnail on my thumb so aggressively that it started to bleed, and I had to stick it in my mouth. I silently clicked my pen open and shut. I had to rummage through several pens before I found a silent one, because in the last meeting that M pulled me into, she practically slapped my hand and growled at me for clicking too loudly.

M leaned over and patted my back and whispered, "Don't be shy now. Speak your mind." Which was totally mortifying to me. Like I'm her retarded stepchild or something. So when it was finally time for me to "pipe up," I threw a topic out and hit paydirt. There was discussion amongst them for days, so I could go back to daydreaming about chicken tacos and oil changes.

Yeah, your momma's growin' up, Jake.

So, I'm taking tomorrow off and we're heading for San Jose for a long weekend. Dinner with friends tomorrow night, beach on Saturday morning, and Son Volt at the Catalyst at 9pm! Woo-hoo! I better get to sleep, cuz daddy wants to leave at the butt-crack of dawn.

Love you!