Category — true colors

Have I told you lately how much I hate waiting, and how impatient I am?

At this very moment, I’m waiting for the sun to melt enough of the six or eight inches of snow in my driveway so that I can go to class tonight. Whether or not it will clear up enough remains to be seen. It looks promising- the sun is shining, the wind is blowing- these are all very positive signs. I don’t know right now, though, if there will be enough sun, if it will get warm enough, if it will be safe enough for me to forge ahead with my plans.

This particular situation in no way parallels any other situation in my life. At all. Certainly not a situation in which I’m a little more emotionally invested, or one in which I am so anxious to know the outcome that if it were a book I would read the last page today, or at least skip ahead a few chapters just to see where the characters are a little further along in the plot.  Not a parallel to be had, no sir, not at all…

Of course I realize that waiting is important. Necessary. An act of self preservation, of caution and prudence and maturity. You don’t take a cake out of the oven before it’s baked through, you don’t take a fiberglass and aluminum two wheel drive paid for car out if it’s going to be icy. That is when things get messy; when accidents happen, when poor decisions are made, property is damaged and people get hurt. Plus there is no cake, just a gooey mess that might give you worms. No one wants worms, especially when they are so easily prevented by just letting the cake bake till that toothpick comes out clean and you’re ready for frosting.

Some people are able to relish the waiting- they love the smell of a cake filling the house as it bakes; they want to want that first piece of cake so badly that they’re drooling before they cut it.

I’m the girl that scrapes every last bit of leftover batter out of the bowl with the spatula, eats the frosting with a tall glass of milk while she works, and has a wicked stomachache by the time the oven timer rings.

Oh baby don’t it feel like heaven right now
Don’t it feel like something from a dream
Yeah I’ve never known nothing quite like this
Don’t it feel like tonight might never be again
We know better than to try and pretend
Baby no one could’a ever told me ’bout this
I said yeah yeah

The waiting is the hardest part
Every day you see one more card
You take it on faith, you take it to the heart
The waiting is the hardest part

-Tom Petty “The Waiting”

Two weeks ago, my bestie bought an Eris. The day before that, my sister told me that her cell phone was just about dead, and she’s struggling with finances at the moment. (I am too, but I didn’t know it at the time. Don’t you just love it when that happens?)

So, I did the only thing a phone-envious bestie with a phone-needy baby sister could and would do. I upgraded my phone and sent my sister my old one. Two birds, one stone: I get an Eris, and we all get to know that my sister isn’t wandering the Atlanta ‘burbs a la Wilma Flintstone.

My old phone was an LG with a full QWERTY, and I was nervous about the touchscreen keyboard. When I played with B’s phone, I struggled with it, and my fingers are nice and little. In fact, at one point, I was convinced I would hold out until I could afford the Motorola Droid, since it has a full keyboard. Of course, my phone envy got the best of me.

I love this phone. Here, please to repeat: I love this phone.

The size is perfect- it is just the right size to hold in my hand, heavy enough to feel substantial but not bulky or heavy. It fits right into the cell phone pocket on my purse.

My family noticed an improvement in the sound quality right away. My sister said it was clicking one night- it was my high heels clicking on the pavement as I walked.

When I read reviews on the Verizon site, people complained about battery life. It does run out more quickly than is ideal, but there are two major workarounds. The first is an app killer- when you open an app on this phone, it continues to run in the background. I use a free app killer to shut down apps after I use them, or to keep twitter and facebook from updating while I’m on my laptop and don’t need the notifications. It makes a huge difference. The second workaround is the charger. I freaking love this charger. The cord detaches completely from the power supply, and the prongs on the power supply fold up when the charger isn’t in use. Bottom line? I carry my charger on me. Friday night, my battery was running low, so I found an outlet at the bar, whipped it out (TWSS) and charged ‘er up.

I was running updates from Twitter and Facebook through SMS on my old phone. My text ringtone was a doorbell. The damn thing rang from 6pm to 10pm. People hated me. I hated the noise. Having a smartphone- being notified of updates through a unobtrusive one time alert is much, much better, and I can check my twitter timeline and pending friend requests from the couch, without muddling through itty bitty screens. The landscape feature (when you turn the phone, the screen orientation changes) makes non-mobile sites so much easier to navigate in the browser. Speaking of the browser…

The Facebook app for this phone sucks. It doesn’t show the live feed, I miss updates, it shows all pending events, which caused me to wish someone a happy birthday a month early (I may or may not have been drunk). I use the browser almost exclusively for Facebook. The trackball is a godsend when you’re trying to hit the itty bitty “home” link on the touch site for Facebook. If someone really hated me, they would disable the trackball on my phone, rendering me insane in a few short hours.

If you get a lot of spammy-ish emails (Nordstrom sale notifier, I HATE YOU), you’ll want to fix that, because instead of them piling up in your gmail while you’re off having fun, you get a notification on your phone every time. The upside is responding to important emails on the fly.

There is only one downside to the Eris…

It makes me feel bad about myself.

The touchscreen keyboard has an auto-complete feature, which makes things much easier when you’re typing a text or a tweet. It has a custom dictonary and is predictive…

So I’ve spent the past two weeks texting things like “tucking shut”. In order to avoid this, when you type a word that isn’t in the dictionary, that you know is a regular part of your lexicon, you should save it. I feel guilty when I’ve had to add the bad words. There’s nothing quite like hitting save on, say “dickface”, because, yes, I will be using that again. A little part of me dies (not that it serves to modify my language in the long run) when I realize that my phone thinks I’m a lady, and I have to tell it I really meant to call someone a whore. It’s like slipping up in front of your grandma.

I wish I was the lady my Eris thinks I am.