And to think, all I was doing was running a couple errands

I blame myself for the spiraling financial ruin I find myself in (but inwardly, so no one knows) (and really, how bad can it be? "Financial ruin" to me means I can't buy a new bag whenever I want one), because I constantly want stuff, but the purchase of my iPhone last year was probably the smartest thing I've done impulsively in a long time. It's just plain fun. And for once everybody DOESN'T have a better phone than me.

First of all, I think I'm cool because I have my work email on it (as well as my personal one), so if I respond to a customer after hours the signature line says "sent from my iPhone", and then I think THEY think I'm cool, too. I think that's an important part of the game. But also too they dig it because even if I leave work at a reasonable time they know I'm still available. I've literally answered an email at 4:50am before. I think that made the client kind of dig me more.

Secondly, it has all these neato do-dads you can download on them. Some of them, I'll admit, I've downloaded only because my friends have them or they seem like a neato thing to have your phone and then I've never used them, but others are pretty dang handy. Like weather and traffic and GPS and currency converter and find me a gas station and all that. Handy. Plus there are games and the actual internet itself and of course my iPod. Which up until yesterday I barely used.

So here's how I used my trusty $200 phone yesterday:

I phoned my brother and asked if he wanted a ride home from work - he is carless and mid-week carpools but when he works on Saturdays he depends on mass transit. Anyone who uses mass transit knows it's going to tack on some extra time to your commute, so I thought I would be nice and offer a ride. Plus I planned to be down in the area of his work so why not? He took me up on it.

Before I left the house I googled the address of the Target in Wilsonville. Jeri loves that Target and I haven't been to Wilsonville in forever so I set my sites on it. No matter how hard I try I can't leave the house earlier than 11am, and yesterday was no exception. I also have retention issues and didn't pay attention to what Wilsonville exit to take for the Target, but it didn't really matter since I have GPS on my phone, right?

I took the main Wilsonville exit instead of the North one, because, I thought as I went sailing by, it couldn't be that one or wouldn't Jeri call it the North Wilsonville Target? (I also don't notice things so you'd think that the big fat Target sign on the side of the freeway would have attracted my attention but it didn't). I ended up getting a pretty good tour of Wilsonville, which, you know, is pretty much like any other city in Southern California (except that it's in Oregon) and after driving around for about 30 minutes looking for anything that looked like it would house a Target, I pulled over and used my google maps. And realized I should have taken the other exit. But what was nice about it was that I wasn't exactly sure where I was and the map thing told me exactly how to get to my destination. Bitchin.

The Target was like any other Target, but it was a pretty neato strip mall situation, and it was clean, so that was nice. I managed to get out of there under $80 (seriously, like $79.82) (I was there to get a baby shower gift and part of the gig was to also bring a can of formula for some game and can I just say something? Why is formula so flipping expensive? I've never had to buy this shit but for the love of Mike, it's like break-the-bank expensive! I don't consider myself poor by any means but I am telling you there is NO WAY I could afford to buy formula, not enough to actually keep the baby fed on a regular basis. So what the fuck? How do low income people do this? Does this make ANY sense? I'm speechless) and then had about another hour to kill. I popped back on the freeway and went to yet another strip mall in Tualatin that I had been to before that had a whole bunch of stores and I was thinking I needed a Radio Shack. There wasn't one in there but I went in to a Starbucks, got a coffee, and looked up the location of the nearest Radio Shack on the internet.

To fill you in on why I needed a Radio Shack... so the other day John and Chris and I were coming back from lunch and I was using his car charger to charge my phone. He pulls out this OTHER cord and plugs it in and lo and behold it suddenly starts playing my iPod on his radio! Now, I consider myself fairly smart, and I knew this was something one could do, I just didn't know how and didn't really think beyond "wouldn't it be cool if I could play this in my car"... on account of the developing late stage adult ADD I think. Anyway, I started searching around my own car for the little plug in thingie but couldn't find it.. It has the one where the cigarette lighter used to be, and I use that, and there's another one of those in the center console.. but yeah, I don't know. Anyway divinity stepped in while I was driving up the freeway from the Target to the Starbucks and sure enough I found it right under the cigarette lighter thingie. Sweet!

I did find a Radio Shack very near the Starbucks I was at, and even closer to Tom's work, so I drove on over (as neato as it is to have the GPS thing on the phone, however, there is no accounting for my inability to believe a telephone and my never having learned left and right during those all important developmental years - I learned about those on the back of a can of Enfamil at the Target) and got lost a couple of times, but found it, and bought the little cable for $6 (yay!) and then got BACK in the car, took a wrong turn, broke two laws trying to get to where I wanted to be, but plugged that bitch in and started jamming to ANYTHING that wasn't the Portland radio station drivel.

So you see, folks, as much as I bitch about being poor, and knowing it's my own fault, and wondering why I have to have all the cool stuff, this one particular cool thing I have is very handy. Let this be a lesson to you - those of you, that is, that don't have to buy formula so your kid can eat - if it's really neato and you don't have any money but you can figure out a way to charge it, I say go for it. You only go around once. You might as well have fun doing it.