Letters

i've been writing tons of letters lately - i have a stack sitting next to me of eleven completed epistles, most just in need of a stamp and trip to the mail box. i have always been a note-writer - several times in middle and high school i wrote letters to every single girl in the school - but now that i'm sick and my brain doesn't work very well on things (like the class i'm working on virtually), letter-writing is one of the few things i still feel capable to do. i am anxious to get back to normal, but as it stands, writing letters is a profitable diversion. i've been reading an incredibly ridiculous amount, as i believe i have mentioned before, but letter-writing is more externally focused, which is good. and you know, it's always nice when you get a letter in the mail instead of bills or credit card offers - i'm just making sure it happens more often. :)

not that i don't love me some email.

Three Thoughts of the Day

#1 Independence Day is a silly film.
#2 I stink at chess.
#3 John Frame is a really great lecturer.

The Morning from the Bad Place

you would think that waking up at like 11 would preclude this sort of thing, but apparently a lot of things can go wrong in about an hour (and a half, if we're getting technical, but more on that later).

so my madre walks into my room literally 15 seconds after i grab my current fun-book, the reason for God by tim keller off the marble-top table acting as my nightstand. i had just woken up from a dream in which my dad yelled at me a lot. you have to understand two things 1) my dad doesn't yell in real life; and 2) i have really vivid dreams, and even though a lot of times they are completely ridiculous, sometimes they affect my mood, a la this morning.

so after a quick debriefing on the day, mom heads downstairs, calling back up that i need to phone the urologist in charlotte again because they still haven't gotten back to me on a urodynamic exam they ran three weeks ago. so i grab my phone, text my brother (he's at church camp in florida), and call the doc. i leave a message. i'm not feeling too badly today (on a pain scale of 0-10, 0 being zero pain, 10 being the worst pain i've ever felt, which was really horrible and i screamed and my roommate could hear me from the waiting room, i started at about a 3). text from the brother about the stingray that he almost stepped on. so far, it's annoying that the doc hasn't called back, but not killer.

i'm checking my email. lo and behold, my roommate up in charlotte had called (that explains the 6 missed calls last night), and she wrote me a facebook message to tell me that my voicemail wasn't working anymore and asking if i had changed phones. hmm. so i hop over to the at&t wireless website and start looking around for stuff about voicemail problems - what do you do when your voicemail up and disappears? but mom was like, 'we have to go,' so i said i'd deal with it later.

oh, i almost forgot, i've had mail forwarding set up, but nothing came and nothing came and we were starting to think maybe the doc had sent me the results from the exam in the mail and we hadn't gotten them. so i pull out the confirmation letter i got here in dallas, and i give them a call before we head out the door. they give me the phone number for the post office that delivers my mail in charlotte. when mom says it's time to roll, i grab that sheet with the number on it and head for the door.

only i couldn't find my purse. it wasn't that big of a deal in the long-run - it hadn't been stolen, and we knew that from the getgo, but we really couldn't figure out where it was. i gave up and we headed to lunch with dad, who was checking his car to see if my purse was in the back (it wasn't). awesome.

i call the p.0. people in north carolina. their server isn't working, so it takes quite a while to figure out if i'm in the system, if they know who i am, if anything's wrong. the guy asks for my old address, new address, and phone number, and i tell him that, of course, if they call me back while i'm at the doctor's office this afternoon, i won't answer, and i have no voicemail. but they figure things out before we hang up, so that's one less phone call i have to worry about missing. now we're just worried about the urologist's office calling.

so we pull into a parking spot at our restaurant of choice, and dad beat us there, so he called to tell us he beat us, and then he must have slipped his phone into his pocket and then bumped it, because he's standing in the parking lot waving at us with both extremely long arms (remember, he's 6'11"), and my phone is ringing and it says "daddy" is calling. so i answer, hop out of the car, walk over to him, and hand him the phone. "here," i say. "talk to yourself." (this happens a lot. i hear snatches of meetings regularly.) he grabs the phone, says "hello?" and then laughs and closes the phone, handing it back to me. i slip it into my pocket and we get inside and seated and all that.

dad wants to know if we've heard from the bug. both of us have, so mom starts talking about the sting ray while i pull out my phone to refresh my memory about which kids he's been hanging out with so far. i flip open the phone and.... houston, we have a problem.

it's an appearance of what i like to call the black screen of death.
"Boot Loader
blah blah blah
blah blah blah
some random numbers
D3R
PH SIG ERR:
number that would be time if it wasn't so large

OK to Program
Connect USB
Data Cable"

this has happened before. normally i just turn it off and back on again and we're golden.

oh no, ladies and gentlemen, not this time. this time it's dead.

not that i didn't try to resuscitate the darn thing. i think it was probably after attempt number 15 or 20 that i called it quits and gave up. so now there is NO way for the doctor to leave a message, NO way for her to reach me anyway, NO way for me to tell her - after all, all my doctor contact phone numbers were in the stupid phone - and i'm not eligible for a new phone until october. i mean, this was getting ridiculous. i turned to mom and said, "hey, at least i have something to blog about."



{fyi, mom figured out a plan that will hopefully work, and i managed to pass my bad luck on to dad for the rest of the day. [the work day ended with him locking his keys in his office...]}