New Cell Phones

Mel's cell phone has been acting up recently, giving really bad reception to the people she talks to, so since we were at the end of our two-year cell phone contract, we went out to buy some new cell phones yesterday. While we would have loved to get smartphones, we really couldn't justify the added expense we would incur with the required plans for those phones. Besides, Mel already thinks I am on Twitter and Facebook too much as it is. With a smartphone, my usage of those would only increase. One requirement that both Mel and I had for our phones was a QWERTY keyboard. Both of us have begin texting more since we bought our last cell phones in December 2007, and a full keyboard would really help with texting.

After being shown the three non-smartphone phones in the store, we had a decision to make. We quickly narrowed our decision to between two phones, the LG Chocolate Touch and the LG enV3. The touch phone looked really cool, having a touch screen and no physical keys, but with the discounts we were getting, it was still going to cost us $110 more for both of us to get that than if we got the enV3, which we would get one free when we bought one. With the discount we were getting for upgrading our phones, the first of the two enV3s was already free. So when it came down to spending $110 versus $0, that made our choice fairly simple. Besides, I think I like the feel of actually having a physical keyboard to use. I think it makes it easier for me and my big fingers. So while the LG Chocolate Touch looked cooler, we each got an enV3 phone, which still look pretty snazzy. Fortunately that had two different colors of this model of phone in stock. So now Mel has a maroon phone and I have a blue one. That will help us keep the two phones straight between us.

Now this next part of my blog posting is a bit morbid, but I am going to include it anyway. While we were at the desk with the salesperson, I received a text message on my old cell phone which was still active. It was a text from a coworker of mine in Iowa City. She was letting me know that Brittany Murphy had died. So I told Mel what the text was. Both she and the salesperson were quite surprised by that news. To confirm the news, and to get additional information, the salesperson immediately looked it up on her Blackberry. Now to my readers, it might seem a bit odd that a friend of mine would text me when someone who neither of us knew personally, although I was once on a flight from Minneapolis to Cedar Rapids with Brittany Murphy, died.

This all started this past summer when Michael Jackson died. I was talking on the phone with this coworker the next day and she expressed mock disappointment in me for not informing her of the death of the King of Pop. Now I would have called her once I learned the news, but once it was confirmed, it was after our normal workdays, so I assumed that she would be at home or somewhere where such news would be spreading like wildfire. She was however working late that evening. So every time I learned of a celebrity death since then, no matter the caliber of the celebrity, I have either called, emailed, or texted her to let her know. I can only assume that since she hadn't heard from me when she learned the news, she assumed I didn't know, so she returned the favor and texted me. Now this all reminds me that I need to get to work on my picks for my death pool list for 2010.