Call It What You Want...

Two more messages from Chelle and 20 minutes on the phone with Cody, this time, and a BLANK message to this magic number. Will it ever end?

Oh, but I got a $5 credit for all the money I'm spending getting and answering these people's messages.

There's probably a book in this somewhere. I should have just kept letting them come, saved them, and published them someday. It could be a mystery. A thriller. A soap opera.

Or it could just be an annoyance. I mean, how many times do YOU want to read

Hey

The saga continues.

Last week, I visited my friends at T-mobile, spent some time waiting around, and finally, had the text-message sending and receiving features turned off my phone. I said goodbye to the text messages in this famous post.

Goodbye, until yesterday, when I got the phone out of my coat pocket and saw that I had received two new messages, one from LovelyChelle and one from a new friend, Pam. You have got to be kidding.

So today, I called my friends at T-mobile again to look into why the magic fix only worked for three days. Jamie answered the customer service line and quickly realized that my situation was beyond her control and put me on hold to wait for technical support. (“Your average wait is six minutes. You may choose to hang up and have us call you back. Or press 2 for other options.” Are you kidding? I’m in your queue. I’m waiting. I can put this thing on speaker phone and play with Mark and the computer until you decide to answer…)

Finally, I got Amber. The first question was answered easily enough: Why did I start getting messages again? Well, it seems that while, yes, someone was able to turn off that feature on my phone, the computer sees that phone and says, “Gleeps, that phone doesn’t have text message receiving. I must turn it on!” So in order to keep the text-message receiving feature off, it would have to be turned off every three or four days.

But where are these messages coming from? What is the number of the fellow in Iraq she is trying to reach? Veeeeery mysterious. Amber asks questions. My answers do not come back as they ought. From what numbers have I been getting messages? I read her a couple of 5-digit numbers. Hmm, those should be regular 10-digit numbers… Hmmm.

What model phone do I have? Gee, I don’t know, but it’s made by Nokia.

Ahhhh-haaaa. But, no, hmm, wait a minute, does this phone...? Hmmm, yeah, that’s it.

I’m not getting messages from other t-mobile customers, or even other mobile phone customers. These are AOL instant messages, somehow coming through onto my phone (on occasion). Somehow, AOL was activated on my phone. I must turn it off. Amber instructs me to compose a text message saying “OUT” and send it to a certain number. It doesn’t work. She has to reset the text-message sending feature so that I can send. She does. I send. It goes.

Amber will call back tomorrow to see if I’ve been bothered with anymore messages – AOL Instant messages, not text messages at all.

Possibly this saga is over. Except that I can send and receive actual text messages now, if anyone wants to send them. (Do not take that as an invitation, just a comment.) And I still am not the father, I don't want kisses from Chelle, and, no, I'm not in Iraq.

Today it's farewell to the text messaging feature of my mobile phone. This feature has been the bane of my existence (or at least my phone's) since I picked up this T-mobile-To-Go package last summer.

First it was a pile of messages from a few sources. Then it slowed down. Recently it has picked up with a vengeance. I finally started messaging back to these people, telling them I don't know them and think perhaps they have the wrong number or something. It always seemed as though I was just getting a piece of some ongoing communication, particularly when one of the messagers answered my "wrong number" message with a bit of explanation of her own -- as much as she could explain.

A call to T-mobile's customer service line left me with the "we can change your number" solution, so I made a trek down to a local T-mobile retailer, thinking at least they could look at these messages and get the idea I was trying to convey. They could do nothing, but could use a little more leverage with the customer service line people. No, I really am not attached to this number, per se, but I am attached to the fact that I finally got on the no-call list so I don't get telemarketing calls to this phone, and I've finally convinced the bill collectors that I am not either of the people they were looking for... But finally, finally, after about half an hour on hold (she did keep checking back with me to make sure I was still there), we managed to get tech support to figure out a way to TURN OFF THE TEXT MESSAGING FEATURE. It is now gone. I can neither send nor receive text messages. So all those messages you wanted to send me, well, now you can't.

In farewell to the feature, I'd like to say a few words to the folks whose messages I've been receiving over the past several months:

Victoria: Thanks for clearing things up, and I hope kage comes home from Iraq soon. And I hope no more of your messages go awry.

O'B'Parker: I assume you're kage's friend too, but I hope whoever you're messaging in Iraq gets home safe soon as well.

Mom: No, I didn't get your picture. No, I don't probably want it.

Chelle: I'm not sure who you're kissing at over the phone, but I don't think it was me. And I'm wearing jeans and a red shirt and striped socks, thanks. You?

Ren: I'm pretty sure he's not the guy for you with that attitude. I hate for you to have the abortion just because you don't have the support, and I hope you've at least got good girlfriends to back you up. I believe in adoption.

Everyone else: Sorry to take away a place to send your weird and random messages. Sup, you sleepin, what up and everything else right back at you. Have a great day and I won't be hearing from you again.

"I had a drink somewhere..."

Famous last words as Tim steps into the living room in search of the can of pop he'd been enjoying. Mark had been eating his lunch in his high chair, and Daddy was working on the computer while watching Olympics. Mark finished eating, and Tim cleaned up lunch and went to go find his drink.

The baby found it first.

He had gently carried it over to the front window, where he'd poured the can of Mountain Dew onto the windowsill and was fingerpainting in it with glee. He was really having fun. Too bad the video camera wasn't at hand.

Tuesday morning, room service! And yes, it arrived, delicious omlets, bacon, fruit, juice, muffin/danish... No noise but the gobbling of food. Especially nice since it was FREE.

Off to Sea World! It's a Tuesday morning in February; we parked in the very front row close to the gates, went right in and started our fun day, which included the sea lion/otter, dolphin, and Shamu shows, Tim getting to ride several times on the so-called fun roller coaster (I watched), food that wasn't such a rip-off as the previous day's, Jenny petting a dolphin, and a teensy bit of rain at the very end.

It not being a busy day, the wait for just about everything wasn't long at all. We did fork over some money for a small tray of fish (dead) to feed the dolphins. The staff photographers, poised to take photos to sell for high prices to unsuspecting tourists, were more focused on cute subjects, so I must suffice with pictures taken by my loving hubby instead.

(That is my hand to the very left of the image.)

We ate better at Sea World; a barbeque joint offered a three-meat platter (included fries, dinner roll and a drink) for $13 -- this included three spare ribs, two big slices of beef and a quarter chicken. Yeah, didn't go away from that one hungry. (There was also a smoothie, ice cream and a hot dog, but who's counting? Besides, there was a pregnant lady to feed!)

Highlights of the day were the dolphin activities -- including petting, which was pretty neat; and the dolphin show, which was just extravagant -- and probably the penguins (very interesting to watch). Not so much the sharks (sort of a creepy underwater tube to walk through; crowded and a little claustrophobic) and the jewels of the sea aquarium (a little anticlimatic for all its nice name). But a super-fun day and nice place to go.

After Sea World we went to a movie, choosing Queen Latifah's "Last Holiday" as a nice, light break. It was just as it was offered, funny and cute and a little poignant (but not too much). Fun day.

In order to be up, fed and ready (and preferably not morning-sick) for our "grand resort" tour, we hung our room service order on the doorknob Sunday night and settled down to sleep, knowing the kind room service people would deliver at or near 7 a.m. Monday morning. Tim also set an alarm, just in case their knock was too soft or whatever...

Seven a.m. Tim is up early, taking a bath and reading a book. I peek out the door to see if perhaps a breakfast tray is just waiting for the room service's clock to turn to 7 a.m. Nothing. I open the door. The nice little room service order card is still dangling from the doorknob. It was placed there before midnight, as instructed. (Well before midnight. Nine p.m. maybe?) Tim calls the desk. We are instructed to talk with management later, as we do not have time to wait for them to bring us breakfast before making our trip to the grand resort for our vacation ownership tour and offer. We stop at McDonald's for a Big Breakfast. One is never disappointed with a McDonald's Big Breakfast -- unless it's the one in Gahanna and they're out of biscuits, but that's beside the point.

We see the place. Lovely. "All of these people are owners." (Except of course those who have rented, NOT as owners, as we have since discovered can be done for anywhere from $150 up per night, depending on the size of room...) We do not buy, despite the enticing offers meant to push us over the edge. We move on.

Off we go to Kennedy Space Center. We stand in line, buy tickets, stand in line to go through a metal detector, then stand in line to have our bags searched, and off we go to find food. Unfortunately the pregnant Jenny is hungry enough to pay the usurious price for the food -- a chicken calzone, bag of cheetos and a drink totals over $12, and we wonder why it is that Dad didn't want to go here back in the day??! -- and then we're off for a bus tour that takes us by all the cool sites at Kennedy (well, several of them), stopping us off at the LC39 Observation Gantry (from which launches from both LC39A and LC39B could be seen) for a movie and opportunity to go up to the top for pictures. We watch the movie. We take the pictures. We get back on another bus and go to the Apollo/Saturn V launch site. We see another movie. Then we go into MISSION CONTROL for the launch, and there's a recording using the actual desks and controls for Mission Control, with the voices of the people who were doing the work, the noise from the launch (they made the windows shake), a very very cool thing (perhaps my favorite). Then we get to go through the displays and see a real Saturn V rocket, moon lander, all that cool stuff, and since Tim has been there before (albeit when he was not yet a teenager), he didn't make me stop and read all the signage and all that. Nice Timmy. Good Timmy. Then back on another bus and off to the International Space Station. Well, not actually to the space station, since it's, well, in space. But we got to see some space station modules and go through them, and then we got to go across a bridge into the building where they actually work on building the modules that become part of the ISS. Then it's back on the bus to head back to the visitor's center.

En route to and from the places, we had short videos and also commentary from the bus drivers, and got to see where the space shuttle is worked on, the big tracks that the mover drives to get it to the launch pad, and even one of the big movers that the platform and then the space shuttle and all its accessories are put on and then taken to the launch pad. Also various aspects of local wildlife were pointed out, including an eagle's nest that has been inhabited by eagles for at least 30 years (our bus driver said 40 but the book said 30...). The eagles come down for the winter, hatch their babies, then fly to North Carolina for the warm months, and then the female goes on some distance further to take a vacation from her mate until they get back together to head back to the Cape for the winter. Interesting. We could see it clearly -- it was very near the road -- and Tim saw eagles in it.

Back at the Vistor's Center we attempted to get food but were so horrified by the prices we turned away -- in the end, a mistake. Then we went off to see the Space Shuttle, the Rocket Garden, the IMAX movie, and, of course, the Gift Shop. After that, we stopped off at the Astronaut Hall of Fame, saw some cool stuff, took Tim's picture with the display of his favorite astronaut, Story Musgrave (he met him when he went to Houston after high school graduation to accept his NASA Challenger scholarship), and back to Orlando for some food (too late, run down preggy lady who should'a eaten sooner, but lesson learned). Ate Mexican, back to the hotel, Tim deals with the manager on the subject of room service, and we will be BOTH granted complimentary room service in the morning.

(please note the moon in the sky just off the tip of the rocket. I worked very hard to get that shot...)

Yes indeed, we managed to go on a grownups only vacation, leaving Mark for a few days of fun with Uncle Brian and Aunt Tara, and, of course, his cousin Jonathan. Reports came in daily (we called, of course), and all indicated he was having a blast!

One of the interesting things of the trip is that Mark has discovered (we're sorry, Uncle David and Uncle Dan) that he loves UNCLE BRIAN best of all. (Let that be a challenge to the rest of you... heh heh.) In fact, on Sunday morning before we were even ready to leave, while Mommy was holding him, he stuck out his arms to go to Uncle Brian, and hugged and hugged him. Word has it that the whole time we were gone, no one but that favorite uncle was the hero... Aunt Tara reports that he would only go to her if Uncle B was nowhere to be seen or heard.

It helps to have friends in strange places. At check in at the airport, I discovered former Conner P. co-worker Becca working one of the check-in counters. We let people pass us in line so we could have her. I suggested perhaps she could find us a good seat for a pregnant person (me, not Tim), and, after shrieking something like "You're pregnant again already?!?!!" she asked how business class sounded. PRET-TY GOOD, frankly. So we made our trip there in style, plenty of legroom, free cocktails (well, for SOME PEOPLE) and a choice of snacks (I got a luscious thick chocolate-chocolate chip cookie).

In Orlando, the snow we'd left behind in Ohio and Indiana was a thing of the past. It was sunny and nice, though not overly warm, and I suppose locals looked at the idiots with the convertible top down and thought "Must be tourists from up north where they don't know that 65 degrees is too cold for something like that."

But we were tourists from up north, and we didn't think 65 degrees was too bad at all, and it was sunny and nice and I got the tiniest hint of pink on my neck where my v-neck t-shirt let in a little sun, and we wore hats and sunglasses and I even wore capri pants and it was nice. (Tim did not wear capri pants, because he is not European, nor is he one for the latest fashions.)

Further entries will detail our fun activities and the horrific themed hotel, but we will leave you with the fact that we did NOT (I repeat, did NOT) buy into a fantastic vacation ownership package despite their generosity in sharing this great opportunity. And to think, we could finance it all at 14.9%. It really was a lovely property, and were we used to a good deal more luxury than Motel 6 or Holiday Inn might offer, it might be something to consider. But... what's wrong with the Holiday Inn? (nothing that we can think of...)

Okay, I will include a gratuitous hotel photo...

At least at sunset it sort of matches... sort of. Nowhere have I ever imagined salmon, pink, purple and green to be a coordinating color combination.

Perhaps I will take the time, also, to include dining highlights from our first night, dinner at Salt Island Chophouse & Fish Market. Good food; we left stuffed.

But for now, I believe there's some TV that we missed while we were gone. That and opening ceremonies for the Olympics. More to come...

It's a continuation of his latest phase, but Mark is really into his cats these days. As in his early days of speech ("dogdogdogdog"), now everything is "CAT". Fortunately, most things he points at and says that about, are.

On Tuesday, we went to the library to get some new reading material. After watching the fish for a while (still a favorite, perhaps because stereotypically cats like to catch fish?), we were wandering the stacks. I suggested that we might look for a tiger book. Mark immediately walked to the next shelf, put out his finger, and pointed to a teensy tiny picture of a tiger on the end of a videotape.

Okay. Tiger book. Good plan. Except that was the general "animal" section. I had to go two rows over to get to tigers. We came back with a couple books, one a true winner.

Of course, the lion on the front gets the same sound effect as the tiger ("raaaah"). The pictures are, as one would expect from a DK Eyewitness book, spectacular. The text, while missing Mark's age group by some 8 years, is interesting in small snippets. The pages are spellbinding for the little dude. He sat in the car on the way to Bible Study on Wednesday "reading". I didn't hear a peep all the way there or all the way home. Well, except for the occasional "raaaah".