Last night, I was at a friend's house, and when I left to bike home, it was raining pretty hard. It wasn't too far, so I just grun and bore it, and arrived home 15 minutes later, soaking wet. Needless to say, I rid myself of my soaking clothes ASAP, not thinking twice about tossing them in a heap on the floor.
When I got up this morning, I couldn't find my phone, and eventually realized I hadn't bothered to take it out of my pocket when I arrived home last night. Well, when I eventually recovered the old girl, I discovered that it had tragically passed overnight. I was even presented with a time of death: 3:10AM. This was several hours after I arrived home, so perhaps if I was a little more diligent with my bedtime routine, I could have prevented the unthinkable. But alas.
I've got a new phone now, so all is (mostly) back to normal. However, being phone-less for one afternoon was long enough for some CRAZY PHONE ADVENTURES.
The first crazy phone adventure wasn't that crazy - I just went to school to meet some people when I was supposed to go one of their houses, an instruction that had been revised via text (the reviser knew about my phone dilemma, so this one's on her).
While at said classmate's house, I mentioned my plans for later - playing basketball with some people in the evening. I invited a friend (Ian) who I thought would be into it, and told him I'd be by his house shortly before seven, since I had been informed the bball was going down at, you guessed it, seven. (Isn't this exciting?!?)
OK. Fast forward to about 4:15. I got home, and was in a rush because I had to eat dinner and shower before tutoring at 5, since I thought I wouldn't have time between the hour-long tutoring session and bball (it was a half hour bike ride away). Since I was in such a rush, I didn't check my e-mail until shortly before 5. This was unfortunate, since I had an e-mail waiting in my inbox informing me that basketball was at 8, not 7. Well, okay, fine for me (I had no other plans), but I had to tell Ian, and this proved to be difficult since I had no phone, and on top of that, had lost all of my contacts. Oh yeah, one more thing: it just so happens that Ian has been without internet for a few days, so I couldn't simply e-mail him. This leads me to believe I have discovered some sort of anomaly in the age of communication: when one party has no phone, and the other no internet, communication becomes impossible.
Well, I didn't have time to worry about that, since I had to rush off to tutoring. After tutoring, I went straight to the Rogers store in an attempt to get a new phone. They required the postal code of the billing address; unfortunately, since my family is on the family plan, that billing address is my parents', an address I do not know since they moved a few months ago, and I've never mailed them anything.
So I headed over to my friend Janet's house, with two goals: retrieve my parents' California address, and get in touch with Ian somehow. Luckily, I had asked my mom about her address within the last 48 hours, so it was fresh in my inbox. The second mission, contacting Ian, proved to be more difficult. None of my friends who would have his phone number were online, and given the nature of the age of cell phones, I don't know anyone's number by memory. Eventually I had a brainwave: check facebook for friends' phone numbers. I checked 3 or 4, with zero luck, until I came across a friend who lists the website of his home business. Luckily, the phone number for this business is just his cell phone! So I borrowed the use of Janet's roommate's cell phone, and sent a text to Matt, to be forwarded to Ian.
Unfortunately, I couldn't stick around to find out if it worked, since I had to go back to the Rogers store, with billing info in hand. Of course, when I got there and told them my parents new postal code (i.e. zip code), the chick got confused since it wasn't a Canadian address. I eventually figured out she had all my info right in front of her, so I guess the billing address thing was more of a confirmation than anything. Anyway, I was worried at first, but she just had to put a call in to her boss (in which she had to speak some sort of weird password that included her name and "zulu" and a few other words...?!?) and it all worked out.
At this point, she described my options: since I've had my current phone for more than a year (more like two and a half), I qualify for a "hardware upgrade". Great! Except that a hardware upgrade requires a new 3 year deal. Given that I'm likely leaving the country in a few months, this didn't seem like a good deal. Option 2 was to buy a new phone outright, and with the cheapest one being 70 bucks, I just didn't feel like it.
So I asked if they had some sort of temp phone I could take for a few days. Well, it turns out they have a big box of crappy lost and found phones or something, and after a few minutes of digging, she found a functional one, complete with charger! I am now the proud owner of a (free!) Nokia 3120b, which, according to Google, is a 2004 phone.
So while I'm still missing almost all of my contacts, at least I've got something. But boy, let me tell you, losing your cell phone is a lot more devastating than losing your... home phone? I'm not even sure how that would happen. I guess address book is a better old-timey analogy. Whatever.
This has been another installment of CRAZY PHONE ADVENTURES.
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