Cellphone Drama and Snow Day!

I had the most horrific drive to clinic yesterday, I’m talking almost having a panic attack on the way to the office. (Let’s preface this with how much I HATE driving in the winter.) I left about twenty minutes before I normally do because we had gotten some snow the night before and I wanted to give myself some extra time to get there and not having to worry about driving too fast or getting there late.

Ayden woke up before I did with a stomach ache and although I thought he probably could have gone to school, I decided to let him stay home for the day, which in turn shortened Jay’s work day because he had to come home from plowing because I had to leave for clinic. When I got home last night, Jay said that Ayden was fine pretty much all day and probably could have gone to school, but oh well… you never really know at this age just how much he doesn’t feel good and I gave him the benefit of the doubt.

My drive through town was pretty predictable… the roads were halfway decent and I didn’t get too worked up because everyone was driving pretty carefully. It was when I hit the highway that I thought I would be okay for the rest of my drive… um… or not! The highways are supposed to be clear and clear they were. Of snow that is! The roads were really good snow wise, but because it had gotten so cold the night before, once the snow was plowed off and the salt laid down, the left over water froze and so the road was covered in a thin layer of ice. I can’t stand driving on ice to begin with and in my car with my stupid butt tires its even worse.

So, there I was driving along at 55 mph (when the speed limit was 65 mph) and my car is fishtailing back and forth. The feeling of not having control over your vehicle is VERY unnerving! I slowed down to about 45-50 mph and that seemed to be okay and watched as all of the other drivers whizzed by me in the fast lane. At that point I really didn’t care, all I wanted was to make it to the clinic all right. Thankfully, my drive altogether is only about 20 miles (10 in town miles and 10 highway miles) and I made it to the office with about 15 minutes to spare.

Clinic went well yesterday! The morning flew by and we had saw our last patient at 3pm and I thought we would be going home early! I was excited because it was still in the afternoon and the sun was semi shining and so the roads were going to be good. Unfortunately, we had a hearing aid rep come in at 3pm also and we spent the next two and a half hours talking with him. Total bummer! I was totally okay with maybe a half hour, even a hour, but after that it just got LONG! Even my supervisor complained about how long he was there when he finally left. LOVE her!

I was pretty apprehensive by the time we left the office about my drive home. The sun had gone down and it had started to get colder out (well its always cold in the winter here, but even more so at night) and I didn’t want to have to drive home again on iced over roads… in the dark! To top it off, my phone, which hasn’t been holding a charge since I got it, was pretty much dead. Actually, it was dead since I couldn’t turn it back on when I got home.

I had charged it the entire night before, talked on it a whole five minutes that morning to call Ayden’s school and Jay and it was blinking low battery to me by 10am. At that point I turned it off so I might have a slim chance of getting a five second phone call in if I needed it on my drive home for any emergencies. Turns out it wouldn’t have worked anyways. But back to the drive home- it was fine. The roads in town were better than in the morning, still not perfect, but fine for winter roads in town and the traffic wasn’t too bad. The highway was pretty much perfect, but it had gotten really windy out so I still only drove about 60 mph home just in case I happened upon any icy patches, I didn’t want to spin out at 70 mph. Made it home safely, yeah!

Because of the impending blizzard that the southern part of the state was supposed to get last night, UW Madison closed its campus for today around supper time last night and since all of my classes are with the Madison students, that meant a snow day for me! It was pretty fabulous too because Wednesdays are my LONG days and I so needed to have this Wednesday off. Okay, so I didn’t really, but they do get really long and I didn’t want to sit through another class with the third years this week. They are really starting to get under my skin, well only a few of them and only at certain moments. And because we have two classes with them this semester, I feel like I need to compete with them and do better than them. I know that I don’t have to, but sometimes I feel that way. I constantly hear two of them talking about how they read all of the articles and such and it drives me nuts! Who has that much time on their hands?! Oh, that’s right, they don’t work or have kids, guess then you would, huh?! Yeah, I’m a little jealous, but even if I didn’t work or have Ayden, I probably still wouldn’t read them. I think I’m more jealous that they have the ambition to read them and I don’t.

Since I had most of the day off today (I went in to work for a little while), Jay and I ventured to the cellphone place to tell them about our phone problems (his hasn’t been keeping a charge either). We were in a contract with Alltel and when we found out that Verizon had bought out Alltel, we were excited with the fact that we would be switched to Verizon. Guess again! Apparently some other company, Element Mobile, had bought out the Alltel franchise or whatever in our area and a few of the surrounding areas and we would be switched to them. That is all fine and dandy and Jay and I were excited because we were going to be getting an upgraded phone that would work with their new 3G network and it would be free, even better!

Well, it took forever for us to finally get the phones in the mail after multiple phone calls. The actual switch over went fine, but then anywhere we travelled to we were in roaming. Fine again I suppose because we have free roaming. The phones were slightly better than our older ones and the internet worked faster on them. But, my phone does not hold a charge to save its life. I have to charge it EVERY night and it usually only lasts until 4 or 5pm and that’s if I don’t talk on it at all during the day. I tried using the old battery from my last phone and that didn’t work either (apparently even though it fits in my phone, the new batteries are made for the new phones and old batteries won’t work well at all). The last straw was yesterday when my phone only made it until about 10am after a full nights charge.

Jay’s phone started out holding a charge pretty well and he talked on his morning than I talked on mine, but then recently it started acting like mine. While we had the day off together, we ventured into Element Mobile and got in line with the rest of the ‘complainers’. (I met the sweetest old lady who was having the worst luck with them!) We waited for probably 15-20 minutes before it was our turn and during that time, I think a half dozen people came and got in line after us.

Apparently the store we went to didn’t have any replacement batteries in stock and couldn’t give us new phones because they had to give them to customers who hadn’t been upgraded like we were already. We were told we could get another house charger or car charger to have around to charge our phones, but that we would have to wait a month or so to come back in and get new phones that would hold a charge. I understood about others needing to be upgraded first, kind of… they gave us a $50 credit on our next bill, okay I’ll take that for now. We’re supposed to ‘just deal with our cheap crappy phones that don’t hold a charge’ for the next month, ugh! Looks like I’ll be taking my charger with me EVERYWHERE for the next month.

I told Jay that we will be patient for this month and then go in a month from now and get our new phones whether they like it or not… or get out of our contract. I will only be patient for SO long! My previous phone could go at least three, maybe four days, between charging times and I could talk on it multiple times during that time frame! I would like that back please (and thank you)! We are unfortunately in contract with Element Mobile until next December and at this point don’t have the extra money to pay to get out of our contract. Jay thinks we will probably leave them at that time and find a different carrier. At this point in time, the only gripe I have with them is that my new phone won’t hold a charge and they won’t replace it or the batter right now. Nothing else changed as far as our bill goes and won’t until December. And other than being in roaming more often and the internet not working quite as fast in roaming, the new 3G network is A LOT faster than before we were switched. I suppose only time will tell.

CIAO! LOVE ME!