I have about an hour before I have to get dressed in out-door clothes and take Annie to the vet for her check up. I thought I might take this time to actually write something here that wasn’t just a post about not having time to write about stuff. Partly because I want to show off my new toy and partly because perhaps this will stop my father for bugging me about linking to his new blog every time I speak with him lately. (ha ha!)

But I am going to start with me because, well, it’s my blog and I want to.

I got a new cell phone!

Last night after work Shawn and I headed over to the dullsville mall around the corner from us (and I call it dullsville, because there’s nothing really in it other than clothing or shoe stores. No Dollar store, no pharmacy thing, no toy store…nothing fun. But there are cell phone kiosks, which is good because I needed one) so that I could look at cell phones. See, I have been a client of Telus for at least 6 years now, and my contract with them was up the end of November. I  needed a new phone aside from a new contract (if I was going the contract route, which I wasn’t sure, but economically it always works out that way). I have been a faithful holder of LG brand phones and I was going to the mall to check out Rogers and their new LG Shine, which I saw in a tv commercial and thought looked spiffy. Telus didn’t carry the version that I wanted to look at. However, while at Rogers I spied this lovely red thing to the right, and I held it in my hand and I held the LG Shine in my other hand and I really, really liked this one much more. The sales dude at Rogers was awesome, charismatic and friendly (I might have a crush on him) and English (which is a tough thing to find in a Quebec store). He answered all my questions honestly and at no point did I get the smarmy salesman vibe from him. Plus, he thought I might have been a student and was going to tell be about the student discount. I told him that was really sweet, but I was old. Heh. So I hemmed and hawed and wandered back around the mall to the food court, stopping at the Telus store on the way to see what they had new, and I still didn’t like their phones and they NEVER give current clients the sales prices and discounts that they give NEW clients, unless you phone and argue with customer service. I was getting tired of Telus I have to say, but I was also clinging to my LG loyalty and felt unsure about what to do about the phone.

The food court was still crazy busy at 7:30 at night and since it was only Shawn eating, we went back to the Rogers store so I could fondle this phone some more and get a few more questions answered. I don’t really actually USE my phone all that much. Generally every phone I have had stays OFF unless I need it (you know, like, to phone Shawn and tell him he can pick me up now, or have Shawn phone me to tell me he’s getting in the car and will be in front of my work in about 10 mins), I had my text messaging turned OFF with Telus because I didn’t use it and they started charging $0.15 per incoming message, whether it was spam or not. Like I wanted those charges on top of everything else? Hell no. Anyhow, with this Rogers phone, I got the base plan for a whopping $17.50 a month (plus tax and all those other charges like 911 and stuff) and since I wanted call display, I got the $11 bundle for call ID, voicemail and 125 outgoing text messages (a month). So, yay. Oh, and their incoming texts are free, and no near future plans to change that AND their evenings (for my free evenings and weekends) start at 6:00PM! (Unlike Telus where it’s like somewhere between 7-9 PM depending on the plan you get.)

So we’ll see how it goes with Rogers. So far I am happy with my phone (Sony Ericsson W580i red), though I have only had it less than 24 hours. But it’s being used as our alarm clock this morning since the power went out at 2:10am and we weren’t sure when it was going to come back on. So it should go off in about 15 mins for Shawn to wake up. heh.

Ok, so the other news is my father, who takes these fantastic photos and posts them over here on his photo site, has started a photo blog. (And I am totally stealing his image here and posting it on my blog. But he’s family so I don’t think he’ll sue me…)

Photos by Healy is his photo blog name and he’s posted a few photos so far with the story behind them. Which I like. Some of his scenic shots look an awful lot like Bob Ross paintings, which is a cool thing. And although I join in the merciless teasing about how many flower photos he takes, my Dad actually takes some really great photos (though I try not to encourage him too much, or we’ll never get to talk about anything else in the conversation. Heh heh.) I especially love the album taken at the Jean Talon Market in September. I think they should pay him to advertise for them.

Anyhow, please go check out his photos, they are very cool.

And he’ll be linked on my sidebar when I next have time to edit things, I sadly have taken up too much time writing this post and then I lost the internet connection (grr) and now it’s time to get dressed and head on out. I didn’t even get a chance to post the Thanksgiving photos I wanted to. That’ll have to be its own post later on this weekend!