Green Tee Readings

On Tuesday after I left my brother a message to see if he was up for doing some general hanging out I had a attack of clutziness and dropped my phone. I’ve dropped many things many numbers of times with very little negative effects, although I did have to perform some surgery on a Rio mp3 player. This time the fumble went from my fingers to an empty bottle, screen first. It made the sound that everyone knows means something’s wrong. This is what was wrong:

I could still take and make calls, and continue to use the phone as my primary time-keeping device. I knew I’d have to get a new phone sometime, but I had a couple days before I went off to DC. After going down to the local store and nearly coughing up my lunch at their outrageous prices on phones I remembered I had my old phone somewhere. When I got home from my general Tuesday excursions, I quickly found the old phone and quickly realized that I had no idea where the charger was. I also notice that my broken phone could only stave off a trip to the cart with some power. It wouldn’t recognize the charger. Awesome. At least my class isn’t until 1:00. The next day’s first class is at 8:00, which for my car-less self means getting up at about 5:30 to catch the first of the buses. Clearly I need to find a solution on Wednesday.

Before class I try to make a stop at the local store to see if they happen to still carry the proprietary charger for my 5 year-old phone. They’re not open. Blah blah blah class blah. I figure my next best bet is to get to an actual T-Mobile store and see what they might be able to do for me. So I went to Wicker Park (having already considered going to Ben’s Shoes). Their prices were completely in line with the web-advertised prices, so there was no sticker shock induced coughing, any coughing was from it being really freaking cold in the city Wednesday. Like unsafe for human consumption cold. Like today.

None of the phones were whispering in my ear, telling me that I just had to pay nearly full price*, that they’d make me three inches taller**, get me laid, or provide me with delicious eggrolls on demand. Any of which would have gotten me to whip out the checkbook. Heck, I’d have bought a phone if it promised that Panera would start delivering.

I was prepared to buy the cheapest phone that gave at least decent call quality and text abilities when the Very Nice T-Mobile employee I was talking with mentioned that they keep a loaner phone or two in the back and that one of the phones could be mine for two weeks with a deposit. Absent her coming up with a totally free phone or a charger for my old one, she solved my problem in the most efficient way possible. I could have hugged her. Now I can wait for a new charger to be mailed to me (thanks internet!) and still let people know that I didn’t die in a fiery crash landing at BWI. Also, I don’t have go to buy an alarm clock.

The only thing left to do is use T-Mobile’s quite handy online contacts page to enter the relevant numbers into my new phone (no, I didn’t bother saving them to the SIM card before I destroyed my screen. Yes, I know I should have. At least I backed them up somehow.)
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* my contract’s not up for nine months
** Yes, I’d like to be 6′ 5″

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