To come: A Flashback post about a flashback.

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Music: “Don’t Call Me Baby,” performed by Madison Avenue

I think my cell phone may be officially dead.

Note: This does not explain the long gap in posting, but it is probably why most people are checking in here, which is why I’m touching on it first.

I first thought it was a problem with a battery, but after borrowing a spare from a friend, the phone maintained its steady practice of turning itself on and off every other second (which wouldn’t be bad if I used it as a metronome.)

So I’m personally out of tricks. Part of me has a long-shot hope that some unknown Verizon techie might be able to figure it out, but it may be cheaper to opt for a new phone.

Note: People who may want to get ahead of the rush and start reminding me of their contact numbers are free to do so through the usual channels, with the exception of phones, of course.

It’s been interesting that through this I find I don’t hate phones as much as I used to. I’m not sure if this is because I’ve matured some or if I’m finally accepting it as a necessary evil.

It seems there are very few places you can go where you can’t be reached, though I’m closer than most. In the short amount time before landing my current job and flying out West, my family and I reviewed a lot of cell phone coverage maps. I quickly discovered I was moving into a gap on most of the maps.

However, between the energy boom and necessity (one drives another, which pushes the other in turn), I found some carriers had encircled the town and at least placed it on the perimeter of what is covered.

There are still some faults with the system. I typically end up turning off my phone when out riding in the country because the frequent in-service-out-of-service chirping drives me nuts. Also, considering the tenuous nature of the system, I can think of two times where my reception was killed because some construction crew severed a cable on the other side of the state.

And expansion is still ongoing. I’ve read the federal government is spending millions to make camping areas “more connected” or “cellular friendly,” or some other phrase the AP writer mindlessly copied from PR press release.

I laugh at the idea of park rangers getting tired of dealing with complaints from people about not having an internet connection, but I’ve benefited from the process. Last summer I’d spent a day hiking around the Grand Tetons (it’s the national park immediately south of Yellowstone.)

It was my Dad’s second recent trip out West. A few weeks before, he and my Mom took a trip where they visited me on two separate weekends when I was off, and in the meantime trekked back and forth across the region.

Anyway, my Dad and I had stopped near the summit of one of the medium sized hills, and on the highest ones accessible by car (we were winding down after a long day). It was about an hour before sunset, but the view was killer with a view of sparkling rivers in the far distance on one side and snowcapped mountains on the other.

In the middle of taking in this vista, my cell phone rang. A friend from the East Coast was calling to say “Hi.”

After a quick conversation, I looked around and saw a gleaming tower that partially peaked out from the trees on the hill. I mentioned it to my Dad, who said it had not been there a few weeks prior when he and my mother surveyed the area. Thanks Uncle Sam.

So anyway, I guess I’m more accepting of phones than I used to be. My current model served me well. I specifically asked the dealer for a sturdy model that could be dropped a lot, which is an unofficial feature I’ve taken advantage of.

I’m a few months short of being able to trade in the phone for a new model after two years, but it looks like that’s a cost I’ll have to swallow. As it is, it’s outlasted about four pairs of shoes, two watches, and a pair of glasses.

As I’ve said many times before, I’m rough on technology. Just ask my mother who has spent years watching (and sometimes paying the replacement costs) of me finding new and creative ways to wreck my possessions.

I’m the only person I know who dropped a pair of glasses in a football field before the start of an all-day marching band festival. You can imagine how the frames turned out; and the lenses were never recovered

All in all, my cell phone got off easy.

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Music: “I’m Free” performed by Kenny Loggins

I’m emancipated, I’m off, I’m out of it.

In getting my belated birthday day off, I will be catching up on movies, dropping by the local book stores and catching up on sleep.

Guess which one is the lowest priority.

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Music: “My Baby Loves a Bunch of Authors" by Moxy Früvous

Note: This is one of the few, if not the first, time I've knowingly repeated a music cue. I've actually worked hard to avoid repetition. However, I absolutely love this song and it fits the post in its celebration of a borderline psychotic’s obsession with literature. You can see how I can relate.

Getting back to business, if it’s Sunday, and if I’m caught up on sleep, it’s recap day.

Juggling personal goals of rereading all the Potter books prior to the seventh’s book release and taking time to write each day was difficult (the metaphor is even more meaningful if you add the fact I’ve never learned to juggle despite multiple attempts randomly spaced over the years). The books were finished, and a number of things sketched out, but most of the entries didn’t appear till I retroactively posted them Friday… when many of the people who follow this site were otherwise distracted.

Anyway, returning to the recap.

Last Sunday, July 15, we restarted the old weekly summary post, bringing posts in July up to code.

On Monday I warned of the likelihood of delays brought on by having about 2,000 pages left to read in the Harry Potter series by Friday.

The aftereffects of a storm that hit Tuesday prompted me to reconsider my definition of modern progress, which may best resemble an ever-upgrading hamster wheel that continues to get flashier but still leaves its users in the same place.

A brief three-word note scribbled down a week before eventually led to a casual sport’s fan lament about wild world of sports Wednesday.

On Thursday I admitted my strange fascination with letter openers and how I think of them as a sign of adulthood (such as a driver’s license or W-2).

Also, under the guidelines repeated the previous week, the third appearance of the “Random confession of the Week” entry officially makes it a standard feature. Apologies still go out to the “From the Jukebox” series that despite a fair amount of preplanning and writing it still has not tallied a second appearance since initially arriving in March 2006.

As has become the norm, if not a tradition of the years, I don’t slow down much for my birthday, and the associated post reflects that.

Early Saturday, before collapsing into bed, I wrote about the little obstacles I had to overcome – distance, sleep deprivation, accidental trespassing – to finish the Harry Potter series.

To come: Comments about what I do with my days off, the practically compulsive Potter reaction post, and maybe the frequently delay observations about the extremes in weather.

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Extra, Extra! With a few details, coding and editing tweaks added after about five hours of sleep.

Music: “Magic Carpet Ride” performed by Steppenwolf

Got the book, read the book.

The tricky part, as I had feared, was getting to the bookstore.

Some time before the first two I got lost taking a shortcut I usually don't use in the day light and ended up briefly cutting through a scrap yard and trespassing on Union Pacific property.

A note about lugging a a mason jar of soup to midnight sales: If you receive a batch of food from a friend and decide to eat it latter, requiring you to take it with you when you leave work, one must keep in mind its going to make climbing over and squeezing through fences a bit more difficult.

Flashing forward again, I worked hard not to look at clocks while reading through the night, pausing only for snacks and restroom breaks. When I did catch sight of the time around 5:50 something, I decided to stroll down to the park at the end of the street to finish the book.

It's been a while since I read on a bench by the light of a sunrise, listening to the birds sing. It added a bit to the experience, in my opinion, especially the ending.

Now it’s done, and I really need to get some sleep...if I can turn off my whirling brain for a while.

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Music: “Happy” performed by Carolyn Arends

It’s been a good birthday so far.

I finished the last few hundred pages of Harry Potter 6 last night; during which I briefly looked up and realized, “Oh yeah, I guess it’s my birthday now.”

I’m… have to think about it a second… one year older than last year (if you want to know the date, go find one of the half dozen places where I registered such information when I was younger and less worried about identity theft and cyber stalkers).

I’ve had a steady flow of cards this past week, and two packages arrived yesterday. I now have homemade chocolate cookies to enjoy and have been reunited with a pair of socks I apparently left in Houston.

I received my first day-of birthday greetings around 2 a.m., electronically of course.

I spent a bit of time composing today, retroactively posting the entries I had sketched out during the week but never finished.

Now I have to head to work.

As I’ve told others, I don’t think much about working on my birthday. I’ve done it before, though this will be a first time at this paper.

At my workplace people are technically supposed to get their birthday off, but since my supervisor is on vacation this week, we thought it was a good idea to have a least one person around to design pages, especially on a Friday.

It will be hectic, but in theory I should be able to cap the evening by picking up Potter 7 and then disconnecting myself from the world for a while. I figure I’ll reconnect with the world sometime Sunday.

In the meantime, happy birthday to me.

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Music: “I’m Gonna Sit Right Down and Write Myself a Letter” performed by Billy Williams

I hate to be repetitious, but I enjoy using letter openers to open letters. It makes me feel like an adult.

I think it stems back to childhood visits to my grandparents in Kansas City. Their homes have always been full of antiques. Running in the house was expressively prohibited when I was younger, for fear of knocking over and subsequently breaking something that was 10 times my age and worth a lot more than a year’s allowance (not that this rule was always followed. I believe me and my cousins ultimately developed an adjusted gait that simply produced less vibrations on the wood floors when we wanted to race).

Most of the items were off limits to touching or close examination. As I got older I was granted permission to flip through some of the older books, but most things remained off limits. While I have grown up, and am less clumsy than before, I still am reluctant to touch some of the items in my grandparent’s house based on the old lessons that were pounded into me.

So in an environment filled with off-limit wonders, the few items I was allowed to touch became that more interesting. Letter openers fell under that category.

I can still remember many of the designs of the letter openers left on the coffee tables, thus located in easy reach. Some had designs with animals, fantastic faces, or my personal favorite, shaped like an Arabian sword plucked from Arabian Knights.

I was allowed to pick them up, but never had the chance to use them. That was something that adults got to do, I thought at the time, meaning it would be a very long time before I could take a crack at it.

When I started my new job, I was delighted that my desk came with a letter opener. It had a regular dulled metal blade and a wooden handle, which is not as cool as a minerature sword, but it does the trick.

Pathetic? Probably, but I use this perk whenever I can. And with the influx of recent birthday cards (sent by people who have better timing when it comes to mailing such missives), I’ve gotten even more use of them as of late.

So thanks for the cards and the chance to exercise an adult privilege I would put on a scale a few pegs below voting and a bit higher than paying my own taxes: using a letter opener.

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