Chasing The Apocalypse

I feared for my life a little bit last night. Just a little bit.

My friend Peter and I were taking a stroll around the plaza where we got our ice cream (CHEESECAKE flavoured ice cream...how long has this been around and why did nobody tell me sooner?!) when we looked up at the sky and saw a huge storm front moving in complete with suspicious looking green clouds.  Peter made a comment about how he felt like we should be in Independence Day, and I agreed. I stared up at the sky and waited for some gigantic alien ship to emerge through the clouds.

We'd already changed our plans because of the weather. We were going to head down to Ed Fest to see The Arkells and Pilot Speed when the thunder made us change our minds. This was probably a good thing because apparently, according to the Sonic 102.9 twitter feed, the stage blew over, and garbage cans were flying through the air.  Not wanting to be blown over OR hit with garbage cans, Peter and I did the next most logical thing. Got food and went tornado chasing.  

Although I had my smaller, lesser quality camera with me, I still wanted to go home and grab my "good" camera, which took us in the same direction as the ominous dark clouds.  I've got my head out the window while snapping pictures with one hand and steering with the other, and Peter is torn between staring at the clouds and making sure I don't crash my car.  We came to a stop light where I could finally take some non-blurry pictures, and noted that we just may be witnessing the apocalypse.

Earlier in the evening, Peter had rolled down my passenger side window not knowing it was broken, and naturally, it refused to go back up.  This wasn't that much of a problem until a huge cloud of dust and debris came tumbling down the road at us. Peter is now manually holding my window up, and the wind decides to take some rocks - not stones, but rocks - and attack my car, leaving a nice crack in my windshield. You know, because the broken window just wasn't enough. *growl*.

We turned into my parking lot, and the street lights, as well as the lights in my building, are flickering on and off. Peter had been kind enough to hold on to the cup of my leftover ice cream until he had to put it on the dashboard to hold up the window, but since I'm driving like a maniac, it went flying through the air and landed in his lap.  I start laughing. He is not too pleased, but figures it's an equal trade off for the broken window. 

Up in my condo, Peter cleans up while I grab my camera, a few garbage bags and some packing tape.  We go back down to my car and notice that it has decided to start raining.  We frantically try to tape up my window but keep losing the end of the packing tape. Okay, *I* kept losing the end of the packing tape.  I can't do things when there is a storm to distract me!  I get all giddy and excited and ridiculous.

Peter uses the light inside my car to search for the impossible to find end of the packing tape

We finally get it taped up as much as possible and try to drive off to find a good place to watch the storm. Except for one little problem. With the passenger side window now completely covered in black garbage bags, I can't see any traffic coming from the right, and therefore cannot make any left hand turns.  So, four right hand turns later, and we'd settled in a little parking lot near my condo building. And, after years of trying, I was finally able to photograph some lightning:

This one flickered for a good few seconds and Peter said "You HAD to have gotten that!" Yes Peter...yes I did.

I call this one "Nature Doing The Splits"

Sheet lightning making my condo building look like the entrance to the abyss

We eventually decided to head back to my condo and watch the rest of the storm from my balcony.  Of course we did this when it was raining its heaviest, my parking lot was a massive river, and it was hailing.  I thought it would be a good idea to take a video of the mad dash from the car to the condo. You can't see much in the middle of the video, (it's mostly my high pitched giggles), but it was the most fun I've had in a long time.

Trouble In Technological Paradise

My cell phone and I haven't been on good terms lately. There's been some bickering, some emotional manipulation, and even threats of violence. And while we generally try not to go to bed angry with each other, it's kind-of been inevitable lately. Patience and forgiveness are wearing thin. Naturally, I fully blame my cell phone for all of our issues. If it would just BE NICE and RELIABLE we wouldn't have anything to argue about.

I originally got the phone around a year and a half ago. I was home for Christmas in Ontario, on a tight budget, and willing to sign a three year contract if it meant I didn't have to pay a cent for the phone. I got my wish, and came home with the LG Wave. Which I bought mainly because it starts out red at the top and transitions to black, and gosh darn it, it looked pretty. (See picture). It also didn't seem strewn with unnecessary bells and whistles, which I honestly hate about cell phones these days. If I could buy a cell phone without a camera installed in it, I would, but I don't think they even exist anymore. What happened to single function devices? Everything has to be multi-functional, and yet all the functions it incorporates are not nearly as high quality as individual functioning devices. For example, there's no way a tiny little camera built into a cell phone is going to have anything close to the quality of my 10.0 megapixel 20x optical/digital zoom camera. So until they make that possible, I will stick to my single function devices. Such as my ipod. Which has 80 gigs. Which an iphone would not have. My point continues.

As far as I can remember, my cell phone and I generally got along pretty well. I can't remember exactly when it started - as I suppose most people in troubled relationships can't - but gradually my cell phone began to act...well...different. These actions included, but were not limited to:

• Lying when it said it was making a phone call. It would TELL me it was "calling", except there was no ringing, and then after about 30 seconds of waiting, I would finally get the cold, hard truth: "Call failed".
• Not giving me my text messages until eight hours after they were sent. (It chose 4:30 a.m. to deliver them.)
• Not letting me send out texts (possibly out of jealousy, as there WERE some male recipients.) It would tell me it's "Connecting" for five minutes before informing me "Message is not sent. General problems." GENERAL PROBLEMS? If you're going to screw up my texting, at least think up a worthwhile excuse! You stupid, stupid phone!
• Mood swings: one minute having a full signal, and the next having no signal at all. (While remaining in exactly the same location.)
• Closing itself on me in the middle of sending texts because I made the mistake of holding it vertically and apparently it just took too much effort to stay open in that position.
• Only staying charged for one or two days max. (Burnt out from all the arguing, I assume.)
• General brattiness: the T9 word function always changes "it?" into "i8.", I SWEAR just to annoy me. Also, when I type "chiropractor" it first gives me "chipossabuns". THEN I have to hit "next" to get to "chiropractor." Which is completely logical. I'm always texting about chipossabuns. (Is that even a word?)

Lately it's new way to irritate me has been to send the wrong "reply to" number when I text, so when someone tries to reply to me, they end up talking to some random person in Alberta, or, as occurred on one occasion, B.C. Either that or I receive replies asking "who is this?" because the text appears to be coming from a number that is not mine, and, let's face it, receiving a text that says "I just narrowly missed walking into a firetruck" may sound pretty bizarre to someone who doesn't know me or my texting ways.

I finally had it up to HERE with my phone, and decided that our relationship needed to come to an end. So I marched into Telus (a.k.a. the divorce lawyer) to investigate my options. They said they would give me $150 towards a new phone or $200 towards a "smart" phone. (Because clearly, the old phones are stupid phones. Hahahaha. Haha. Ha...ah.) However, if I don't want to incur any extra costs, I have all of two phones to choose from. One of them is an LG model that is very similar to the one I have now, and the other one is so old it's on the verge of being discontinued. SPEAKING OF DISCONTINUED; I was also informed that my phone, as well as the entire "Chocolate" line from LG, was discontinued months after it was released because they were just, so, BAD. I wish they recalled cell phones like they do cars.

The injustice of this entire cell phone situation has stirred deep within me, conjuring up some sort of Cell Phone Avenger superhero-type character who wants to right the wrongs for all those who have been screwed over by a cell phone service provider, or suffered because of the lack of quality of their cell phones. Here is my logic, and I'm really going to emphasize this, so you might want to cover your ears:

IF THE CELL PHONE IS NOT OF HIGH ENOUGH QUALITY TO LAST THE TERM OF THE CONTRACT, IT SHOULD BE REPLACED FREE OF CHARGE!

Why should the consumer have to pay for the lack of quality?! We're already getting screwed by outrageous phone plans, especially now that you have to pay to receive texting! (Don't even get me started on that.) If I buy a phone on a three year contract, I expect that phone to last the duration of the contract. And that is just how it should be! And each one of us needs to step up and fight for how it should be. Let's ban together! Riot for cell phone quality! Protect the rights of the consumer! Better cell phone service for all! *flips cape*