Touche, Mary Anne. Touche.

On Monday morning, I was rudely awaken at 9:02 by a phone call for Mary Anne Miller. This would be the start of roughly half a dozen phone calls, all for Miss Mary Anne (actually, during the course of the first phone call, I received a second call, but that was just a recorded message. I thought that was weird, but I didn't realize until later that the recorded message was also for Mary Anne). I finally asked one of the callers where he had gotten this number, and he informed me that Miss Mary Anne had filled out a form requesting information on health insurance and apparently she put down the wrong number on the form. Apparently.

The Mary Anne Miller calls have been problematic for several reasons:

1. I was still asleep at 9:02 am on Monday morning. It was a holiday and although I did not mean to sleep in that late (9:02 became 10:31 suspiciously quickly), I did anyway and a wrong number phone calls is not a desirable way to be woken up on a day off. Or two wrong number phone calls for that matter (I'm glad the second one was a recording because I just yelled "NO" into the phone and hung it up. Hmm, I hope it really was a recording).

2. I don't get very many phone calls and tend to get quite excited when a phone call does present itself and having them all be wrong numbers is rather disheartening.

Okay, I just have two problematic reasons, but they are extensive!

This whole Mary Anne Miller situation has given me pause to consider how it happened that Miss Miller put my phone number on her insurance information form. Here are some possible solutions:

1. Our numbers are just a digit off and she accidentally typed in a 3 instead of a 2.

2. She filled out the form by hand and her 4s look like 9s.

3. There was an incentive for filling out a form, but she didn't want to be hassled by insurance salespeople, so she put down a fake number.

4. Mary Anne Miller is actually an ex-boyfriend of mine or some acquaintance that I've wronged in some way and s/he is enacting some twisted revenge plot by cruelly siccing insurance salespeople on me. If that's the case, then the jokes on shim! All the callers have been very polite once I tell them I am not who they intended to talk to. Except for the recording I yelled at.

In any case, the calls have stopped so maybe word got out that I am not Mary Anne Miller. Good thing, too, because I was about to track down Miss Miller myself so I could give the callers her correct number. Although maybe she is in desperate need of health insurance and will now die because the callers are calling me instead of calling her. Goodness, I hope not.

The Disney Problem... And Solution!

We're planning a trip to Disneyland for this coming October. Yes, another one. This time though, we are hoping to go with all of Lewis' family. Should be fun!

Saturday last, as we were all gathered at the casa de los Youngs (as opposed to the apartamento de los otros Youngs) (where I live), we were discussing details of the trip. Sammie, my delightful niece, mentioned how lame the Peter Pan ride was. She described how boring it was to just go up like a foot and ride around for a minute or two and then go back down. No fun at all.

As she was describing this, I just stared at her with a look of shock and awe on my face. I couldn't believe that anyone would think the Peter Pan ride as "lame" or "boring" or "stupid." So I told her she had no sense of nostalgia.

And that's when it hit me. She probably doesn't have any nostalgia towards that movie! Me, I grew up on that movie and other movies like it. That's why I love Peter Pan's Flight and Snow White's Scary Adventure and Pinocchio's Daring Journey. They're not thrill rides, they are rides about movies. Movies that I have loved since I was a wee one. That's what Disneyland is all about. Sure, you do have thrill rides like Indiana Jones or Space Mountain or most everything over in California Adventure. But Disney is not just about thrills. They create an attention to detail experience with the characters that the world adores.

But for how long? How long will love for movies like Snow White or Peter Pan be enough? We live in a world where many of the young people have not even had the chance to see these beloved films. The advent of DVDs are partially to blame for this; families who own VHS copies of the movies rarely pull them for their kids. VCRs are obsolete! True, you can find many Disney Animated Features on DVD, but only once every seven to ten years when they come out of the Disney vault. But will that even be a viable marketing campaign in the future when primary DVD purchasers haven't seen the movies in the first place?

To prevent this (love for cherished characters dying off due to lack of movie viewership) from happening, the Imagineers at Disneyland have (possibly inadvertently) developed some solutions. One is to replace old rides/attractions with updates from more recent films. Case in point, the Swiss Family Treehouse was replaced by Tarzan's Treehouse in 1999. But that practice makes a part of me really sad. I mean, it's good to make updates and to continue to expand and whatever. I'm all for brand new rides and replacing stuff that was no good in the first place. But where is the line? How far can that be taken? Will Snow White be replaced by an attraction from a more recent movie? Can you replace Snow White? Is that what Walt Disney would have wanted? I don't know about you, but I would not want a cryogenically frozen Walter Elias Disney after my neck. You've been warned, Imagineers.

I'm getting carried away. There is still an abundance of classic Disney in Disneyland and there are no current plans to alter that.

A second solution would be to create more rides from interesting characters/stories developed specifically for the park. Sometimes the movie comes later like with Pirates of the Caribbean and the Haunted Mansion, but the rides were still there first. I am okay with this as it gives Disneyland a personal stake in people's nostalgia. They have nostalgia for the rides alone, and not necessarily in concert with a movie attached to them. Which definitely makes me keep going back for more!

Neither solution is perfect of course. For example, instead of replacing the old with the new, why doesn't Disneyland just keep adding rides? I don't think anyone would complain about a bigger Disneyland. And if you do, you have no heart. Or soul.

The fact of the matter is today's generation of youths is missing out on a series of classic movies that their parents, aunts, uncles, and grandparents grew up on. So here's what I think Disney should do. A few months before they release their movies from that mysterious vault they're always talking about, they should also play them in movie theaters around the country for a limited engagement. That way, parents can take their kids to see for themselves the magic of these animated features, and understand why Peter Pan's Flight really is a great ride. Plus the rest of us would have an excuse to go see the movies from our childhood that we haven't seen since. Disney can do this. They've done it before! I know because my parents wouldn't let me go see Jurassic Park with my older siblings when it was first in theaters and they took me to Snow White instead.

The cynic in me says that this quest would be futile. Most children would probably go into the movies with sky-high expectations and would come out saying it was "lame" or "boring" or "stupid." Psh. Kids these days!

Old Age and Dying

If you're 104 years old, the way you expect to die is not by being hit by a minivan. Even if you are the strongest man in the world.

Truthfully, though, that'd be the way to go. But only if you're that old.

The Fourth Day of Christmas

On the fourth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me...

4 calling phones

3 final tests

2 Praxis scores

And a mid-Atlantic winter snow storm

As far as cellular service is concerned, I've been with T-Mobile for five years now. And it has been adequate. I've had my share of faulty phones replaced, but who hasn't? Well, my contract with them expired last week. Lewis and I were planning on having me pay month to month until April when his contract expired and then join AT&T together so we can (eventually) get iPhones. But then circumstances facilitated the need to save as much money as possible, so we decided that the best thing to do would be for me to join the cellular telephone plan belonging to Lewis and his mother when my contract was up (they're with Verizon).

As a bonus, Verizon said it was time to let Lewis upgrade with a new agreement, so we could get it so our time in their hands expires together.

So today, we headed over to our neighborhood Verizon Wireless store to check out the phones. While there, I narrowed my selection down to these four:

1. The Samsung Intensity

Lewis and I actually walked into the store with the plan to each get this phone. It's a pretty basic phone, no special bells and whistles (which is all we really need). It has a slide out qwerty keyboard, which is cool. However, as we discovered when we got the chance to actually hold it rather than just look at a picture online, it feels flimsy and like it will break with one fall. And if you know me, I have a bad habit of either dropping my phone on accident or throwing it across the room when I'm angry. Although I don't do that as often as I used to.

Plus it was hard to type on the keys at the top of the keyboard.

2. The HTC Driod Eris

We spent a lot of time looking at this phone. It's what Verizon wishes was the iPhone. It's a touch screen with lots of applications (or "apps" as the kids call them). Overall, it's a pretty sweet phone. However, it's a smartphone, which adds 30 bucks a pop onto our bill, and that just didn't seem too practical considering the whole point of this is to save money. And the good graces of Lewis' mom. So that was a no.

3. The Samsung Alias 2

I looked at this one mostly just because I found it to be intriguing. If you open it like a regular flip phone, the keys are one way, but if you open it on its side, the keys change. And then they change again if you want to send a text. It's pretty neat. (And if none of that made sense, just watch the video from the link). In the end, though, I decided that the changing keys were just too confusing. Cool idea, but meh.

4. The LG enV3

This one was our winner. Lewis has an enV right now, which he admitted is a quality phone in spite of the fact that it likes to shut itself off randomly and without notice. As far as design is concerned, the enV3 seems to be a good improvement from the original enV, so that's good.

The only trouble now is how we are going to tell our phones apart. We both picked the phone in slate blue because the other option was red and well, you know... red. Blech.

So that's that. Actually, we ended up stressing ourselves out about the lack of desirable phones while we were actually at the store, so we ended up going home and just ordering our phones over the phone, interestingly enough (I'm convinced that the reason we didn't just end up getting the enV3 in the store is because the one they had on display was of the red variety. That and the fact that you had to mail in a rebate to get the upgrade discount at the store whereas it's instant online or over the phone). They will be here on Friday. Which is great news for me especially because I haven't been texting since October, so basically my phone has not been used much at all. I realized that I don't get very many calls. But that's okay. It's been a busy few months at school, so the lack of cell phone usage is probably a very good thing.

Happy fourth day, everyone!

Question

Is it weird when someone you dated is dating someone that dated someone else that you dated? And you don't actually know the girl they both dated/are dating, you just notice this because you're friends with the two dudes on the Facebook? And the two individuals you dated don't know each other, their only common link is you and this other girl?

Cause I think it's weird. Maybe me and this girl just have similar tastes. Except not, cause Lewis is not anything like either of those guys and I'm grateful for it.

I Don't Have Friends at NASA... Bunch of Nerds

Dear NASA,

Just so you know, I woke up at 5:26 this morning so I could watch you guys bombing the moon. I couldn't tell if it was lame because I was so tired or because it was actually lame. Would you please let me know?

And if it was lame, could you please put up a video of the event that is cool? I might even get up at 5:26 again to watch it. Just let me know.

Thanks,

Alyssa Young

Question...

Does it make me a total cheese-fest loser that I loved the Office tonight? It touched me. It touched me in my heart.

Karma

You may be surprised to find out that we ended up with a surplus after our Disneyland trip. We decided that the best thing to do would be to keep the surplus where it is and start saving for our next grand adventure - wherever that may be. True, it helped that Nancy from Cleveland, Ohio saved us $60, but we actually ended up with a surplus larger than $60. The rest of the surplus came from our food budget and potentially from our transportation budget. Allow me to explain.

As I mentioned in my previous post, our taxi driver tried to stiff us. And, if you recall, I said that the charge for $72 has not gone through yet. Well, last night, we were balancing our checkbook from the trip, and marking off all the charges that had gone through. Everything was checked off the list except for the cab ride, but there was also an unknown charge for $7. All we could tell from the charge was that it came from somewhere in Anaheim and was paid on Monday, August 17th. We googled the name on the description, but nothing came up.

I got just the teeniest bit worried about it because what if someone had stolen our credit card? But then I thought about how absurd that thought was. We were both still in possession of our cards, and I suppose someone could have gotten a hold of the number, but, really, who steals a credit card to spend seven dollars? I mean, if you are hurting that bad for seven bucks, I'll give you seven bucks.

So we called the bank, thinking that maybe they would have more information on who exactly charged our card. They didn't, but they did tell us that the charge went through at 10:54 Utah time, which would be 9:54 California time, which was right about the time we paid the taxi driver.

Intrigue!

I guess that's the best answer we have right now. The cab driver meant to charge us $72, but he only charged us $7, which means we actually made $13 from the transaction because he gave us $20 back in change. I hope that's what happened. It would serve him right for trying to stiff us.

The bank also told us that there are some extra hoops people have to jump through when they try to charge a card more than a week after the card has been swiped, so we'll know if he tries to charge us the full amount. Just in case, though, we'll be sure to always keep at least $72 in that account.

In any case, don't you just love it when karma works in your favor?

The Non-Prank

For the past couple of weeks, I've woken up in what I've thought was the middle of the night to a soft beeping. It sounded like a watch alarm, but it would end really quickly. At first, I thought I was just imagining it.

But if that was true, I was imagining it every night. That's just silly.

Then, I thought it was the alarm of our next-door neighbors, and I remember thinking, man that sucks that they have to get up at such a whacked-out time.

But then I decided that wasn't really logical. If I can't hear anything else from them, why should I be able to hear their alarm?

Next I thought someone was playing a prank on us. Someone had hidden a watch somewhere in our room and set it to go off at a time when they knew we would be asleep.

But that's not as good of a prank as it could be. I mean, the alarm only goes off for a few seconds, and then it stops. I mean, it goes off for long enough for me to hear it and wake up, but not long enough for me to be annoyed enough to get out of bed and actually go find it to shut it off. I'd go right back to sleep, so it's not like the alarmed ruined my beauty rest. Plus, it only would wake me up, and that's only because I'm a light sleeper. Any heavier sleeper (like Lewis) would sleep right through it. I like to think I associate with more devious mastermind types, the likes of which would have thought this out better. Of course, I suppose the fact that it woke me up every night for so long is actually pretty crafty.

Then, on Tuesday morning, I discovered the actual time the alarm went off. I thought it was the middle of the night, but no, no, no. Lewis had work at 6 AM, so he had gotten up to get ready. Right as he was coming in our room to say goodbye, the alarm went off - at 5:50. Just an hour before I get up anyway. Plus, Lewis heard it too, so I knew I wasn't just crazy. I checked the next two mornings and sure enough, it went off at 5:50 both mornings.

By the time we were both up and at 'em and able to do something about the alarm, we would forget, so it stayed hidden for a little while. Until last night, right before we went to bed. We tore apart our bedroom looking for it. When Lewis located the culprit, it was found to be an old watch from his mission. We think that, a few weeks before, Lewis had been playing with that watch and had inadvertently turned the alarm on. Mystery? Solved.

The alarm is off now. Thank goodness.

Celebrité

If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around, does it make a sound?

Similarly, if a celebrity that I've never heard of does something, does that mean they're famous?

Because, obviously, the world of celebrité revolves around me.

But seriously, who is Selena Gomez? Cause her picture is all over my Facebook ads, and I'm at a loss for who she is.