A New Phone

I activated my true smart phone, an android, last Thanksgiving after it sat on my shelf unused for two years.  I was happy all that time with my old dumb smartphone which had a slide-out tactile keyboard that was good for sending texts and made and received calls, so why swap it out for a complicated android after it arrived once I upgraded my service plan to receive for the same monthly rate unlimited call minutes, unlimited texting and the new phone.

I visited my sister for Thanksgiving and she forced me to activate the android, a THC which was already obsolete by then and no longer sold.  I hated it, couldn't figure it out, went on the internet only once (to look up an address) with it which apparently unleashed a horde of genies into my phone and thereupon it ran 24 hours a day, hogged data (16GBs every 10 days), sent me weird texts from entities I didn't know concerning phantom orders I'd made and rogue deliveries that were coming and I finally went to the Verizon store to change my phone and my service.

Unfortunately, it was staffed by three young people, all twenty-somethings who spoke in very heavily-accented English and I couldn't understand what they were saying whenever the discussion turned technical.  I told them the reason I was switching from AT&T was because it had hired the grifter lawyer Michael Cohen for $400,000 to provide access to our corrupt president, but not one of them knew who Michael Cohen was.

I asked them if they had ever heard of Robert Mueller but I drew three more blank stares.  They tried to upsell me on a "jump pack" and/or a "Hum" to "bundle" with the phone, useless accessories so much as I could even follow what they were talking about and I left the store with my old, hated phone still a part of my life and a troubling suspicion that this country is in deep trouble.

National Tulip Library

On this week's, and last week's, long runs, we passed by the National Tulip Library by the Tidal Basin, which last week had started to burgeon.

This week they had lost their bloom and were fading.

But they'll be back next year.

In a field between the aforementioned Tidal Basin and the Washington Monument, every year around the start of May the field blooms with beds of tulips waving gently in the wind.

Wee wee wee

There's a German pastry shop in Arlington that is a fun place to spend a half hour.

It has all kinds of marzipan creatures.

Bring a book of poetry and enjoy coffee, crumpets and company there.

This little piggy cried wee wee wee all the way home.