PANTS!

Woke up in the freezing cold. At first I thought maybe my dad had gone on some austerity program to save on heating bills, but came to find out that the furnace had simply given up the ghost. There’s a repairman coming to have a look at it tomorrow. Had to break out the pants! 

Started out the morning sifting through 6 months of mail: medical bills, tax forms, insurance forms, and other fun stuff. I need to get all of the tax paperwork together for Monday’s visit with the CPA. Had a breakfast of Raymond’s famous poached eggs to sustain me as I braved the pouring rain to drive out to Poway for a visit with the ear, nose and throat specialist. Traffic got a little thick passing through Escondido when the rain was so heavy that it obscured visibility on the freeway.

The ENT had a look at the ears and told me that the left ear is 80% occluded, trapping wax and skin particulates in the opening. Gross. This is the source of my hearing loss and infections. He wants to operate to remove the bone growth. He will first cut and peel back the skin covering the bone, grind down the bone and then replace the skin on top like sod on a lawn. The only catch is there are follow ups that have to be done 10 days after and I only have 17 days. His scheduler comes in tomorrow at 8:30 so I have to call and see if we can get me in during the next few days to go under the knife.

From there, I took the back road down to the big mall in Escondido where I finally decided to bite the bullet and pony up the cash to purchase my first iPhone. Not only for better reception and quality when using my mobile hot spot, but to have the 12 megapixel camera for taking pictures on the go. As much as I take pictures, hauling around the Canon all the time can sometimes be a pain in the rear and appear more intrusive in some situations. With the phone, I can discreetly slip it out and get an occasional candid shot that I might not be able to with the 40x zoom camera. It will be nice to have both.

Spent about 45 minutes in the Apple Store getting it set up and transferring my data. I count myself lucky, some people at my table had already been there two hours. For as hip as the Apple folks tend to view themselves, they could make the experience feel a little less like going to the DMV. After waiting 20 minutes to get helped, the first guy was all cool and attentive until the credit card got swiped and the phone was paid for. Then I was walked over to a table with six other people at various stages of setting up their devices, phones, computer watches and one older guy with a laptop. One techie kid was assigned to all six of us, so time was spent in limbo waiting your turn to ask questions. Luckily, I’m moderately technical and could figure most of it out myself. I had to download a transfer data from Android to iOS app then wait while things were switched over. It went pretty smoothly, though I was missing a number of contacts when I took a closer look later on.

Being in California and in a mall, I felt somehow compelled to drink a hot beverage at Starbucks and give PJ a call on my new phone. Wandered around the mall for a while before trudging back out through the wet parking lot and driving back to Pop’s. Spent the evening playing with the phone, eating a tasty roast with potatoes that dad cooked up and face timing with PJ before hitting the hay.