I have now seen this five times. I GIVE UP.

All I want to do is change to a new plan as I seem to be going over my 450 peak minutes about every third month due to calling work all the time. Shelley wants me to invoice her when I go over but it takes CDI 90 days to pay a bill and it’s just not worth it to me to lend them $15 at 0% interest (the alternative being Not Paying the Bill Either). Therefore I just want a new plan.

As long as I don’t have to extend my contract, because on Contract Ending Day Plus One I’m buying an iPhone.

And as long as it doesn’t screw up my delicately balanced data features, including a feature I have called “broadband connect tethering,” which it took me four contacts to find a person at Verizon Wireless who even knew they offered it and a fifth to find someone who could turn it on.

And as long as …

… you know, maybe it’s not worth it. Maybe I just keep the plan I have and pay the overages. It’s not like I have to pay a home phone bill too. Maybe it’s okay that my cell phone bill is $120 a month.

At least until I can get out of the contract and bid farewell to Verizon.

Unless I get FiOS, in which case Verizon can sell me whatever they want.

It’s hard to live this way. Why can’t we just have monopolies like other countries do? Wouldn’t it be simpler?

I was at some sort of fundraising dinner or other big-name event. Maybe a retreat, since we stayed for a few days. At dinner at long communal tables I was two seats down from Claire Danes (her [female] friend was sitting between us). She had long, brown hair, not blond like she actually has.

We were all staying in a sort of long, narrow dormitory room, and I was sleeping on a twin bed that was kind of in a hallway, just like the extra hallway “bedroom” in the beach house Lin and I stay at in Bethany.

There was a guy I liked, who liked me back, but we were being all standoffish and not particularly flirty. He was staying in a bedroom in the back and had a male roommate staying with him.

We were all sharing bathrooms. I declared my intention to take a shower and almost walked in on the roommate, so I started looking for another shower. While I was looking it turned out the closet next to my bed was actually a shower, and there was a showerhead in the ceiling over my bed and a drain in the floor so that part of the hallway could *be* a shower. I decided everyone needed to know there were actually five showers, not two (yes, I know it doesn’t add up) and I walked around telling everyone.

No one else seemed to want to take a shower so I went ahead. While I was in there everyone decided they needed to take a shower so all five filled up. The guy I liked was standing outside my shower curtain and said “we know it’s going to happen eventually, why don’t I just join you,” and then Jasper sat on my head and woke me up.

Angela and I went out for sushi for lunch today. There were leftovers, and we were right down the street, so after lunch we went to see Lisa. She couldn’t taste the leftovers we’d brought her, because she’d stuffed herself a couple hours before—on sushi—at the same restaurant.

This is what we ordered (plus we got Arigato Balls, because hi, fried cheese):

Top row: Tuna nigiri (magaro); Ultimate Tuna Roll (off their new menu, a California roll wrapped in tuna)

Middle row: Caterpillar roll (smoked eel wrapped with avocado, plus that great sweet sauce, this is my favorite); avocado roll (which I always always get because it cuts spicy like nothing else)

Bottom row:

Well, the bottom row. Thereby hangs a tale. That is a Lion King Roll (off their new menu, again). It looks like pizza, I know. It’s not. It was crab and avocado and roe wrapped in salmon and a weird sauce that was like spicy Hollandaise and then broiled. So the salmon was flaky and opaque and perfectly cooked, and it was just wonderful. This was great. I’d get it again in a heartbeat.

But boy, when it showed up, we kind of freaked out at the look of it.

On the way back home from Lisa’s, we saw this lady driving next to us.

Honestly, if it’s cold enough for mittens and earmuffs, put the goddamn top up.