Northwoods Woman

Then you may find this article justifies every reason for you to fear Friday the 13th.

For 5 hours this past weekend, I had the whole fam damily at the house.  And in honor of this special occasion, someone* had the bright idea to assemble everyone for a family picture.

In a way it’s kinda like herding cats.  They are spread out all over the homestead and trying to corral them is a great test of patience.

The little ones are all excited until they find out they have to a) stand still; b) smile; c) act like human beings.  Then you add to the mix the parents of the young ones who drag themselves over to the “staging area” like it is a death march and hope you can elicit a sincere smile out of them in the next 5 minutes.

The biggest troublemaker of them all is Rick.  He loves to stand behind me when I’m taking pictures and make funny faces so that the grandkids will get all giggly and silly.

After an eternity of 10 minutes, I prayed that there was a decent photo that didn’t look like a mixture of The Simpsons & The Bundys.

Months ago when I decided that I’d had enough with paying 3 different phone bills, there was an agreement between Rick & I that going strictly to a cell phone for our communications needs would be just hunky dory.

That lasted all of a week.  Rick realized that we he still had to have some kind of phone in the house because my cell phone has less than stellar service.  (I beg to differ:  my cell phone has crappy service but it still sends & receives calls.  The quality may not be the best if there is a sun spot/lightening storm/windy day/invasion from Mars, but I’m OK with that.)

The first option that he was convinced would cost us him just pennies was Magic Jack.  This wonderful invention was very inexpensive and you only had to pay a one-time initial bill of $80 or some other stupid amount and then monthly it was virtually free.  Only there was one small problem:  we couldn’t call anyone locally.  Sure, we could call everyone else on the planet, but not in our own dialing area.  This made the necessity of him calling me at home or me calling him at work somewhat problematic.  After him farting around on it for the 30 day “risk free trial”, he finally asked for a refund and sent the piece of crap “jack” back to them.

His latest find is from some geeks out in California that are trying to launch their own VOIP business.  Anything that can run through the computer has “RICK” written all over it (also anything geekish).  So far (which is a month now, I guess) the phone has worked well.  I can call Rick and he can call me.  We can also call other people, which is another good use of the phone I guess.

However, I’m kind of concerned about the phone they sent us.  It seems to be haunted.  The first time it showed that it was possessed was at 2:30 a.m. on a Sunday morning when it woke me up ringing.  “Who the f*ck is calling this house at that time of the morning“, is all I could think to myself as I stumbled bleary eyed to the kitchen to give the person on the other end a piece of my mind.  (side note:  no one was supposed to have the phone number, so add an extra level of freaky to the situation.)  I picked up the receiver and no one was there.  There also was no dial tone.  I was too tired to give it any thought, so I went back to bed, unhappy that I didn’t get to ream out somebody for calling in the middle of the night.

Time number 2 happened just a few days ago when the phone rang and I went to answer it.  Again, no one was on the other end of the line, and no dial tone.  I hung up and it rang again.  Picked it up – no one there,  yada, yada, yada.  So I just let the stupid thing ring… for 2 more minutes!  Then it stopped.  Mildly annoying?  Yes, you could say that.

The latest escapade happened when I was on my cell phone with my daughter tonight.  I had her on speaker phone so I could putz with cat food and I heard a dial tone, and I assumed that we had lost connection.  So I hung up.  Only problem was, I heard the dial tone again… and I wasn’t on the phone any more.  I quickly realized that it was the VOIP phone playing mind games with me.  Color me embarrassed!  That stupid thing made me hang up on my own daughter!