The Wrong Number

Yesterday, as I was jazzercising*, my crappy borrowed cellphone rang.  Since I am currently out of the service area and it costs like 2 dollars a minute to take a call, I just checked the number, realized it was no one I knew and went back to my squatting jazz hip thrusts, ignoring the ringing, which is more of an ephemeral ghostly wailing than a ringing, but you probably wouldn't have known what the hell I was talking about if I said I ignored the ephemeral ghostly wailing without letting you know that that is my ringtone. I only chose it because it was the least aurally offensive of all the rings available, and because I was unable to program Hedwig's theme into this phone by hand, since I am certainly not going to pay for a ringtone for a phone I hardly ever use.

Anyway, the phone then made a tinkling shooting star sound, which is the sound it makes when I get a message of the textual persuasion, which I always get when I ignore a call or miss one by accident, which I also usually ignore if I am doing something else, but then... I got another tinkling shooting star sound and I wondered, 'well, what the hell was that?!' So I checked and the person who I did not know had left a message.  And curiosity beat out. My logic being, if it was actually an important call for me from a number I didn't recognize I should know what it was, or if it was something important for someone else like "Billy, it's Devon, mama's being mauled by a snow leopard, you have to come home from the bar RIGHT NOW!" I might wanna let them know that they dialed the wrong number, for mama's sake.

But it wasn't for me, and it wasn't Devon calling for Billy, it was Ron, calling for Josh.

Hey Josh, it's Ron.  I'm in Montana for a few more days so give me a call when you get off work, dude, okay?! I wanna hang out. See ya man!

I can only assume that Ron was in town for something having to with a medical marijuana convention because this was the rest of the exchange when I texted to let him know that Josh was not getting his messages:

Me: Wrong number- sorry!

4:40pm Ron: What is the #

Me (thinking, doesn't your phone have that feature where you can see who you dialed? I thought that was standard, but fine, whatever...): XXX-XXX-XXXX (only I put my phone number instead of Xs, obviously, although I can't see that it would have made a difference had I not used numbers).

5:09pm Ron: Got it dude thanx when u off work

Are you fucking kidding me?! You were asking me, the person on the receiving end of the wrong phone call, what Josh's actual number is... *facepalm*

Me: This really isnt josh. XXX-XXX-XXXX has never had a male owner. (Screw capitalization and punctuation for wrong numbers, let them think I am dumb, what do I care?)

5:59pm  Ron: Cool send me a pic so I know this aint josh

FFS... really?! Now I have to sext you to get you to stop calling? But I would have sent a picture if I had had the capability to send pictures just to get him to go away. It would have looked a lot like this:

Yes,  I would have hired a skywriter for the occasion.

But instead, I just ignored him, while being annoyed and partially amused. Until 8:46 pm when I received yet another call from Ron, which again, I ignored. And again, he left a message... and again, I was too curious and had to listen to it.

Josh- Ron. Dude, give me a call.

*blink*


If he calls again, I am texting him a link to this post.


 *fine, I wasn't really jazzercising, but that is more pleasant than what I was really doing, just trust me on this one.

SNOMG!

So, uh, I know I have said that I live in Montana, but I have also indicated that I am not originally from here. I am, in fact, from Florida originally. I've lived here in Montana for three years, and as such, driving in snow still scares the holy living hell out of me.

Today, I was coerced into driving to do stupid errands that totally could have waited, in the middle of what should have been labeled a blizzard... and would have been if people without meteorological degrees from Florida were in charge of classifying northern weather.

I missed one turn because this was my view:

And then I hyperventilated as I drove further and further out of town because I couldn't tell where the median lumps broke because everything was covered in snow.  Finally about a mile or two later the median lumps disappeared and I then flailed as cars whizzed passed me at 50 mph while I looked for stop sign shapes to try to turn left to get off the road and turn around.  Have I mentioned I'm afraid of left turns?

So I managed to turn around and get where I was going and then sent a text while I waited for the first errand to be done, informing my loved ones that I was going to die while driving in crazy snow storm (thankfully I received a reply that was not "K"). And then I promptly experienced the joy of my car pretending to be a Disney ride while trying to enter an intersection as I lost traction and slid at 90 degree angles left and right while begging my car, Eunice, to 'PLEASE! PLEASE! PLEASE! for the love of weasels, go forward,' so that we were not smashed by the people approaching way too quickly.

I managed not to die, as you can probably deduce, but I think I might now need blood pressure medicine, or some sort of anxiety pill as a result of my crazy snow storm adventure.

Pet Peeves- Part Two

This is the conclusion of yesterday's "Pet peeves- Part one" a series in which I discuss pet peeves.
Today, instead of llamas, we have squirrels!

Pet Peeve #4- The "K" Reply:

I am terrible at texting.  It is probably because I don't actually have a cell phone, though I have the use of one for emergency purposes.  The cell phone that is in my possession is the free type that the store gives you thinking, "This thing is totally nonfunctional, surely this person will buy a better one." But I didn't buy it, and it is only for once in a while, so it is crap.
And I live in Montana, where cell phone towers don't seem to actually exist and we don't have new fangled things on our service like, the ability to receive photos texts on our phones, even with a phone that is not bottom of the barrel.

Anyway, I can't text well, and each short message on my 3+ year old phone takes me about 5 minutes from beginning to end.  It's a lot of effort, so I am therefore peeved when I send out a several sentence text which takes me 3 minutes per sentence to type and I get back a reply of "K."  Even more so when I have asked a question in the text before making a statement and I then have to write another tortuously slow message to clarify.

Someday, I hope to get a real cell phone and maybe some friends so I can add super fast texting to my list of skills.

Pet Peeve #5- Superfluous Questions

I am a question asker.  Most of the time, if I don't understand something, I will ask question after question until I understand.  Thankfully, I am pretty self-reliant so often I try to figure things out myself first, but questions come in handy when interacting with others and trying to understand their motives.  However, there are a few questions that just get my goat, big time. What are these questions, you ask?

There are two major classifications of questions that drive me nuts: The Rhetorical Response and The Unanswerable Opening.

My mom is big on the rhetorical response.  After everything I tell her she answers, "Really!?" 

Me: I had the cafe' burger for lunch.

Mom: Really!?

(silence)

Me: . . . yes. . .

If it didn't shut down the conversation, I wouldn't mind it so much, but what do you answer when someone seems incredulous to every thing you say, and doesn't really respond with anything that lets you continue.  I usually just get mad, or stop talking and think about bacon.

The Unanswerable Opening is usually met with weirdness from me.

Although I am great at deductive logic, I am not great at being met with "Guess what!?" as an opening query.

"Guess what!?"

"You ...sold your feet to a Russia sausage salesman?"

I know I am never going to be right so I figure if I say something weird, people will stop telling me their news that way.

I think this may be exactly why "Chicken butt" was created.

Pet Peeve #6- Pet Peeves?

My last pet peeve is reserved for people who don't understand the concept of pet peeves. You ask them what their pet peeve is and they answer something like, "Lying," or "Racism," or "People who murder babies."  Now, I know that these things are bad, and I don't deny that, but they qualify as quite a bit more than a peeve.
A peeve is supposed to be something with which most people have little to no problem.  A mild personal annoyance. They are supposed to be little things that drive you bonkers but that other people can laugh at.  I don't know a single person who is completely fine with liars, or racists, or baby murderers.  Not one.

So what are some of your pet peeves?