The Emerald Rose

     Yes you read correctly, strawberrys, bosenberrys, and blackberrys. It was that kind of a week!

     Firstly I was reminded severely for the past two weeks as to the why of  leaving the New England states and “following the sun” to Florida. COLD, COLDER, and COLDEST,….no make that UBER, MEGA COLDNESS. It came to visit us for the past two weeks. The first day was,…so,so, by the second day the “bloom was off the rose”,….and by the third day I was checking airline prices to small warm Islands in the Southern Caribbean. And on it went for almost two weeks.

       Now as a former hardy “Yankee” from Massachusetts, Maine and New Hampshire, I cut my teeth on cold. Layer up was the very first survival trick you learned. Under shirt (or tee shirt), shirt over that, sweater over that, and some protective outer clothing over that. It wasn’t like being on the beach in Hawaii, but only your hands, feet and nose were subject to frostbite. My wife got to wear her mink coat last Sunday, (although she was nervous about it because here in the South if it’s furry and moving you can shoot it and ol’ Rufus got a recipe for it.)

        But I digress. About the middle of the week we decided to play a game called “old retired farts”. That’s where you wake up, feel like you are related by blood to a penguin, thank God profusely for the TV controller on the night stand, slide one arm out quickly and flip the TV on to the weather Channel and pull the covers up around your neck and “hunker down” until.

      “Until” is defined as as long as you physically can stay in bed, under the warm covers and “snuggle” without feeling like either a totally lazy piece of humanity,…or a retired old fart.

       And in the middle of the week I rolled over reached for the TV controller and it didn’t work, neither did the lights, nor the hot water heater, nor the stove,….but most punishing, the COFFEE POT would not turn on or make that wonderful liquid “get up” juice. And then amid a plethora of old adjectives and adverbs acquired in the U.S. Navy I realized the power was out. (Why doesn’t it go out on balmy days? But no it’s always the hottest or the coldest days that it fails)

        It took about fifteen minutes of sitting in the freezing house before I said to my wife, “Come on, I need HOT coffee and food.” (Not wanting to brave the freezing temperatures , 26 degrees F. she declined, but eventually came around) So off we go to Don Pedro’s for breakfast,…OH NO! They were closed, so we decide to head down to “Cracker Barrell”, …and OH NO! They are closed for four days to remodel or some such thing. (All the kitchen equipment was in the parking lot and they had steam cleaners going like crazy, even in the freezing weather!) Now we could have gone to Waffle House, but since my “roto-rooter” job for cholesterol we’ve kind of stayed clear (sigh! I do miss a good greasy breakfast with home fries) So we settled on iHop (International House of Pancakes),…they have Bosenberry syrup, an  old weakness of mine. My wife likes their strawbwerry pancakes, so there you go.

      Oh yeah, the damn Blackberrys,…well let me sort of condense this a bit. My original “provider” was Nextel because they had the “walkie-talkie” direct connect built in, and they were great. But like anything that works great, some one decides to “improve” life for us. So they sold themselves to another carrier, Sprint who supposedly has this great coverage, a 3G AND a 4G network, etc. I was assured it would be a seamless transition. That was about a year ago.

        Now over the past 12 months I have become a veritable Blackberry Ace troubleshooter, why I even know a lot of the “techs” at Sprint and RIMM who invented the B’berry by name. I can do “hard resets” “master radio boots”, complete wipes” and tons of other neat stuff. Why? Because I have had nothing but problems. Last April, just before my heart thingy, I bought a brand new B’berry for dependability, etc. etc. But I still spent more time with “technical help” than my own family,…and the Quality Control of the tech support staff is going the wrong way,….poor to abominable!  I usually start the call with them by saying,..”OK, I’ve done the hard reset, I’ve called and had someone re-send my service books to the phone, two of my e-mail accounts don’t get e-mails any more but the third and fourth ones are fine, and oh yeah, my clients are getting really pissed that my phone is “undependable” and since I am in the personal communications business that is a no-no.”

          Well the rep I got this past Monday was honest (I think they would have fired her if they knew) but she tells me the “Nextel” B’berrys just won’t work right with a 3G or 4G network like Sprints, and it’s not worth trying to spend all the money trying to make them work right!!!!

          “SOooooo, what should I do?”, says I.

          “Get one of our ‘new’ Sprint Blackberrys, like the new 9630 “Tour”, says she.

          ” And how much is that little gem going to cost me?”

          “Well since you are a valued customer,…I can sell it to you for $49 plus give you a trade in allowance of $49 for your old Nextel phone.”

         “So where do I have to go to get this all done?”

         “We’ll go ahead and ship you one out today via second day air, so you should have it by Wednesday, would that be good for you?”

       So here I am, brand new super dooper, state of the art, high tech toy a scant day and a half later, all loaded up with “my stuff” and functioning like the purring  of a Ferrari Testarosa at 200 miles an hour!

      So there you have it, Strawberrys, Bosenberrys, and Blackberrys,….and God’s in his heaven and all’s right with the world,……for now.

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