little tid bit of happy news....:)

....nope, still waiting for a guy...but maybe next best...


CAFE RIO OPENED IN CALIFORNIA!! It's up in Orange County, so still haven't gotten there yet. But, folks, this is SOOOO much closer than Las Vegas and St. George. Trip? 2 hour road trip? I think SO!

checked off my list...

1. Get a new phone and plan!

I did it, I went to T-Mobile and talked to them about my plan and getting a new phone. Lucky for me I did it on Saturday, because that afternoon before I went to the mall, my phone died. I now am finally on a 1,000 text message plan (can you believe we need plans with that many texts, I had thought 400 would be good enough, but previous post explained that).

I am now the proud owner of this new baby...the Samsung Gravity 2.

My previous phone was a Motorolla, so this is a completely new device. It has a slide out keypad (just when I got used to using numbers to text, I'm now thrown for a loop and have to use letters). It has a 2.0 megapixel camera, so better pics, and internet capability, which I did get a 30 trial and need to remember to call and cancel that at the end of it.

I'm not an expert in tech toys by any means and all I really want a phone to do is receive calls and allow me to call people too. So far this phone does that. I've been relegated to the slowest texter alive position again, so if you do text me, thereby helping to use up one of my 1000 texts, it might take me a little longer to respond, I'm still in the elementary stages of using this phone.

A pet peeve only I can control

The last few months I've received my phone bill, all I've seen are HUGE numbers. It's getting kind of ridiculous. I first started with T-Mobile and thought 400 text messages a month would be ok. And for a long time it was. But since May of 2009 (RS pres. start time correlates with this) my messages have been increasing, to the point where every month, I get billed for all those text messages I'm going over. I've exceeded my monthly plan by 300 messages each month for the last 4 months. I thought, I'll just try to bring it down, but that hasn't worked. So, after being mad at myself and the phone company for the last 4 months, I'm looking into different providers and better deals than T-Mobile. But I was reading today and saw something that didn't help my mood towards cell phone companies, what do you think about this?

"Text messages are short, quick and cheap to transmit. So why are they adding so much to your wireless bill?

The messages are such a tiny piece of data that they cost carriers only about one-third of a cent to deliver, according to computer scientist Srinivasan Keshav, who testified before U.S. senators on the issue last summer.

But on a pay-per-text plan, the 160-character messages typically cost 20 cents outgoing and 10 cents incoming. That's a markup of as much as 6,500%. OMG!

"It's pretty much pure profit," Keshav says. "Carriers would argue they put that money toward investing in new technology."

Even if customers sign up for an unlimited texting plan for, say, $10 a month, carriers are still cashing in considering that their overhead is basically $0. That's a lot to pay for a few LOLs."
By Julianne Pepitone, CNNMoney.com staff reporter

So, for all of those out there who hate looking at your phone bill because of this, don't be like me and just put up with it, make a change, I'm going to!

My new favorite!!! (and not so favorite...)

I have found a favorite place to eat at lunch during the week. I shouldn't love to eat there so much but I can't help myself! Who knew that sandwiches, panini's, soups and salads could be SOOOO good! I really should figure out how to make my own!

It's funny, I work downtown, but don't go outside my office for lunch all that often, so I don't check out the nice, cool little places to eat. I miss that about working in San Francisco, there were some cool ethnic food places to eat and they weren't that hard to get to. With only a half hour lunch, it's kind of hard to get to anywhere diverse or interesting for lunch and sadly, San Diego doesn't offer much in ways of non-chain lunch stops in it's civic area. So I'm settling for the chain, but I LOVE it.

And my not so favorite....
I have been working on a project for the last 3 months at work that required a lot of reading, editing, revisions, brainstorming and meetings. It's our annual report that gets sent to the whole 9th Circuit and to Congress. So, we wanted it to look nice, be as correct and factual as possible but be aesthetically pleasing as well. Not some stuffy report full of figures. I worked along with 2 other people on this. We had many meetings for how the book should be arranged, collected all the agencies reports, wrote our own reports, met with the graphic designer and printer, all that good stuff. So, the reports were delivered today! Yipee, except the director of our procurement department, a man that had nothing to do with the report itself, picked up the reports and started distributing them himself. I'm sorry, that was my job!! And I worked on the darn thing, not him! It kind of bothered me that I put in a lot of hours looking at every word in this report, I kind of felt a little ownership of it. And I feel like that was just ripped away by him acting like he had done it, and now it's his to pass out. He came up to give me MY copy and a few others. I had to respond, I'm sorry, but I'm going to need more, which is why they usually come to me first. I have 105 to send out!! I think I should get the reports and not have to go through Mr. take-your-job-and-get-all-the-credit man.
Anyway...that's it. It's a good looking report. We did a good job. Guess that should be enough, but in the world of office politics and performance, getting credit for what I did is kind of on top of my list!