iThoughts

August is to the summer season what New Year’s Day is to the winter holidays: the tail end of a good spell. And each – both August and New Year’s – is followed by a period of denial. Fall’s so magnificent! Colorful! Love those dead leaves! Bare branches… beautiful, no? Like arms. Artsy. Let me take another photo of the same old tree outside my window (really because there’s nothing else).

But I have to say that each day of a tail end of anything good is especially meaningful. Winter break is merely fun at the beginning, but revered at the close. Every minute counts.

So, too, in August.

And how did those minutes count for me? What beautiful summer ritual did I chase down on this warm (for once) Madison day?

I bought an iPhone.

It was inevitable. There are basically four people who occupy 90% of my cell phone minutes and of those, three are switching to AT&T and the fourth doesn’t do cell phones (can you guess who that may be?).

Having recently learned the technology of retail in the high tech age on my moonlighting job, I guessed my receptors would be ready for the challenge that an iPhone offers. Still, the rapid fire geek-speak of the rep over at Apple central (at our local mall) was slightly over my head. (I may have been his first and only customer who admitted to never texting anyone in her life; following that admission, I was too mortified to tell him that his examples, based on analogues from Star Wars, were meaningless to me as I had never seen Star Wars.)

And so I asked for a written manual to accompany the phone. Do you have a book maybe? With instructions? My daughter looked at me with pity. Or was it amusement? A book? You want a book of instructions? No kidding?


It was uphill after that. I cooked dinner for daughters and enjoyed not moonlighting tonight as the orange moon rose over the eastern skies and then disappeared again behind a cloud.

[addendum: I sent in my primary camera for servicing today; expect fewer photos in the days ahead.]