On Sunday I drove up to Seattle for a day trip, ostensibly to make some extra money for my upcoming trip to California. Unfortunately my funds were running rather low due to a blown headgasket that ended up costing $1400. Sarah and I bought a Subura in July, and already we have had to replace the transmission, and now both headgaskets, ugh...Anyways, I drove up to Seattle and saw a client, and had a very wonderful time. I always love it when my clients let me give them a prostate massage, I think I am very skilled at it. When my session was finishing I asked my client to show me the iphone that they had. He pulled it out and showed me all the bells and whistles. I must say, after 2 years of living with the cell phone from the stone age (my punishment for losing my phone at the beach while rolling around with a hot date!) and using dial-up internet at home, I was thoroughly mesmerized. So I left my session, went and got some food, and waited for the next client to call. And I waited, and I waited. And he never called. So I drove back to Portland.
The next day I had an unexpected call, it was easy and fun, and afterwards I decided that rather than save the money i made for my road trip, I would go and buy an Iphone. I would no longer miss important emails because of connection issues. Now I will be connected everywhere I go, 21st century woman, hurray! Not only did i buy myself an I phone, but I bought one for Sarah too (putting me right back to broke, but broke with an Iphone.) The salesman at the AT&T store was a bit overwhelming, but easy enough to forget. When we left the store we decided to make a quick stop over at Powells to get a book for the road. Powell's for those folks who are not familiar with Portland is a local landmark. It is one of the largest, longest running, and certainly most impressive independent bookstores in the country. It is practically a tourist destination. Anyways, I walk into Powell's and as I wander through the massive aisles of books thinking fondly of my new iphone, I hear over the loudspeaker that Susie Bright was going to be speaking in 5 minutes! What amazing luck! Susie Bright, the sexpert! The same Susie Bright that I heard speak about masturbation on the radio when I was a repressed 15 year old evangelical. She was practically responsible for me learning to feel ok about masturbation and eventually sex. How amazing that I would have the luck to see her speak. So Sarah and I went and grabbed ourselves a seat up in the reading room, and wow were there some hot, slutty, women in there! Susie's talk was great, but we were anxious to go activate our new Iphones, so we cut out through her talk half way through. Besides, I realized that my motives with Susie Bright were progressively taking the realm of dirty fantasies, and I didn't have the focus to pursue them as long as there was a brand new Iphone in my pocket!
So we drove to our friend L's house, since he had a high speed internet connection and we would be able to activate our phones there. First he had to download the newest version of ITunes, only problem was, he couldn't remember the password to his operating system, which meant he did not have admin priviliges. For the next hour we tried to decipher the clue that apple provided us "B'day". We tried his birthday, his mom's birthday, his dad's birthday, his deceased brothers birthday. After an hour we gave up and made the hour drive home. Once home, I set to work downloading the newest version of Itunes, which believe me, took 6 hours with my slow connection. When I then plugged in my Iphone I was startled to learn that my operating system was too old to use. I had to upgrade. Dammit! Back to Portland it was. So Sarah and I drove the hour back into town to go to Macforce to see about upgrading our computer and replacing our wireless card. Well, before we could upgrade our operating system we had to add more memory. They wanted $400, and they would not be finished for 3-5 days. Fuck that, the computer was only a thousand bucks new, three years ago. Besides, we were leaving town, and all we wanted to do was turn on our phones. At this point, I was ready to strangle the teenage dick-weed who was trying to extort us, but instead we graciously declined and left the store.
So then I called my friend Lana (www.ilovelana.com). Lana is a technically savy woman, who generally has newer technology. We went to her house to try and set it up. Unfortunately her Mac was also 10.39 instead of 10.4.4. Dammit! This was starting to eat up my whole day, and I had planned on leaving town in less than 24 hours. At this point, we drove on to the Lloyd Center Mac store and begged the salesperson to help us activate our phones. He was nice enough to help us out, and we got Sarah's activated, but there was some crazy delay on mine, so we picked up a friend of ours from out of town and drove home. 6 hours later Sarah got a message from AT&T that my account was ready, and my phone just needed to be plugged into a computer. So back into town we drove, this time to another friends house, to borrow her computer and find a wi-fi connection. Finally at 10 pm last night, my phone was activated. A full 24 hours of hell. I was ready to destroy Apple. I would have returned the phone, but there is a %10 extortion fee that apple charges, probably because they know people will be unable to use it without purchasing costly upgrades. After all that, I was damned if I was just going to give $40 to the store that I bought my phone from. As it stands, my trip got pushed back a day, and I can't download music from my itunes onto my phone. Hopefully after this upcoming trip I will have enough money to get a new computer, and upload some music on my phone.
Fortunately my day wasn't a total bust yesterday. Because I did get to pick up my friend Keer in Portland and take him out to our house in the woods. He had his banjo with him, and he played the banjo while Sarah sang (she has the voice of an angel, and they have been making music for going on 10 years together), and I played the piano. Plus we went on a lovely hike. So all in all, I have no complaints, now that everything is taken care of. Plus, Keer left his banjo with us (it was a spare) and maybe we will learn how to play it!
Today I seriously need to pack, and pack well. I always end up forgetting vital items of clothing (like socks), sex toys, you name it. And this is a big road trip I am embarking on. I'm so excited, Sarah and I haven't traveled together in a really long time. First stop SF, then its on to LA where we will be doing a scene for Vicki Richter. How cool is that? Getting paid to have sex with your lover? I love my life.
xoxo
Mandy
. She makes vague allusions to "girls like me" but doesn't push it. 
