Dateline: Mimi’s Branch International Headquarters, Austin, Texas.
“Which is more important? The world as it exists? Or the world you are making up a responding to?”
The world I am responding to, of course. Best Thinking and Finances. Collecting information for income taxes has a way of forcing a person out of the delusional financial picture running daily operations. Even my carefully honed sense of denial can’t hold back the two Annual Reality Check Questions.
Question One: “Wow. We made that much money?” followed quickly by…
Question Two: “So what the hell happened to it?”
Having no answer to the above question that didn’t involve cocktails and Baja sunsets, I decided to take a gander at all those convenient automatic pays…which, in my blind fervor for Baja, etc….I obsessively ignore.
Perusing my statements, I determine that the current monthly outgo for cell phones, HD cable, land line phone, home wireless, and those handy mobile wireless devices….is $523.00.
Now that’s not the figure yelled by people in those commercials where they throw their bills over their shoulders.
Thus. Something must be done! I little less travel in my immediate future, I set about to rectify the situation. At the time of this admirable commitment we had: three working HD cable televisions, four working phones, two functioning mobile internet devices, home wireless, two reliable email accounts, and two snappy cell phones with unlimited use contracts. Why bore you with this inventory?
Because, at the moment…well, suffice it to say…we’re not quite as plugged into the worlds of communication and entertainment…as we were when I began my crusade.
Note: For those of you too young to get the Keystone Cops reference, the K Cops were characters in silent movies who descended on criminals only to bungle their policing duties in every way possible. In fact, the Keystone Cops would so mess up a crime scene that often the criminals would give themselves up, just to get the Keystone Cops to leave them alone. And there was the afternoon that turned into evening…when during Hour Five of the Cable Guy Invasion…but I get ahead of myself.
Day One, Step One: Before switching the home wireless, I took on the task of upgrading from the Wedmail email system we had that didn’t allow html or any editing…which meant that all emails going out looked like sales slips from Costco. So, from Webmail to Windows Live Mail. Nothing to it.
A couple of taps here and there…we’d be in, sending emails that looked like articles in the New Yorker. I knew the upgrade process was going to be a snap because…the Time Warner Tech guy, Steve, from phone help said all I had to do
was…it was going to be easy…
To be continued if I can get to the library again and use the Internet.
