Today, I hit an extreme moment of cellphone induced crankypants.
For the first three years of my cellphone ownership, I had out of economic necessity the smallest minuted national plan in the nation. But dang it all, it was cheap. Cheap, I tell you.
To make this work for me, I had the number blocked, only gave out my number to close family and a few friends. Most of the time the phone lived under the driver's seat of my car off. Yes, off.
Off is the best way to have cheap cellphone bills. But an off cellphone really irrates other people.
In August, my roommate gave me her old Nokia 6360, which was a big upgrade over my previous Nokia, and AT&T was kind enough to give me extra minutes to extend my contract for a year. Which I did.
A total of 350 weekday minutes made me feel rich. I started to leave my phone on and actually answering it. In this feeling of freedom and in an expansive mood, I took off the number block. And there began the beginning of the end.
People who I called then had my cell number and forgot about my real phone number (home / office). And instead used my cell number. And used it. And passed it on. Less than one month later, I was all finished with my bright and shiny minutes three weeks into my monthly billing cycle. This happened two months in a row.
As a stop gap, I started not answering the cell unless I knew it was important. I stopped answering any phone number not in my address book. I made my cell voice mail state that I would only listen to the messages on the weekends and to call my home phone if you didn't want to wait for nearly a week for me to return the call.
And it just kept ringing. And ringing. And I went mad yesterday. Angry mad. I had 8 calls from numbers I did not know. I just looked at the phone and said "F**k you." I called my home phone, retrieved my messages and called everyone that needed a call back. My cell continued to ring.
Today, I listened to my messages and all the phone calls were from music industry people who had the office number at Alex's and my home number, knew I was at the office, and continued to call my cell. But how they got my cell I didn't know at the time. I was pissed. Alex does not pay my cell bill.
Thus, this afternoon, I called AT&T and changed my cell number. Until next time...
Last night at 10:31pm, at least 3 hours before I normally go to bed, I set my alarm clock for its usual time of 10:32am and turned off the lights. Yes, I slept for 12 hours straight and for good reason. I was exhausted from the night before.
