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Originally uploaded by biukalee.

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The "No I" Phone

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It's a cheap party trick: I pull out my phone, flip it open to check the time or send a quick text, and watch for the reactions. In the decades I've owned a flip phone, people have given me a few double takes. Recently, though, when I opened my phone to squint at a photo texted to me, the person sitting across the conference table surprised me with a "Haha! I love your phone!" And I did, too. I loved my flip phone. Then, in a deadly mistake of distracted domesticity, I scooped it up with my bed sheets and dropped it in the washing machine: Eco Cold, extra spin. Oh gentle readers, the tragedy of beautiful T9 predictive text programming drowned at the bottom of the linens spin cycle! Yes, I lost saved phone numbers, the blurry store photos I'd snapped over the years to double check prices when back to internet access, the text threads with details about addresses and meet-ups... all lost. Sad, inconvenient, annoying, frustrating, all of it. But the biggest tragedy, ...
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Signs of the Time

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For several years, in the valley where I lived in my former life, there were large billboards along the freeway with a man smiling a cheesy smile as he draped his arms around the giant telephone number 222-2222. Aparently, if you were in an accident, he was going to be your buddy and fix all of your problems. What more could you want than a friendly accident lawyer who knew how to drape his arms around giant numbers? Fortunately, I never had cause to call him. But now I am curious, because on the same billboards, with the same giant red numbers 222-2222, there is a cozy little smiling family. They are smiling because they called the number to buy a house. They may also be smiling because they get to drape their arms around each other, but I'm not sure. I've thought a great deal about why a family would buy a house from an accident lawyer, and about an equal length of time wondering why an accident lawyer would change his career to realty without changing his advertising strateg...
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Lunch With the Babysitter

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In the world of kids, there are definite trends in food. For instance, I can't remember babysitting for a single family that did not, at one time or another, have cheese sticks in their refrigerator. That is just fine. I happen to like cheese sticks. Colby, Mozzarella, Cheddar, and even Monterrey Jack. But there are other food trends in Kid Land that took a little while longer to grow on me. I've already mentioned Macaroni and Cheese, and I'm sure you remember hot dogs from your own childhood (of course now a days, they are 100% turkey meat or chicken) and peanut butter and jelly. Both of which I gave up eating about the time I entered high school, but now that I lunch with kids, I've added them back to my diet. I've even met and conquered the dreaded cheese spray. But while I catch myself eyeing the baby's applesauce (also something that I spent nearly a decade avoiding, although college cafeteria food drove me back to it) or munching on fish crackers because t...
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