Phone Skills

I've recently been thinking about an old friend I haven't talked to in a while. So I came up with a brilliant plan: I pulled out my cell phone and called her. But what did I hear on the other end? Not my friend's voice. Not a recording asking me to leave a message. Her husband answered the phone. Dum dum DUM!

My mind went completely blank. I know there's something I'm supposed to say in this situation... but my mind was not prepared. Everyone I talk to these days has a cell phone. When I call, I expect to communicate directly with the person I'm trying to reach. I'm not supposed to have to communicate with OTHER people.

Me:           "Hi, uh, I'm trying to reach [friend], I'm not sure I have the right number?"
Husband:   "Oh, yeah, we just have the one phone, you dialed right."
Me:           "Oh, okay. Thanks. Um. Can you... Can I... I could... leave a message?"
Husband:   "She's right here, let me get her for you."

The funny thing is, I call strangers all the time at work and know how to request the person I'm looking for, and leave a message if needed. I just never encounter this anymore in my social life. I'll guess this means I'll have to be more proactive. In the near future I will be implementing some training exercises to keep my phone skills sharply honed and ready for the unpredictable. Clearly this will be a top priority.

Weekend Things

Here are some things I did this weekend:

Tyler got some good news from work on Friday, so we wanted to celebrate! We went to Red Robin with Jordan and Megan. Thought about hitting up a parking-lot carnival after, but everyone was too tired.

Saturday morning, Tyler had to catch up on a few things at the office. I decided the nice weather was actually picnic weather. At the grocery store deli counter, I picked out "fancy" meats and cheeses to attempt to recreate his favorite restaurant-style sub sandwich.

Turns out we don't know where any parks are, and we ended up at some sort of bird/wildlife preservation area.

Ideal park experience:

Approximate park experience:

We found a shady spot in a semi-grassy-ish area. Tyler thought it was altogether too hot to be outside, but was gracious enough to participate in my picnic plan with minimal grousing. Even took his shoes off!

After an hour and a half of outdoor time (during which Tyler had a shouting match with the sun as it slowly crept across our picnic blanket), we packed up and headed to Melissa and Raphael's house. We were going to grill... something. We were hoping a plan would just come together, but at the mention of charcoal, we quickly lost motivation. We ended up going out for dinner instead.

On Sunday morning we put some corned beef, potatoes, and cabbage in the crockpot. Tyler kept calling it leprechaun meat. I also made some mini-cupcakes for our Primary class at church (we teach the 9-year-olds). We made them work for the special treat by giving them a simple test at the end of class. Despite high stress over the testing, they all passed and everyone enjoyed the green-cream-filled cupcakes.