Today, Mark and I went to upgrade cell phones. My two-year plan was almost up and my old cell phone was on its last legs... the microphone was goofed up meaning that more often than not, I could hear the other person on the line but they couldn't hear me. Not good. Meanwhile, Mark wanted to upgrade his phone to one that had a few more perks. (For example, his old phone only had space for three address book entries.)

It was my intention, from the word "go", to get a camera phone. Mark was considering getting one that had a color screen. We BOTH wound up getting the camera phone that our cellular provider offers (they only have one model).

While we were waiting our turn in the store, I started fooling with the two camera phones that were on display, and I stored pictures of Mark on them both. :o) Once the purchase was complete, we sat on a bench right outside the store and tried sending one another messages. (That's when I took the shot of Mark that's currently my wallpaper on that phone.) After some experimenting, I figured out how to e-mail the photo to myself. OOOO, but I think I'm going to have all sorts of fun with this. Hat Trick is going to be able to do a lot more things, now that I don't have to worry about carrying my regular digicam everyplace I go.

The one thing that I'll miss from my old phone is its QWERTY keyboard. That was tailor-made for people who want to send text messages and emails, and I loved it. I'm getting the hang of the T9 typing system (especially after having to manually enter my entire contacts list that I had stored on the old phone. One by one I viewed the entries on the old phone and T9-ed them into the new one. My thumb is exhausted but by golly, I have those contacts all set up now.

New toys are definitely fun, but it'll be nice to have a cell phone I can actually use to have CONVERSATIONS again. The fact that the battery's not going to run out by about 4:30 PM every day is a plus, too. I'm looking forward to having a functional phone again.