Smarty-pants Phone

I moved. I got an iPhone. I discovered that I got crappy reception at my house. I used my phone sparingly and only when it was connected to my in-house network. My smart phone sat idle for the better part of five weeks.
   Then I got a job. A job that takes me out of the house.
   I now have reception. And 3G connection. And I can do stuff with my iPhone. Like text effectively, action which my sister is all over. Me, not so much. I can download apps from the App Store. Wheee! If I use the compass I can tell which way I'm facing, which was always a question for me before I got this phone. Now I can tell the hobos who approach me which way North is. I can calculate a tip using the calculator, or just use my brain like I did when I was a waiter. I did use GarageBand to create a few ring tones, but there are tons of other things my iPhone can do that I'm completely ignorant of. And, perhaps, willfully so.
   Except...
   I discovered that I can take notes on my iPhone. Type things into a notepad and preserve them forever. So when I'm sitting in a restaurant observing the local fauna it seems like I'm texting, but I'm really jotting a few quick observations to myself. It's like when I use my digital recorder to preserve my pearls of wisdom, except not quite so 'douche-y' as a friend of mine put it. Although I can't say I think obliviously texting in a restaurant is any less douchebaggery than talking into a digital recorder.*

So here are a few notes I've taken in the last few days since I discovered this feature.

From Jim's - a chain of diners in San Antonio:
   'Cooked fish smells almost as bad as raw fish.'
   '300 lb. man makes a dramatic point of ordering wheat toast with his chicken-fried steak breakfast. It's not going to help.'
   'Hefty waitress constantly snacking. Wonder if she helped herself to some of my hash browns?'

From the gas station:
   'Why do bald guys with tattoos always look like they're going in to rob the place?'
   'Who rents videos from a Red Box outside a Valero? People who wear terrycloth shorts in public.'
   'Terrycloth shorts should never be worn in public.'

From the Wal-Mart parking lot:
   'Terrycloth shorts should never be worn in public.'
   'Is everyone here morbidly obese?'
   'Is anyone else looking at me and asking 'is everyone here morbidly obese?''
   'Have they stopped making toilet paper? Everyone has a twenty-four pack.'
   'What percentage of Wal-Mart workers smoke versus the average population?'

And so it goes...


* or iPhone, since it will also do digial voice recording. Steve Jobs' gnomes are nothing if not thorough.