JoJoisms

An ARIDzona Moment

Written By: JoJoisms - Sep• 20•13

Cactus ManIn case you don’t happen to live in the desert of ARIDzona (or inside your oven), let me share with you this ARIDzona Moment:

A few weeks ago, I was celebrating my birthday.  I was 49 again on my way down from 50 the previous year.  It was still Monsoon Season (anywhere from late July, August to the beginning of September), which here on the surface of the sun, means it’s the only time of year we get rain. Not rain like normal people experience.  Desert dwellers live that old expression, “it never rains but it pours.”

A monsoon is where the heavens open up and dump an ocean on a parched land that cannot hope to soak it all up.  It runs off into your home and through your windows because ARIDzona home builders don’t think we need insulation…which is why our AC bills are so high.  All the cool air escapes through the visible cracks on the bottoms of the doors and sides of the windows designed to allow scorpions and lizards direct access.  But I digress…

It poured down rain while I was in church that SONday which dropped our normal September temps by 20 degrees.  So it was in the 80s all day! Too funny how people came to church in winter clothes. No kidding! High suede boots, long sleeves and sweaters.

This has been an ARIDzona Moment.  Stay tuned to JoJoisms.com for further heat humor.

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How I received a product four days before it was shipped!

Written By: JoJoisms - Sep• 19•13

I’m on a VERY restrictive diet to help me with my Hashimoto’s Thyroid Disease,  I need to eat protein every few hours for my Reactive Hypoglycemia, and, yes, my body is currently a bit of a mess.  Unfortunately, I don’t like a lot of protein-rich foods and most of them take too much time to prepare.  So I purchased this Stone Wave microwave pot that is designed to make a souffle type egg dish in just two minutes.

I ordered the cooker on August 28th as a birthday present to myself, but was disappointed to find that it would take 6-8 weeks to deliver.  I toyed with the idea of paying more for them to ship early, but decided against it because it would only decrease the processing by a small percentage.

On September 3rd, I received an email saying they FINALLY processed my credit card payment.  At this point I figured, if it took them six days to process the credit card, I’d probably get my Stone Wave Cooker on my next birthday!

Well, color me surprised (and that color would be purple!) when, on September 4th, I received the cooker!  I have already used it once and I love it!  Case closed, right?  Wrong!  Because on September 8th, my birthday, I received this email:

 

“Dear Stone Wave Customer,

Thank you for your recent Stone Wave order. Your order XXXXXX  has been shipped. Please expect to receive it in 7-10 business days.

To track the progress of your shipment, click here.

Thank you.

Stone Wave Customer Service”

 

I actually received the product four days before they say they shipped it!  The order number has been changed to protect the cooker’s account, but as you can see, they do things a little backwards over there at Stone Wave.  One might even say it was a bit Stone Aged.  Ba Dump Bump!

 

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Here lies my purple flip phone

Written By: JoJoisms - Sep• 18•13

RIP phone

It is with grape sadness that I report the death of my purple, Motorola flip phone.

Motor Mouth came into my life several years ago in the twilight of his life.  He took his place at my side for the primary purpose of getting me out of unfamiliar territory.   This directionally-challenged soul was then able to call her dh and ask him where on Earth she was and how she could find her way home.

Toward the end, poor Motor Mouth wasn’t able to find his own way to my voice mail, had to take naps after a 20 minute phone call and eventually was so tuckered out he would turn himself off without warning.

Motor Mouth leaves behind five cousin cordless phones and two iPhone children.  May he rest in peace.

 

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She gets her sense of humor from her mother

Written By: JoJoisms - Sep• 17•13

My daughter decided I needed some iPhone practice so she sent me a text.  At first, I didn’t even know how to access it.  Then I had some trouble touching the correct letters so all I could muster were short, one-word responses.  She put part of the  conversation on Facebook, but look how she introduced it:

 

“They grow up so fast…she’s texting, now. *sniff*”

Photo: They grow up so fast...she's texting, now. *sniff*

I’ve since graduated to three-word responses!

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Greetings from JoJo’s New iPhone

Written By: JoJoisms - Sep• 16•13

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERABeing the creative and goofy person that I am, I’ve never been one to record boring greetings for my voice mail.  If I had my way, they’d all be creative and fun, but I’ve had to curtail much of my creativity for the professional image my husband likes to portray at home.

My sister once had an adorable message on her machine that went like this:

“None of us are home right now because all of us are somewhere else. When all of us return, one of us will call you back!“

Our home voice mail greeting is pretty standard.  But when I got my new iPhone, I decided to go hog wild and record something really fun, especially since I was having such a hard time programming and learning how to use it!  So…here is my iPhone recorded greeting:

“You have reached JoJo’s new iPhone. I’m either not out right now or I don’t remember how to answer. Leave a message at the tone and, if I can figure out how to listen to it, I’ll call you back..unless I can’t figure that out either. In which case, I recommend you mail me a letter.”

Have you ever recorded a crazy and fun greeting? What did you say?  Post it here!

 

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The Pink iPhone Cover Caper

Written By: JoJoisms - Sep• 15•13

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAAs you read a few days ago, my husband bribed me into stepping into the 21st Century and getting an iPhone to replace my ancient, purple, flip phone.  The flip phone was shutting off, wouldn’t click through to text messages, couldn’t find it’s way to voice mail and was generally acting like an old man with an attitude.

I agreed under ONE condition: that he get me this beautiful purple case.  So the day he told me my iPhone had shipped, he also told me that my pink case was winging its way to me.  Oh NO YOU DON’T!  I”m not using that iPhone contraption without my purple case!

So on my birthday, iPhone not yet delivered, I opened the purple gift bag to find two purple shirts and a PINK iPhone cover!  Oh NO HE DIDN’T!  I just knew he was teasing me.  I just knew he wouldn’t dare give me a cheap $1.99 PINK, plastic cover!  He agreed.  He said it was $4.99…plus tax.

Four days after my birthday, my gorgeous, personalized purple cover appeared in the mail!  I love it!  I feel like my iPhone was naked and now it’s wearing clothes.  And it’s well dressed!  What do you think?

Makes the struggles to learn how to use this thing all better…for now.  Stay tuned to this blog channel for more of As the iPhone Turns!

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As the iPhone Turns: Beginnings

Written By: JoJoisms - Sep• 14•13

As the iPhone Turns continues with this episode.

After all that work I did to find that the back up had already done its job on its own, my dh took over to activate my new iPhone for me.

Mr. Techie, who said using the phone was EASY, had a terrible time setting it up.  You apparently need a password for this and a password for that.  Here a password, there a password, every where a password…

I hope I remember them all!

Next we had to import the contacts, set up some apps and take away some icons.  Then I got a tutorial on how to make a phone call, take a picture and text–of which the next day I remembered NOTHING!

After that, we purple-ized it a bit.  I got to choose a purple background to put on the home page and put a purple rose on the other page that shows up when you start the iPhone.  I had a heck of a time figuring out when I should touch and when I should swipe.  And don’t get me started on how difficult it is to touch a small icon with my finger tips when I have long nails!

So after all that set up, we still didn’t have time that night to set up my Outlook or record my greeting.  Not to mention the fact that I still don’t have my personalized, monogrammed, purple case!

Stay tuned to this blog for more episodes of As the iPhone Turns!  And please leave an encouraging comment.  However, if you call my cell phone, don’t be surprised if I can’t figure out how to answer it!

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Murphy’s Law Humor

Written By: JoJoisms - Sep• 13•13

Today being Friday the 13th, I thought I’d bring you a little Murphy’s Law humor.

 

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You Can’t Handle the (blue) Tooth!

Written By: JoJoisms - Sep• 12•13

My new iPhone got here the day after my birthday, but I couldn’t figure out what to do with it so I waited for my dh to get home.

He plugged it in to charge it up and settled in to watch racing with my son telling me to b/up my flip phone contacts using the directions. Yeah, right!  The directions said, “Back up your old phone.” That was somewhat less than helpful. lol

So I went on the Verizon site and typed in backup.  Found 171 entries.  They told me about iCloud and the cost of keeping my iPhone data on their server or something.  It also gave me a link where I could transfer my data from my old iPhone.  Since I didn’t have an old iPhone, that didn’t apply to me and I began to look for the customer service number to speak to a live body and ask for HELP!

For reasons unknown to me, Verizon hides the phone number so, after searching for 20 minutes, I was finally able to trick the website into giving me one.  Don’t ask me how. I can’t remember.

I called and was prompted by Automated Audrey who asked me a series of questions, none of which applied to me.  I kept pressing zero until…YES, it transferred me to a live, breathing human being!  As Phil Robertson says, NOW we’re cooking with peanut oil!

I got to a rep who was very nice.  He guided me through the b/up process step by step–at the end of which we found that my contact list was ALREADY backed up!  At this point, it is already evident that I can’t handle this technology.  Stay tuned to this blog for further episodes of As the iPhone Turns.

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An inspirational 9-11 message

Written By: JoJoisms - Sep• 11•13

JoJo, Laura and KennyTwelve years ago, our country was attacked. So many people’s lives changed that day.  I can still remember exactly what I was doing when I heard.  As information unfolded, I found that I didn’t know anyone personally who was killed during 9-11…until a few months ago.

Kenny was a childhood friend when I lived in an apartment building in NY city.  My sister and I have fond memories of him even though we didn’t know him long. He made a lasting impression upon us because, even at the tender age of 4 or 5 yrs old, he was kind, nurturing and sweet.  We had such fun as pre-school aged kids in that apartment building watching Marine Boy and Speed Racer while jumping on the couch cushions.

Once, all three of us got stuck in the elevator on our way up to his apartment to watch cartoons.  He protected us from the mean looking older man who got stuck with us…or so we felt.

Our families went on a vacation together once and had a blast.  However, we moved away and lost touch with Kenny and his family not too long after this picture was taken.

One day last month, I was telling my niece about him as she was visiting ARIDzona from California.  On that same day her mother, my sister, was trying to find Kenny to connect with him on Facebook.  What she found saddened us both.

Kenny died in the Twin Towers that fateful day on September 11, 2001.  We found his memorial page online.  We were not at all surprised to find that he had lived his life in such a way as to leave behind a great deal of people who admired and missed him dearly–as we do.  He had made such an impression that his memorial webpage is filled with posts of how Kenny had touched people’s lives.  Kenny grew into a good and faith-filled man and I am saddened that he was taken from us before I got to know him as an adult.

My prayers go out to his family on this day as they celebrate his incredible life even as they remember his tragic and senseless death.

My prayers go up for all who were affected by this terrible day in our country’s history…that is to say, all Americans.  Because we were all touched by the horror of that day and always will be.

I pray also that I might live my life as Kenny apparently lived his short time here.  May we all be inspired to be the kind of person who touched so many lives.

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