New phone!

I can't really remember if I mentioned that I bought a new phone on Thanksgiving, but I did! Ordered it online (I switched plans, so I'm not on the family plan anymore, I've got my own. It's like I'm an adult with a paying job or something :) ), and it came like ten days after that maybe?

It's really cool, my service is through Virgin Mobile, and I have unlimited text, unlimited data, and 300 minutes for 35 a month. And now I have a smart phone! Very exciting. I have apps! And games! And the ability to check facebook on my phone! And check my email! And basically never need the computer again. Ha. Except to play Warlight, because my phone does not have adobe flash on it, which apparently I need. I'm not actually sure, btw, what I'm supposed to be doing on that game. So I'm just trying to take over Australia, Antarctica, and Canada. I've been mostly successful.

But I actually only just started playing Warlight sometime in the past 5 days, maybe. So for a month, there, I had no reason to get on the computer! Which means I haven't blogged. Clearly. (As a side note, with my phone I can actually convince myself that it's time to go to sleep when it's still a reasonable hour. Whenever I break out my computer, it's like I think I literally need to be on it all the time. I mean, here I am, really tired with nothing I need to do, yet refusing to get off the computer. Like I really need to check slowrobot one more time, because what if there's something new that I haven't seen in the past three minutes?)

So, Merry Christmas! It was lovely, I got some nice luggage, and a zen garden, and a necklace. And since I have a job this year, I could actually afford to get all my friends and coworkers nice stuff that I thought they would like. That's actually probably my favorite part of Christmas-- giving away presents. Chaelomen always tells me that when you give someone a present, you should make sure it's something that you like, because it's lame to give someone something you don't even like yourself. So it was cool to think about what my coworkers and friends might like, and how it compares with what I would like to get. It was lovely.

And Happy New Year! One of my friends is serving his mission in Belgium, and he's been asking everyone about their New Years Resolutions. Most of them reply by saying that they didn't make any since they don't reach them anyway. Haha. I love that. But I still made a resolution. I want to be able to climb a 5.9 by the end of the year (which also means that I'll be able to learn how to lead climb, which would be cool). I think probably the biggest challenge to that is going to be finding someone who will climb with me. I can't do this thing anymore where I switch between my friends, asking a different one to come climbing with me every couple weeks. I actually need one person who I can teach how to belay, and then we can go climbing together like twice a week. And then we'll get awesome at climbing and take the lead climbing class together.

The only other cool thing I've done in the past month is that Sara and I did another burger review-- we went to Carl's Jr-- and while we were there, we decided which categories would be rated on a 1-5 or 1-3 scale, and which would stay on a 1-10 scale. I put the pictures we took from my phone onto the computer, and I have both of our burger-rating-notebooks with me so that I can recalculate our new ratings. Then I'll tell everyone what the changes are. And post about Carl's Jr. All of this is something I intend to do before school starts on the 22nd. :) I think we're going to slow down a little with burger rating, though. Tuition and Christmas and birthdays have made money a little tight, so maybe we'll rate another burger in a week or two, and go once every 3 weeks from then on, instead of once every other week.

Oh, actually, there is another cool story I have. Unfortunately, I am allergic to Leonard the hedgehog. I get all sneezy around him and my eyes get all irritated and itchy. I also get a really ridiculous (and kinda funny) reaction whenever I pick him up and he actually touches my skin. I get all itchy wherever he touched me, and it looks like I suddenly get 30 mosquito bites all concentrated to where he had been resting on my arm.

This isn't actually news to me. I knew I was allergic to him. That why, while he's been in my bedroom, I've been sleeping in the next room on my couch. Since like, March. Maybe February. I just realized that he doesn't really have a super awesome life with me. He doesn't get attention like I want to give him, and he's stuck in his cage most of the time. So I gave him away to a friend who is not allergic as far as we know. But I still wanted to have a rodent. Around the time I took Leonard in, actually, I was considering getting another pet rat. I got my first one for Christmas in 5th grade, and between then and my 18th birthday, I had 6 rats (a couple at the same time). So now that I don't have Leonard, I decided to get a rat again! Number 7.

She's awesome, very shy and timid, but also very sweet. She's white with a brown hood, and I named her Billie Jean. :) Yes. I'm awesome.

Though, in hindsight, I should have named her Sally, that way I would have had Jack (my dog) and Sally!