We're Connected... Again

Scott and I went cell phone shopping today.

You see, we had canceled our own cell phones when Scott took the Deloitte job, since they provided his cell phone for him. Let's just say we were totally spoiled for the past 18 months, as we basically used the phone as much as we wanted and never saw a bill, ever.

Now that we're back to working from home, we have to enter the real world again and get some phones. So, we bundled up Brett and Nathan, picked Jesse up from school, and walked across the street to the mall to buy a couple of cell phones. Sounds simple, right? Wrong.

First of all, you have to decide what kind of plan you want. Not only are there about 50 plans out there, but there are also choices for add-ons, opt-ins, bundles, shared plans, and calling features, to name a few. After spending way too much time discussing all of our plan options, we realized that none of the plans were right for us. So we had to settle for a mediocre plan and add on the features that we really wanted (i.e. pay extra to get what you need).

Luckily, Scott had researched Blackberries before our excursion, so he knew the exact model he was going to get. I was getting a free phone for signing up, so there wasn't too much choice involved there either. All we had to do was sign our life away to this company for 3 years, and we could then buy the Blackberry for ONLY $299.99. Somehow they make this sound like a great deal. Oh, and if you decide to cancel anytime before your contract is up, you have to pay them $400 per plan and give them your first-born child.

The whole ordeal took about 2.5 hours. Brett and Jesse were bored after the first 5 minutes. After wrecking a phone card display in the middle of the store, eating a whole pack of gum out of my purse, and getting scolded by the mall manager for ripping some plants, we decided they'd had enough. Scott took them to Zellers to look for a small toy to keep them occupied for the rest of the time while I continued shopping.

The nice part is that we left the mall with two new devices activated and ready to use. And it's amazing what you can do with a phone these days. My phone doubles as a camera, video camera, mp3 player and PDA.

Well, if you've actually read this far, send me an email and I'll give you our new numbers. But I should warn you that we probably won't have time to chat as we'll be busy looking for part-time jobs to help pay for the phone bills.