Who's Spoke? Portion Control and a Tech Project

I am Shopping my way around Albertson's for something to eat over the holiday weekend. The voice inside my head (TVISMH) is scolding me for not going back into the store for ice cream. Suddenly I am aware that the voice inside my head is being played by Jeff Bridges. I was never thoughtful of the actor my voice was using to talk to me before. Talking it over with TVIMH, we agree as a younger person I used my real voice. At some point, I started using Tim Allen from Galaxy Quest. But, today at the store Jeff Bridges came on set and has been my inside voice of choice. The dude abides for the holidays.

We decided not making a traditional turkey dinner would be better for us emotionally. To cheer me up because I love turkey dinner for no holiday reason. Stuffing and cranberry sauce give me reason to go on. So, we had turkey dinner twice already. The first turkey was with the whole meal. There was stuffing, cranberry sauce, yams, and potatoes. After that first dinner, we fell into the trap of wanting a dessert to go with the meal. They go together. The second turkey was low-key. We paired it with brussel sprouts and steamed baby potatoes. There was no urge to eat the dessert after the pared-down meal.

The problem with eating during the holidays for a couple is portion control. How do you portion control a pie or a turkey? Last week we bought a whole turkey and a whole pie. When we justify buying a whole bird or pie it sounds ok to say you will split a pie, or a bird is for lunch meat, but once you get into late November and buy the second pie for another meal you must accept that your Logic is problematic. Splitting the total number of pies into shares means we have eaten a whole pie each in November... so far. Disregard the pieces of pie bought at the House of Pie. I am going to be over target on weight this month.

The technical challenge this week is phone service change.

I'm a Verizon snob since the '90s. There is a premium for their service area. Also, there used to be a value in buying phones with the service. If you signed up for two years of service, you could buy the handset over time. But we have since started buying reconditioned handsets for a fraction of the price of the latest and greatest phones. That led me to make a service change to Mint Mobile. We don't need the big coverage area, and we don't use the handset subsidy. Mint Mobile has prepaid service for $15 a month compared to the $60 per month we are paying Verizon. It's a no brainer except that it takes a brain to order the new service to coincide with the end of the current service. Also, there is a catch, you prepay for the year. It's about $180 per phone, or about 1/3 the Verizon rate we pay currently.

The phone system to make the change is simple. The new company, Mint, asked me for the existing phone number, its account number, and the telephone number pin. There is an app that walks you through the process. You don't have to talk to anyone or go to a shop. Simple right? So, I spent too long trying to reset the pin number but each time I tried to process the app request it was rejected.

I did not follow the simple directions.

I feel like I am the only person who could fail at this task. In my defense, there are two pins. A pin that locks your phone, (it has four digits), and one just for switching service providers, (it has six digits). I kept trying to use that four-digit pin to order the app to change. All it would say was I did something wrong. So much rejection. How can one man take so much rejection? I set it aside for an attempt the next day. With fresh eyes I read the instructions again. Verizon has an app that will create a six-digit number transfer pin that allows the Mint mobile app to switch your phone service over. It took less than 10 minutes. The only other task I had to do was set up voice mail. Having figured it out with my phone I asked my husband to let me do his phone. I told him it would take about 30 minutes. It took me about 15 minutes with the voice mail set up even with him gasping and screaming "My Precious!" in the background.

My Deep thought from James Clear 3-2-1- News Letter

“And it dawned on me that I might have to change my inner thought patterns...that I would have to start believing in possibilities that I wouldn’t have allowed before, that I had been closing my creativity down to a very narrow, controllable scale...that things had become too familiar and I might have to disorient myself.” — Bob Dylan

I am starting to believe in possibilities. It feels wonderful. When an extra pop comes out of the vending machine you get your original familiar choice plus a wild card flavor. It's a new option, yours for the taking and free.