5C's Que Pasa

I have been meaning to mention that on this last trip to Europe the water ( other than in Marrakech ) was good to drink  right from the tap.  That saved us a good deal of money.  Oh and on the cruise ship we had to drink bottled water but we were able to get that from the various bars and did not have to pay for it.

Another thing we noticed is that none of the places we stayed had screens on the windows.  There are no bugs.  No flies, no mosquitoes, nothing.  Simply wonderful 😛 We came home to spiders webs and nests everywhere outside 😡  Colin has been washing them down for a few days now and he has only done half of the exterior of the house.  I dealt with my share on the inside.  And of course there are the mosquitoes waiting for their chance to feast on our blood.  Then there are the noseuums at sunset in Mazatlan 😥  Europe wins on the bug situation.

We picked our first ever cucumber this afternoon. I was happy to see that we have another wee one coming along. I think we lost a few potentials during the transplanting.

I sold all my plant caddies to one lady earlier this afternoon.  I had someone else who wanted them about thirty minutes later and then one of my local blog readers was also interested. So I made another $47.00 today and with what I sold on Sunday, I am ahead $127.00.  The best part is that all those items are out of our basement.  Pretty good with little effort on my part.  The only “free” thing that was not taken was the longer hitch and we put that in the park recycle area, aka Walmart.

Getting some tomatoes. However they were already on the vines. Less than ten new yellow flowers since the transplant. Hopefully the plants will pick up.  We noticed that something is eating our kale, so we will have to do some replanting.

Once again due to my lack of technical knowledge I spent close to three extremely frustrating hours on the phone this afternoon.  I may have mentioned that Colin got his first ever iPhone this past April before we left for Europe.  He had very little time to get used to it but he did have problems receiving texts. We spent a good deal of time trying to sort that out before we left.  Today he got a phone call from a client we have not heard from in several years.  He later texted details on a place to meet later in the day.  Colin never got that.  Heck Colin was not getting my test texts.  Colin even stopped in at a local Telus store and asked them to check his phone at my suggestion.  The fellow sent him a text and said that his phone was just fine and he had likely been in a dead zone 🙄  I certainly used my little grey cells today to get to the bottom of the continuing problem.

First I want to clarify that I have only had my iPhone for two years.  Colin has been using a flip Blackberry for almost forever.   When I got my iPhone we had no problems texting each other.  Now that we have two iPhones we are having communication issues.  Colin has unlimited texting and phone calls.  He had been with the same company since 1993, 26 years!  I have unlimited texting, 500 anytime minutes and unlimited after 5pm and weekends plus 1 GB of data.  It took a while to figure out that because Colin has no data ( even though he is paying for texting ) he can’t receive texts from an iPhone if the text is being sent via iMessage  😯   What the heck is that???? The help desk tech told us that a text is green in colour while the iMessage text is blue in colour.  So????  I ventured to ask what is the difference.  Simply answer, it is an iPhone thing!  Okay so why can’t I text my husband.  It took a while but it turns out that you need data in order to text with an iPhone. My mind was spinning by now.  So I asked why could I text with him for the last two years?  Impossible she said.  I tried again but was forced to give up  that train of thought or go mad.

So I next asked how could he get texts and why did it work sometimes.  Turns our that if you have wifi, which we do here at home, he can receive a text.  But while out driving or wherever he can’t receive a text if someone happens to be using iMessage.  Which I later found it is the norm.  So I then asked what can we do?  Well she said just tell your clients to go into settings and turn off their iMessage and then text you.  Yeah, right, like they are going to do that each time they text just this one person.  Obviously Colin needs to add data to his plan @ $25.00 per month for 3GB.  He only needs a small amount for texting and will never ever use his phone for anything but texting and phone calls. The only good news is that we can stop that $25.00 charge when we go to Mexico.  He does keep his cell turned on until we drive into Mexico and at that point he call forwards it to our business landline phone.  Once he gets a message, it is sent to us at no extra charge via email.  However we have a new headache of wondering what happens if he gets a text while we are in Mexico.  Will we get the message?

I could go into more details but you get the picture.  I figured that as my two year contract was expiring this month I might as well call Virgin with whom I have my plan and see what I could get.  Currently I am paying $55.00 per month for 500 anytime minutes and the rest unlimited plus 1GB of data, which I never ever use.  Well I guess except for texting.  I was offered 100mg of data with 500 anytime minutes, etc for $45.00/month.  As she was looking up the info I was also on line and saw that for $45.00 they also offered 500mg and 500 anytime minutes!!  Well I wasn’t born yesterday.  I then noticed that for $50.00 per month I could get the 500 anytime minutes plus 4GB of data.  Only $5.00 more per month.

My next question was about suspending my phone service while we were in Mexico.  Yes it could be done for $15.00 per month.  Brilliant.  For the past two years because of my contract I was paying the full $61.00 per month.  I do take my phone to Mexico and put a Telcel SIM card in it and pay maybe 200 pesos ( 13.70 CAD / 10.40 USD ) per month to have the privilege to call all over Mexico, the US and Canada at no charge as well as have data.  So for a total of $15.00 extra ( for 3 months until we leave ) I will have 4 GB should I ever need it @ $50.00 CAD per month.  Best part is that I can shut that down to $15.00CAD per month.

Is it any wonder I needed a glass, maybe two, of wine afterwards 😳  I still don’t get why Colin really needs data ( I just don’t understand the why of it all  when he is using an iPhone and paying for texting )?

I feel a need to go pull weeds in my garden.

To lighten the mood and to show that things could always be worse…….

Sorry for the rant, but I really don’t get it………