My cell phone broke the other day; the two tiny clips that held the battery to the plastic case snapped off, rendering the phone useless without major use of rubber bands or duct tape. After pondering these alternatives, I gave in and bought myself one of those nifty Sprint camera phones, which I saw as an almost indefensible bourgeois indulgence until I looked around and noticed that everyone seems to have one of the damned things. Everyone in my current zip code, anyway.

Transferring phone numbers from an old cell phone to a new one makes for an interesting nostalgia trip. It takes a good thirty seconds to enter each new number, so you find yourself attempting a sort of melancholy triage: am I really going to call Robo Clarissa ever again? Sigh. All these girls whom I never expect to hear from or call again: Robo Clarissa...South Korea...Johann's sister...and a bunch of Advocate groupies....I ended up keeping most of them, mostly because I worry they'll just be lost otherwise. And who knows how desperate I'll be next month?