Date: 2007-01-19
To: Prep #69--Brrrrrrr......
Miles today: 0.0

Man...it's cold now! Makes me a bit nervous. The thermometer in my truck said 8 degrees yesterday when I crawled in to it to drive home from work. Wasn't too much wind, which of course increases your misery by some mathematical equation like:Misery = Temperature x Wind Speed to the quadrillionth power - Inches of insulative Fat on your body.....or something like that. Just for grins (and because I was too lazy to change clothes again) I ran to the mailbox in my pj's last night, which consisted of very thin PJ bottoms and and an even thinner tank top. I had flip flops on. Oh man...that was brutal. I mean, after a day of hiking, you HAVE to change into your warmer sleeping clothes (which are dry of course). I really couldn't imagine sitting on my hammock, and stripping down to bare skin in 8 degree temps..but guess what, I'm going to and I'm going to LOVE EVERY MINUTE OF IT by god!!! I just have to remember that I won't be enduring those kinds of temps for the majority of this hike and a night or six of misery in sub-freezing temps just builds character right? Onto other news, I activated my pocketmail last night. Here's some words of advice if you're planning on using one: (Yippy..another enumerated list!)1. Don't wait till the last minute to activate it, I found out the people who owned mine before me didn't pay their bill and didn't deactivate it properly, so it took some additional steps2. Set aside an ENTIRE evening to activate it, because (not an exaggeration here) I was on hold for over 2 hours waiting to talk to a customer service rep, who had to activate it. She was awesome once I got thru, but I didn't think I'd ever stop hearing the stupid advertisement loop. All I have to say is THANK the goddess for speaker phones! 3. They tell you they only have 3, 6, or 12 month contracts available. Well, I wanted a 9 month contract (of course). So don't get suckered into buying a 12 month. You can order the 6 months and call back in a few days and tell them you want to add a 3 month extension. OR you can do what I did and get the 6 months w/an automatic quarterly extension where they'll auto-debit your account every 3 months until you call and cancel. 4. Become familiar with Australian terminology, because you're calling Australia to hook the thing up. For instance....the word "surname" is not something I use in my everyday conversations. The lady probably thought I was a total idiot, because she asked me for my surname (w/a thick accent by the way) and I was like, "Excuse me? What? What? What? Excuse Me? Say Again? Huh?" Poor lady finally gave in and said "last name" Duh....... Yup...I are college educated!5. There are different companies that make the pocketmail (pocketmail, sharp, jvc are three I know of now). From my understanding, the ONLY one that will work w/a digital cell phone is the one made by pocketmail (they all look/operate the same by the way). You may want to double check that w/one of their reps though. Mine is a Sharp and my Cingular cell phone will not work w/it, but it¢s all good. I won¢t have to worry about all of the transmission stuff till I get into town, which is what I planned on anyways.Well..1 month, 9 days, 1 hour, 11 minutes till I¢m officially unemployed!!!!!!!!!