Everybody’s snowy for the weekend

Snowed today. I managed to step outside and see this many seconds of it.

After which my phone returned to the repair shop. Because taking it in last weekend just wasn’t enough! I had the battery replaced, the most cost-effective upgrade you can perform on an iPhone. This is the third battery in this phone, which has served me well for five years or so.

Last weekend I asked the repair folks to clean the charging port because, in addition to the old battery not holding a charge, I could barely get the phone to receive a charge. No matter how patient you are, this eventually becomes frustrating. It has had almost-deletirious effects on a few work days. If the phone dies in the middle of the night because it won’t charge, you see, I have no alarm.

Which is a strategic problem, I know. I should use more than one alarm! But let me ask you, early risers, how many alarms should I use? I run three on my phone.

A further strategic problem, sure. Three alarms are great. Putting them all on one platform is a shortcoming.

After I struggled through how to do many of the various things required of the day that sometimes require a phone — messaging, dual authentication, taking photographs, whatever — my phone went back to the phonecanic. Clean the charing port, please. I’m sure they prefer the term “technician,” but you don’t get the honorific until you complete the job. My lovely bride dropped it off in the afternoon, while I was in the middle of a Zoom meeting. They said it’d be ready after 4 p.m., which seems to be the rote answer. She picked it up just after 5 p.m., and the phone was charged to 100 percent. And it’s holding a charge, so maybe the second time was the charm.

Which, again, if that’s as inconvenient as your day gets, it’s a pretty great day. And we insist on great days on Fridays.

I left the office at 5 p.m. for a change. The snow had stopped and the sun was almost threatening to break through the overcast sky. That it had stopped was great because there was no evidence of any winter weather road treatment taking place. And my car slipped and slid and arrived slowly and safely in my garage.

At the house I experienced the Friday burst of energy. I shoveled the driveway, the sidewalks and part of the walking trail. (People need to see the entrance, which runs right by our yard.) In doing all of that I learned that the hat I got this Christmas is indulgently effective. If it is cold where you are, and you have to be outside, get that hat.

(I’m leaving it in my car. It’s going everywhere with me.)

I emptied the dishwasher. I put together a new little ottoman that arrived today.

The ottoman will sit at the foot of the bed. It’ll hold sheets and blankets. Between that and the new mattress — after two nights of sleep I can report it feels like a cloud, mostly because you’re sleeping on the mattress, rather than in it — the bedroom feels almost entirely new.

It’s enough to make me want to go to bed at a reasonable hour tonight.

(Update: I did not.)

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