The curse of an old cell phone

This past weekend, I had the wonderful opportunity to hang out with some fabulous bloggers (I would link to all of you but I'm lazy) at BlogHer. Not that I was part of the conference (on my unemployed budget? heavens no), but I managed to snag some people's free time when they weren't meeting Padma or eating cheeseburgers or whatever else they were doing over at the Hilton.

There were a number of moments over the weekend where I just had to laugh to myself because, as is sort of understandable for people in social media, everyone was on their iPhones and BlackBerries all the time. I mean, ALL. THE. TIME. The reason I thought this was funny is because I think I'm the lone person remaining in the 20-something age bracket who does not possess a smartphone.

I KNOW. I will give you all a moment to go grab some Benadryl for the hives you just broke out in at the thought of having a phone on which you cannot check email.

I've been meaning to upgrade to a BlackBerry ever since I became eligible for a new phone almost a year and a half ago. The thing is, my little LG flip phone is the most reliable thing I have ever encountered in life, and for awhile I was loathe to fix something that technically ain't broke. Now that it's come to the point where I really WANT to upgrade (phone still works like a charm, though), I refuse to do so until I have a job. It will be both a congratulatory present to myself as well as a lovely confirmation that I can now officially afford the inevitable increase in cell phone bill that will come with having to pay for data.

My lack of a smartphone has never really bothered me all that much, mostly because I've been able to work around it and it doesn't inconvenience anyone other than myself. However, I was reading BusinessWeek yesterday and came across something truly disturbing.

33 percent of iPhone users find out-of-date gadgets a turnoff.

As if I wasn't already doomed to fail at the NYC dating scene. I'm now doubly doomed.

Epic fail. Going to hang my head in out-of-date phone shame.

UPDATE: I wrote this post this morning and planned on posting it when I got home from my temp job (you know, one of the few temp jobs that didn't reject me because I don't have enough admin experience). I have since been offered this job on a full-time basis and turned it down (I am not a receptionist, thank you), but negotiated a way to stay here until I find a permanent job that I actually want and maybe needed an MBA for. Does this mean I am now allowed to get myself a Blackberry? Or is that cheating? Does having a fake job to go to until I get a real job count for something? I can't decide.

Where ya from, you sexy thing?

Yesterday I was apparently having a very sexy day.

I left my apartment fairly early to run some errands, and as I headed towards the subway I battled the usual onslaught of pedestrians. As one particularly ragged, possibly homeless man stumbled past me, he looked in my direction and said, "Morning, sexy."

Now, lots of women are going to disagree with me on this, but I love getting compliments from randoms on the street. Or anywhere else, really. You know why? Because no matter how old or gross or homeless or drunk you are, you are still entitled to your opinion. And if your opinion is that I'm looking particularly fabulous today, I salute you.

Fast forward many hours to 2 in the morning. My friend Anna and I, the lone survivors from the initial group of 7 partiers, were dancing it up at Nexus Lounge in a way that signals to the world, "Yes, I took shots of Jager on an empty stomach and am feeling the subsequent effects." Over the next 2 hours, we were approached by a wide variety of men who wanted to dance with us. While I'm not particularly crazy about dancing with random men as I feel that they inhibit my ability to dance the way I want to, I had no problem with all the nice things they had to say. There was a "sexy" and a "hot" and a "you have nice hips" and even a "you dance like a black girl," which I take as an extreme compliment even though I know better than to think it's true.

As if that wasn't enough, I arrived home shortly after 4:30 in the morning, and as usual said hello to the night doorman who is an adorable old man that has probably been working in the building longer than I've been alive. He stopped me and said in his thick Eastern European accent, "You such a nice lady. Very beautiful."

And then he gave me my favorite compliment of the day: "Number 1."

Number 1!! Can't beat that, even coming from a doorman 60 years my senior.

Today, I left my apartment again, feeling pretty pleased with how I looked considering that I was running on 5 hours of sleep and hadn't had time to shower off last night's dancey sweatiness.

Yet again I walked towards the subway. I had my iPod on, and was jolted out of my musical daze when I noticed that a man leaning against a brick building was talking to me.

As if to show me that no one should ever get too high on themselves, and in a way that reminded me just how quickly everything in New York changes, he said:

"You're going to hell."

Randomness

I am low on things to say these days. Or rather, I think of things to say but then I'm too busy drinking unlimited margaritas and climbing on skee ball machines to take pictures next to my awesome score and going to the Jersey shore (GTL baby) to hang out with my parents, play pinball and take phone interviews on the beach.

I don't really know why I came back from the shore, actually. My parents' beach condo rules.

I guess I had to resume my life of eating 10 cent wings with Crapface, getting $10 Maroon 5 concert tickets and getting rejected from more temp jobs because I "don't have enough admin experience."

I am also studying to be a certified project manager. Booyah.

Also, I think my grandma's cell phone keeps butt dialing me.

As always, I love New York. So much.

End nonsense.