a rainy Monday

Hey there ~ hope you had a fab weekend!

It's a rainy Monday here in SoFla today. A good chance to get caught up on stuff "indoors" (like blogging).

Sal and I had a good weekend ... we spent most of Saturday afternoon getting our new iPhone plans set up (they finally arrived!) and ... we're also upgrading to a faster Internet connection ... finally, and thank goodness! Ours is too slow, so frustrating right? Websites are so graphic- and video-intensive now that a fast connection is almost a must. Anyway, our new connection will be activated on Tuesday and I can't wait!

We've been playing with our new iPhones ... so easy to use, right out of the box! It's such an intuitive gadget that I haven't had to refer to the manual even once. OK, I'll admit that we did attend an iPhone workshop at the Apple Store, which was a helpful overview (they offer free iPhone workshops, fyi).

I've begun building my iPod playlist ... I started with a couple of fun tunes that are always a (perfect) part of the festivities at Creative Escape (Gwen Stefani's The Sweet Escape and Natasha Bedingfield's Pocket Full of Sunshine). And adding apps is a hoot, I especially love the cool travel-themed ones like Rick Steves, Travel Channel Go!, live air traffic control tower radios ... good stuff! I enjoy customizing too ... I plan to add my fave ringtone (Lionel Richie's Hello) and some manatee wallpaper. And Sal has changed the default language for his entire iPhone to Italian (!!!) ... how cool is that?

That said, we do have a couple of complaints (gasp!) ... the clear screen protectors that we bought are, well, garbage. I'm taking them back! Anyone have a recommendation? And we wish the iPhone microphone was better ... our voices sound a bit "muffled" during phone calls. Not liking that! Anyone else experience this, and/or have suggestions? I guess no technology is perfect, but I plan to chat with Apple...

Overall, tho, we're enjoying our new phones, which left us with one dilemma...what to do with our old (ok, ancient) phones? I recently read that there are millions of used cell phones sitting in drawers or worse, in landfills (an environmental nightmare!). Instead, how about donating/recycling yours? I found a great program that makes it easy ... Cell Phones For Soldiers.

Simply print out a postage-paid shipping label, mail your cell phone (and accessories like chargers) to their recycler, and CPFS will receive the proceeds from the recycler. That money gets used to buy calling cards for troops, who can then stay in touch with their families. Everyone wins ... the troops, the recycler, and our planet.

Enjoy the week ahead ... see ya!