I haven’t heard anything back about the glasses thing, and I didn’t have time to even think about addressing the issue personally.

I also didn’t get anything done anywhere else, because I woke up to a Situation.

The Situation unfolded confusingly, as these things do when you wake up to them: apparently, things happened, and we were needed to help with the purchase and setup of a smart-type phone, to replace the flip phone of a man who never really intended to replace the flip phone.

This man is the father of a friend of ours, and one of his other children wants him to be more available for his grandkids. This means video chatting, and fancy new technology.

This meant that we were called up to provide in person support from pre-purchase to post-purchase setup and education.

I just woke up. I do not respond well to waking up. At all. There’s crankiness and queasiness and general bleh-ness. I need time for my systems to warm up and issue status reports before I can even begin to guess how the rest of the day might go. I request time to wake up.

This likely makes everything that happens after that point my fault, somehow.

We get picked up by the friend’s dad–we’re meeting the friend at the Sprint store, but not the Sprint store I’d been to previously. A smaller one in a different location entirely, with a much smaller stock. But that’s okay–we can work with what they have, and if nothing there satisfies, we’ll just wait for the friend to show up and maybe regroup and head to a differen–wait, I just got a text.

Blowout. Waiting for tow truck.

Well, shit.

It doesn’t matter. Hidden among the high-end flashy phones are some lower-cost Androids, including a LG that looks like it will be perfect for someone new to the whole ‘smartphone’ concept. A bit of investigation later [some Google searching, and a bit of poking around on the device itself], and…yup. This looks like a good idea.

I got the fuck out of the store while the contract renegotiation was going on, because there were wild children running and screaming and apparently this is just a big anxious-making thing for me. I just cannot deal, so I go out and sit on…something I was probably not supposed to sit on. It had a plaque identifying it as a bench, but it was displayed as an art piece.

I do not fucking care. Plaque said bench. I sit.

I calm down enough to go back in, just in time to provide my lovely Adonit Jot Pro so a signature can be provided on a tablet.

No, you cannot have my stylus, Sprint Store. It is mine. Mine. You should really look into stocking them, though, because your markup would probably be hilarious, and they really are pretty good.

Things look to be done–all but the social stuff–so I return to the Probably Not For Sitting Bench until it’s time to get back into the van.

Our next stop? Dollar Tree, to peruse their surprisingly varied selection of cheap stylus options. Because, really, fuck spending more than a dollar on a stylus.

He opts for one that can also be used as a cat toy.

Gremlin opts for the candy aisle.

I purchase a basket for a project I’m working on.

And we head back to the dad’s house, to finish setting up everything he’ll need for this new phone.

Step 1: Gmail.

Holy shit, are there just no usernames left. Even weird, obscure historical type names are taken.

Step 2: Facebook.

Holy shit, setting up a Facebook account is annoying.

Step 3: Skype.

So, it turns out that setting up a Skype account with Facebook means that it’s unusable on a mobile device.

Abort Step 3. Fuck Skype. We are not going to bother with Skype right now. Skype needs to fix their shit before Skype becomes an option.

But we got everything set up, and taught him how to use the basic phone functions. We showed him how to make a video call with Facebook Messenger.

A quick side-trip to MicroCenter for a 32gb microSD card for the phone, and we’re done.

Another person has been dragged into modernity.

I am exhausted.