Fiesta

Every few weeks I get a wild hair and decide I need new wallpaper and ringtones on my phone. Well, not that I need them, but that my life would be more exciting if I had some, I guess.

They didn't have any really exciting wallpaper, or ones that I thought would look good with the phone icons on top of them, but I did get this one, which is kind of fun:

The icons do obscure her face, for the most part, but they're pretty colors, anyway . . .

As far as ringtones, I've only downloaded a couple: Jinglebells, at Christmas, and the Charlie Brown Theme. I thought I'd listened to them before I bought them, but maybe not, since I discovered that the samples wouldn't work on my Mac. So I spent my lunch hour at work in the conference room playing a bunch of them on the PC there.

I also discovered that the PC on my desk doesn't have sound capability, or at least I couldn't find that it did in the few minutes I was willing to spend on it. This reminded me of another place I worked where, when you got a new PC, they actually removed the sound card that came installed in it. I never knew whether it was from a "this is work, you're not allowed to have any fun" kind of mindset or a "you're too stupid to think to wear headphones" one. Probably a bit of both. That isn't the case here--neither one--it's probably just a PC with no sound for some reason. Maybe somebody took the sound card out to put in another PC. It isn't my real computer, anyway, it's just the extra-computer-so-I-can-test-stuff one.

Anyway, I listened to a bunch of them, and narrowed it down to about a dozen:

• Addams Family Theme
• Pink Panther Theme
• Ghostbusters Theme
• Baby Elephant Walk
• I Want To Hold Your Hand
• Wild Thing
• She Loves You
• Your Song
• Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairies
• Pop Goes the Wease
• Scotland the Brave

There were songs that I actually like more than these, but that didn't sound very good as ringtones. And there were a lot of classical ones that I considered, but almost all of the clips that they selected have been used so many times in cartoons, etc., that they're too clichéd.

They cost $1.99 each, so while it's kind of an impulse purchase, it's enough to make me think about it. I'm leaning toward "Wild Thing" and the "Addams Family." Oh, and "Baby Elephant Walk" is pretty cute.

I try to take a walk at lunchtime, although I don't always get out there. Today I went out and walked around the block, then sat on a bench in front of the building for a little while, to get some sun and people watch.

As I was walking up the hill, I noticed a poster in the window of a restaurant/bar, something about "Get Plowed!" -- a delightful reference to the Heartland, I guess. What a nice sentiment for a bar to advertise.

As I was mentally shaking my head over this one, I walked past another restaurant advertising a "Cinco de Mayo Fiesta" that it held on May 1-2. Yes, granted that was the weekend, but it did seem sort of odd. "Celebrate the 5th of May on the 2nd!" It also made me laugh at myself.

Last night we had the windows open in the bedroom, and when I went to bed I noticed that there must have been someone having a party in one of the houses behind hours. There was a lot of noise--no music, but a lot of people talking and laughing and, occasionally, yelling. It wasn't enough to do anything about--although at one point it got very quiet and Bob postulated that someone must have called the police--but it did make me remark that it seemed odd that someone would be having such a noisy party on a Wednesday night.

Bob said, "Maybe it's a graduation party or something." Now I'm guessing it must have been a Cinco de Mayo Fiesta.