* Title once again a reference to Gilmore Girls. Becky, I would recommend not clicking on that link unless you have watched through season 6. :-)

For his birthday a few weeks ago, we got Paul a new toy. It’s a pretty snazzy phone called a Sidekick. (It’s the same phone that Rory Gilmore has. And Veronica Mars. And Paris Hilton, apparently. Not saying anything about Paul, though.)

The Sidekick is basically a Blackberry-type device that’s more geared to Instant Messaging and email. We found it surprisingly not very expensive, and we even can get a discount on our plan through CNN! (Hooray!) Paul loves being able to do things on his hour long train commute twice a day. He’s also found it helpful for his freelance work, because he’s able to respond to emails fairly quickly. I enjoy being able to IM him anytime I need. Here is an AIM conversation I had with Paul last week, when I came home from work to find him gone.

leadiv (6:13:59 PM): I am on my way home now

ashalily26 (6:20:53 PM): okay see you soon

leadiv (6:17:40 PM): Yes :-)

ashalily26 (6:22:03 PM): don’t type and drive at the same time!

leadiv (6:19:15 PM): I’m at a red light

ashalily26 (6:22:53 PM): okay

His Sidekick has a camera, and Paul has gotten it hooked up to his Flickr account so he can upload the pictures as he takes them. He’s pretty excited about that. :-) You should check some of them out! It takes pretty decent outside pictures, considering that it’s a phone.

We both like the web browser too. We are often wondering things… For example, we were in Panera the other afternoon and I wondered outloud how long Panera had been in business. So we pulled out his trusty Sidekick and in no time we had our answer. (Since 1981, by the way) We also found out that Ball Ground, Georgia is named that because it was a ball playing field for the Native Americans. Had we had the Sidekick when we were driving through Ball Ground earlier last month, we would have found that out much quicker. As it was, we had to wait until we got home.

Paul’s still trying to hook up his blog to the Sidekick, and if he’s successful then perhaps he’ll be blogging more. (I don’t hold my breath on that one, though. Don’t tell Paul I said that.) Our only disappointment is that we can’t really get any mapping sites to work (like Google maps). That would be nice, since we frequently find ourselves wondering where we are. Oh well, I guess we’ll have to continue with our get-lost method of learning our way around Atlanta.

Right now, his plan doesn’t have any minutes (though it has unlimited data and emailing), so we’ll pay by the minute for each phone call. I think it will be cheaper this way though because right now we rarely use our cell phones.

That brings me to another point. Since our current Cingular plan is up, we have decided to not renew our contract. Paul will have the Sidekick, and I have a prepaid phone for emergencies. We’ll use our landline for phone calls, and we’re also exploring using Skype for long distance (which is $30/yr to call phones). I have a new cell phone number, so you can go ahead and delete the one you currently have for me right now. I’ll be emailing everyone about this too. :-)

So, if you need to reach Paul, send him an email or better yet, and IM. I don’t know why anyone would not want to be talking to him every minute of the day. Perhaps I’m biased. ;-)