Connected and impressed

I have to say, I completely adore T-Mobile, if only for my experience with them in the last four days. I have gotten fed up with AT&T Wireless, who as far as I am concerned basically sucks wet donkey dongs, and I started service with T-Mobile with an eye toward checking how they were and eventually moving my AT&T number over.

I have been constantly amazed. More minutes per month, nationwide service rather than a small regional plan with indistinct boundaries, and unlimited data usage for twenty bucks a month as opposed to 4Mb of transfer (which is jack shit these days) for thirteen. The new phone is horribly cute and eminently reliable... a Sony-Ericsson T610. Does everything my Ericsson R520m does, and then some, and leaves behind a couple of the 520m's bad habits while being able to use all the same accessories.

I am writing this on a bed in a hotel room in Las Vegas, Nevada, while Melody is snoozing on the other half of it. I am tied in from my iBook through the Bluetooth adapter to the T610, dialed into T-Mobile's GPRS data service, and the throughput is quite good. It was also a trip being able to sit in Sky Harbor Airport in Phoenix and look up information so I could get a prescription filled from home, all wirelessly.

The gadgets are suddenly all useful again.

Other things I have been impressed with: Southwest Airlines, which keeps doing an inexpensive good job. The Hyundai Sonata midsize car we rented in Phoenix, which got 26 miles per gallon even when being flogged across the desert at nearly one hundred miles per hour at times. This Apple iBook 933, which has yet to disappoint me and do anything stupid or unclassy.

And I decided, in Kingman, Arizona, that I like Del Taco better than Taco Bell.

All sorts of comparisons out there.

Melody and I are here in Las Vegas going to a themed party that some friends of mine are having... my old editor from the now-defunct magazine and her new husband and their friends. Melody and I are staying at the same place Penny and I stayed a few months ago when we came to the wedding of these friends. It's a lot hotter now, though. It was 104 degrees here earlier, with seven percent humidity. The entire city is like a big Ronco Food Dehydrator. My nose actually crackles inside.

Melody and I had a bad night the other night... we're both very headstrong and tend to do overdramatic things and then work them out in the morning. This is an odd but workable situation, because both of us know we're doing it.

We haven't fooled around in nearly a week, but that streak may end in a few minutes, because she's there in a gold silk nightgown and looks rather approachable right now, albeit asleep. We can fix that.

I have never felt so connected.