User error and no more peacock pics

Nancy V.

Owner of White Book (PR & Marketing); Project Manager/Diversity & Events Specialist

Hmm…about me, well, I am always and never the same, which makes for my own interesting world where I constantly recruit individuals to join my planet. Take myself very seriously, but prefer not to, so I dress in outfits that often do not match and say things that I shouldn’t under the guise of �...

Nancy V.

Monday, October, 27, 2008

About a week ago, I had the displeasure of having all of my contacts wiped out of my cell phone. I failed to back-up my info, sync or save it to a SIM card – I know I’m supposed to do one of those things, but I didn’t. I have had this unfortunate mishap occur before and miraculously everything popped back up – thanks to my cell phone service provider. This actually kind of freaked me out because why are they all up in my biz? I was grateful, nonetheless, and learned to use my handy planner where I can back up info the old fashion way.

Well, I had to do this whole upgrade/downloading thing on my cell phone and was unsuccessful. After my umpteenth attempt I became annoyed and decided to just...start all over. Yep, go ahead and restore the darn thing. I felt pretty confident that I had all of the info I needed stored somewhere. That’s right, go ahead and start fresh! “Restore” means that you’ll fix my problem, possibly wipe out a few unimportant things, and we get to start anew. I can just plug in what I need later because I have it stored... “somewhere!”

First, it would’ve done me much good to have found out “where” I had this all stashed away because I can be hard-headed sometimes and I became carefree about the whole syncing my PDA calendar with my planner and...TA DA!...restore means everything’s wiped out! No phone numbers, no addresses, no notes and no calendar. OK, I have some of the numbers and addresses...”somewhere” (searching for all of that was such a joy, let me tell ya) and I’ll just look in my planner to see where I need to be for the next few weeks. Uh oh.

I occasionally get so busy that I feel like I have to schedule my pee breaks, so you know I was unhappy when I learned that the restore wiped out EVERYTHING because I knew that I hadn’t written anything down in the handy dandy planner in quite some time. I located some phone numbers and did my best to remember those I had meetings with – so I was able to get my calendar straightened out...kind of. I spent much of last week arriving too early to meetings because I wasn’t sure when I was actually supposed to be there.

My notes that I like to take about...whatever! Gone. And I can’t remember what was there and didn’t hand write those down. I tried to look at things positively because it’s like me and my phone get a fresh start. New notes for me to type, contacts for me to enter, appointments for me to make.

Well, then I realized that I had taken some pictures on my phone and now I was PISSED. There were only about eight pictures on there, and they were of this one-footed peacock.

The more I type, the more ridiculous I realize I can be. I should probably stop here, but since I’ve come this far – allow me to continue...

I was driving down Dale Mabry Hwy in rush hour traffic, minding my business, bumping my head to some tunes when I saw this peacock come out of the nature preserve on the side of the road. For those of you not familiar with Dale Mabry, it’s a VERY busy road in Tampa, so a bird like this has no business being anywhere near it. Pigeons maybe, peacock...not so much.

Now I’m not sure if it’s a nature preserve, a mini-forest or just a lot of trees – but I’ve only seen peacocks in zoos, so this floored me that this bird came out of nowhere really. I got out of my car, and since it was evening rush hour – cars are stopped, looking at me as I’m looking at the peacock. I felt less like a freak because this gentleman happened to be riding his bike on the sidewalk, saw the peacock and stopped to get out his camera phone. So there we both were – gawking at this peacock.

He was BEAUTIFUL! I’m guessing it was a “he” because I’ve heard male birds have the brighter colors, although I’m not sure if this applies to peacocks. Anyway, this peacock had the most amazing blue neck. THIS was electric blue. There is not a make-up brand around that can capture the beauty of this color – it was fascinating. So me and my bicycle friend are just patiently waiting for this bird to open up his lovely feathers and strut for us a bit. Then we noticed his foot. He was missing one. Was he once chained at the foot and escaped from somewhere? Did something attack him?

I need you to know I am not a bird person, but this whole “beautiful bird on the side of the road“ thing was just so cool to me! The peacock wandered back toward the forest, my bicycle friend left, and I called the Audobon Society, Florida Animal Control and the Professional Wildlife Removal. I wanted to help my one-footed friend and wasn’t sure where to go. Audobon Society and Wildlife Removal were closed, but the Animal Control place said it was something they typically don’t handle. While you all may think I’m crazy, I was assured that peacocks are NOT to supposed to be anywhere near a major highway.

So anyway, when my phone wiped out everything I was upset – but it really sucked to learn that I lost my peacock pics. My moment with a beautiful, electric-blue, humble (he didn’t “peacock” his feathers nor strut), one-footed peacock – it was one of those priceless experiences money can’t buy. Sigh.

I’m outrageous, huh?