day four and my cell phone broke. i could send and receive calls, but the display was broken. this effectively turned my cell phone into some kind of bullshit old-school rotary phone, where i never knew who was calling, and i couldn’t call anyone unless i dialed their number blindly and hit send. erica and i spent half an hour at the cingular store waiting for someone to sell me a new phone. once i picked a phone and bought it, the cell phone salesman who had been helping me said, “see? that was quick.”

“yes,” i said. “quick and painful, just like a kick in the balls.”