A Lady & Her Nook + 3 Wonky Bits

We’ll start with the latest installment of Mom and Her Nook which is rapidly becoming a possible miniseries on Lifetime. I’m telling you, if the Nook suddenly abducts Tom or me, Mom has a movie on her hands.

The Impossibility of Nook Passwords

Mom called today.  I answered.

“Kelly, we’re at Barnes and Noble because I’m trying to figure out how to load my gift cards onto my Nook,” she said. 

I knew this would be a problem. “Okay,” I said, surprised that a worker at Barnes and Noble would be having difficulty loading a gift card since presumably, one has been trained in such things.

“Well…” she stammered, “he needs to get on to the Nook.”

Then it hit me. “Oh my god, you don’t remember how to turn it on?!?” I said and then thought, ‘Well the dude should at LEAST be able to turn the thing on.’

“No no,” she said. A moment of silence ensued. “I don’t remember my password,” she whispered while standing in Apache Mall. I pictured her surrounded by shoppers and a poor B&N worker who doesn’t know how to help the poor woman whose children obviously don’t know her at all to have overestimated her ability to use this complicated system.

“Have you tried readershirley80473?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said.  “It doesn’t work.”

Now, I have a pretty accurate memory and I KNOW this is the right password, but I’m unsure why this wouldn’t open the thing best referred to as Pandora’s Box. “Okay, give me a second,” I said and told her I’d call her back.

So I searched through old emails and couldn’t find the passwords. I was SURE it was this one. I called back.

“Try readershirley80473,” I said.

“What numbers?” she asked quizzically.

“Do we really need to go through your anniversary again?” I asked. “Eight oh four seven three.”

She typed for a minute. “Wait,” she said. “Where’s the period?”

“Where’s what period?” I asked.

“The period on the Nook?” she said. “I see a comma and I see a dash but no period.”

“It’s there,” I said, tentatively, “but your password doesn’t have a period in it.”

“Oh…” she said.  Then hurriedly, “Yep. That worked. Thanks!” and hung up before I had a chance to say, “Jesus, Mom, I don’t have time to blog today.”

But alas, I did.

Not Everything is Nook-Related

Carrie and I watched the movie “Repo Man” today, which is a futuristic worst-case-scenario movie in which human body organs are sold on the open market and, when the person using the organ can no longer pay, they are visited by The Union and the organs are disgustingly taken back. 

This made Dexter look like a puff piece. But that’s not the point of this Wonky Bit.

The point is that this had the absolute oddest product placement of all time. In the middle of a scene, shortly after Jude Law had carved out a liver with his bare hands, he ate breakfast with his child. And squarely in the middle of the table was a box of Froot Loops. 

After seeing it, all I could think is that I would have loved to have been in the advertising room where there was (presumably) an argument between advertisers.

“No, no, Dave!  I say we pay for a product placement in “Megamind.”  That makes sense.”

“But seriously, Bob!  We have this opportunity to put our sugary goodness in this movie about near-apocalyptic organ harvesting.  Think of the money, man!”

If Time Traveling was Possible…

This is still well behind a few other things I’ve stated I would “give anything to have been” at. High on the list is still the time my mom was driving her minivan with a number of colleagues on the Monday after my brother’s band had borrowed it for his band’s gig.

Someone had written “Big Penis” on the window that was apparently fogged Saturday night but now was gloriously highlighted by the early morning sunlight for all traveling reading consultants to enjoy.

I’m pretty sure that ranks #1 and always will.

And a Slider Story

The day we began our move to Winona, the transmission on our main moving vehicle blew out. Dead on Interstate 90 with ridiculous winds blowing semis near my wife and dogs. 

This was not a calm day. We got her towed into town, she switched to my vehicle, and was unpacking some small things at the house with the pups. I was on campus and decided I most definitely needed a smoothie. So I walked to my favorite on-campus coffee shop where I go every day for tea and said I needed a smoothie.

The workers responded like I was someone who walked into a bar and instead of ordering milk, ordered a whiskey. “Whoa,” they said. “What’s going on?”

Next, I began to tell them. In the middle of my story, Carrie called. I answered and my phone engaged in its annoying habit of sometimes going right to speaker phone. 

“JESUS GODDAMMIT!” Carrie screamed from the other side, throughout the entire coffee house, which was funny-scene-in-a-movie quiet. I swear it echoed.

Everyone burst out laughing and I couldn’t figure out why she would be swearing now as the last I knew she was safely at the new house. “What is happening?!?” I asked, laughing.

“Slider figured out how to open the screen door on his own and is frolicking around the backyard,” she said. “I have to go.”

Slider likes to frolic. The fact he’s still right next to me, 11 years later, is something of a miracle.