SIM card and library mystery

Another cold day today, overcast, expecting some rain, high in the mid 40s but at least it isn’t getting below freezing again. We’ve had nearly a week of this weather with three nights below freezing, even in the 20s. It’s not slated to warm up until Monday. 

As mentioned the SIM card on my phone died Wednesday morning, removing it and putting it back in had no effect, but the weather was not conducive to going out and I didn’t think I would die from not being able to make or receive calls or text or get on-line (which I could do on my desktop) so I figured I would go Thursday afternoon after SHARE to the Verizon store and get it taken care of. Except it was 27˚ when I left for SHARE Thursday morning and it barely made it into the 40s during the day. OK, I won’t die from another day without my phone. Still cold but I finally went yesterday after breakfast driving the 30 minutes or so to the nearest Verizon store in Rosenberg where they replaced the SIM card. While there the guy told me we were eligible for a better plan, unlimited data (which we didn’t have) and for $20 less a month and Marc was eligible for a free iPhone 16 with a trade in (we have 13s) so it was a win all the way around. He didn’t know why only Marc’s number was eligible for a 16 but thought maybe they would offer it to me down the line. Which is fine. I don’t need to have the latest and greatest.

I’m not spending any time outside, have no pictures to take or show except for this, the game trail that cuts across the back end of my property. It emerges from the wild space on the east, passes right by the compost pile, and disappears into the overgrowth behind the Wicked Bitch of the West’s little storage buildings. I’ve never seen anything cross using it except for one time when I caught a quick look at a couple of foxes crossing to the west but it is definitely a well trod path.

And here’s some narcissus that bloomed before this last frigid cold spell.

And a mystery of sorts. I’m currently slowly getting through Harlan Ellison’s Greatest Hits, a selection of his work, some of which I remember reading way back when and some I don’t think I’ve read before. Before that I checked out two books, The Book of Elsewhere co-written by Keanu Reeves and China Mieville about the 60,000 year old immortal warrior which I gave up on before getting even halfway through and a new collection of short stories by Stephen King. Marc returned both books for me. When I dropped by the library to return a book he had checked out since I was driving right by there I told the librarian I had a book out that was way overdue but was almost through with it. She looked up my account to renew it and there was no record of my having it, it showed it was there in the library. It was one of the other librarians that scanned my card and we even talked about the book as she had just finished reading it herself. So weird, right? But the other thing was that the brand new Stephen King book came back damaged, the first endpaper when you open the cover was all torn up, and it was on my record as having been the last one to check it out. I have no idea how it got torn. I didn’t open it when I pulled it off the shelf and when I got home I put it on my desk and there it stayed until Marc picked it up to read it. Now this was a couple of months ago so our memories are foggy. I assured assured her I didn’t damage it, that I never even opened it the whole time it was in my possession. When I got home I asked Marc if that page was torn when he opened it and he recalled that it was and I think I remember him telling me that and he says he’s pretty sure he mentioned it to the librarian when he returned it. So I may be on the hook for replacing a book I never even opened.