time for breathing

lately, it seems like the pace of life has ramped up a bit and i find myself madly rushing from task to task at work, barely able to keep everything together (this, by the way, is normal for this time of year and is only bearable because i know it will slow down…. sometime) and my home life has been a bit hectic too, with papers to write for class and weekends full of travel, visitors and/or work.
this weekend, my brain just decided to slow itself down and insist that i take a few moments to breathe. i did have to work on saturday, but i had off on friday, today (sunday) and tomorrow (except for class) and since i had no absolutely pressing deadlines, i’ve spent some time catching up on my blogging (both reading and posting–although 365 is still not caught up, it’s a bit closer than it used to be. this is hard!), just staring out into space, taking some pictures, and figuring out my new phone.
because of some job situation changes at mr. happy stuff’s work, we are changing phone plans and buying new cell phones. so, i had to change over all of the info in my address book and try to find a ring that wasn’t obnoxious. do you know how difficult that is?! on my last phone, there was a simple “ding!” that sort of sounded like an elevator and i think was meant to be a notification of voicemail or something, but i chose it as my ring. mr. h-s complained that it was too quiet and that i never heard it, but i loved it because it wasn’t too embarrassing if it went off in public and didn’t cause me to feel panicky if i wasn’t able to answer it in the first 2 rings. this new phone? not so much. even the innocuous sounding “chimes high” and “chimes low” when played in rapid succession for a ringer made me want to hide the phone deep in the couch cushions. so, my techie hero, mr. happy stuff, helped me search the internet for a new ring. and search. and search. take my advice–if you’re trying to find something similar, don’t ever type in “free ringtones” because you will get about fifty mazillion hits and all of them will be bad. trust me. as in, “we want to invade your computer with viruses and other bad things and in exchange, you get this free (awful) ringtone!” the majority of them insist that you need to have a pop song play from your phone every time it rings. maybe it’s just because i work in a library where obnoxious ringtones are painfully obvious–and annoying–but i just don’t think that there will ever be any song that i’d want to hear every time anyone tried to call me! and most certainly not anything by britney spears.
we finally began to be more successful when he started adding “.mp3” to the search string behind words like “bell” or “ding” (although, apparently there’s some pop song out there titled “ding”) and eventually, we came upon this wonderful website which i adore. on it, i discovered such gems as “bikebell” and “old telephone bell” which both make delightful ringers for my phone (i actually ended up choosing one of a tibetan singing bowl and editing it a little with loooooots of help from mr. techie stuff). i spent way too much time last night exploring different sounds on this site. i was enchanted by many of the “bird song” options and there was one that said it was from amish country that included a squeaky screen door closing and the clip-clop of horse hooves that was very nostalgic for me. poke around on the site for yourself. then, tell me your favorite sound!