Okay, so here’s the deal. Last week in Kauai I lost my phone. As Rance will attest I’ve almost done this several times in the past, and last week it came to fruition. It may have been a subconscious response to the immoral coveting I’ve felt for Larrance’s new iPhone. Althouh I don’t want to pay the outrageous monthly fees associated with the iPhone I do love all the bells and whistles it has. I have a Blackberry Pearl and while it handles my calls, emails, and texts it can’t  calculate my latitude and longitude and tell me the constellations I’m looking at on a moonless night.

So, after the initial shock and horror of actually losing my phone I call my carrier T-Mobile right away to report it lost or stolen. I mean I did go back to where I left it and it was gone, and it wasn’t turned in to mall security so I figured someone saw the phone and gave themselves an early Christmas gift. The customer service rep on the phone is out of this world helpful. Which is one of the other reasons why I haven’t switched to the iPhone. I’ve got a great service plan with lots of minutes, and all the texting and data a girl could want for a reasonable price.

So Danny, the customer service rep, helps me out and gets my sim card locked on my lost/stolen phone and then we begin talking about replacement phones. After confirming that I don’t have a back up phone or a friend with a phone I can use for the next few months. Danny goes ahead and waves the three months I still have to become eligible for an upgrade. Now we’re talking.

We begin discussing new phones, specifically new Blackberry phones since my Blackberry contract is so primo. As it turns out they’ve just released their brand new Blackberry 9700 with many of the bells and whistles that has me going gaga over the iphone. It’s a pricey number to be sure, but with a new contract it brings the price  down to a more reasonable number. Since he can’t mail the phone to a post office box we make arrangements for me to pick up the phone in Maui.

Saturday rolls around and I’m strolling around the Ala Moana Center wIth Mike when he gets a call. After a look of brief confusion he says, “oh, well I’m with her right now”. He hands me the phone and I hear the voice of an angel; an angel that found my phone in Kauai and was trying to find me so he could get it returned. Which of course is such a wonderful thing, but I have just made arrangements with T-Mobile to get a new upgraded phone. And now this guys is saying I don’t really have to do that.  I feel conflicted because now I don’t really need the new phone, but I  really want it. And this guy is doing a really, REALLY nice thing by trying to get my phone back to me.

Sunday rolls around and Rance and I go to the mall where the T-Mobile store is. I talk to Scott the nice guy wearing a T-Mobile name badge and tell him the situation; that I’ve lost my phone and Danny at customer service has arranged for me to get an upgraded phone. Scott looks up my file and starts reading the notes and then looks up and says…”Oh, your phone’s been found. Some guy has it and he’s left his number. I’ve only seen this one other time before, this is amazing.”

He hands me a piece of paper with the nice guy’s phone number on it and says, “now you don’t have to buy a new phone.” Now I’m really second guessing myself. I feel like the universe is trying to tell me not to upgrade, to just get my phone back and yet my  selfish desires keep pushing me to get the new phone.

Rance and I leave the T-Mobile store not wanting to seem ungrateful for the revelation. We walk over to Starbucks while I come up with a plan. I’m going to tell Scott I spoke with the guy (which technically I have) but I won’t be able to get the phone until after Christmas and I would really like to have a phone for the holidays. Which is exactly what I do when I go back to the store.

Scott seems okay with this and so I shell over some cash and Scott gives me a shiny, brand new Blackberry 9700. I’m immediately enamored with the beautiful colors, and screen resolution. Things look amazing on this phone and it has a camera as well as takes video. It seems light years ahead of my Pearl. I will admit though that my thumbs seem to mash the buttons a bit while texting. Rance assures me though that I’ll get used to it.

For the first few days of my new Blackberry 9700 I’m in love. I take it everywhere and get lost in the URL’s and videos  to which I now have easy access. The honeymoon breaks down after trying to synch my phone with my contacts on my MacBook running OSX 10.4. Without buying a third party software that may or may not work I am out of luck. And then in Hilo my service goes haywire and I’m not even able to pull up a map.

Jerry at T-Mobile tells me the reason I’m having problems is because they’re upgrading their Blackberry system and he also confirms that currently there’s no way for me to synch my Blackberry with my MacBook. And that little voice in the back of my head that has been listening to what the universe is trying to tell me screams, “You should just take the phone back. You don’t need to spend that money, your old phone is perfectly fine and does everything you need it to.

This leads me back to the Good Samaritan  in Kauai. I call him to make arrangements to pick up my old phone on Christmas eve. After getting the business part of the conversation out of the way, I ask a few questions about him. It turns out that he and his partner are very well connected in the theater scene in Kauai. When I tell him that I work for a mega-comedy institution, he is flabbergasted, he’s a huge fan. In fact he has an apartment in the John Hancock tower in Chicago and goes to see shows at the mega-comedy institution quite often when he’s in town.

And then the conversation heads down the path of the possibility of doing shows in Kauai, which I know this cast would love to do. Even if it was just a long form improv show, they just don’t get that kind of entertainment here on the island he says. And maybe even the possibility of doing workshops, which is a goal I made  for myself on this contract.

I picked up my old phone yesterday, it was right where he said it would leave it at the Mariott Hotel. We’re going to meet in early January and talk about some possibilities. But first I’ve got to take that Blackberry 9700 back I don’t really need it anyway.