I must explain. Yesterday was very confusing to me, and perhaps I confused you as well. But what would you expect when your day starts off with a dinosaur sighting?

I took my Prius to the dealer yesterday morning for regular servicing. My dealer is located across the street from a large mall, one of those few malls that continue to seem to prosper. My routine when I bring my car in is to drop off my car and then to cross the street and walk across the mall parking lot to a third rate restaurant (I am being harsh. It’s second rate) where I can get very ordinary coffee and a not-so-good blueberry muffin or bowl of oatmeal.

But when I looked towards the parking lot where I normally went across, I saw myself fenced out, and I saw within the fencing an entire herd of dinosaurs, big and small, brown and green, friendly looking and dangerous. Hundreds, maybe, of dinosaurs. (On closer look, I saw that it is an “immersive experience” in preparation, and that it is going to cost about $30 to enter and even more if you want to go on any rides or take advantage of their special treats. I demur). [demur is another new word for the blog]

I had to skirt around the fencing, climb up steps I had never seen before, in order to get my coffee.

My plan for the day was to go from the automobile dealership to a T-Mobile shop for two reasons. One – my smart phone case had begun to disintegrate and I thought a new one was in order. Two – my main home charger had begun to slow down and I thought a new one would be faster.  I certainly didn’t expect to buy a new phone.

But…..I went into the Rockville T-Mobile store and asked for a new phone cover. “Sorry”, said the clerk, “we don’t have anything any more that fits that phone.”

“Uh-oh”, I thought, “I am in trouble here.” He then said “you know this phone is 2 1/2 years old, and you are eligible for an upgrade after 2 years.” “Oh”, I said, what does that mean? “Well, it really doesn’t mean anything. Except that you fully paid off your phone in two years, so if you bought a new phone today, you only have to pay for a new phone, not to finish paying for the old phone.”

Then, I began to think. I had been having some problems with my phone slowing down, being less sensitive than it had been in the past, so I said “So if I were to buy a new phone, what would you suggest?”

“Well”, he said, you have a Samsung A class phone, so why not just buy an updated one of those?” “What other choices to I have, sticking with Samsung?” “Your other choices would be S class phones – they are about twice as expensive.” “What are the differences?” “Mainly the camera, but if you liked you camera before, even the A Class camera is better than what you have now.”

He didn’t have any reason for me to spend an extra $300 to buy a more expensive camera and nothing else. I asked which phone they sold more of. He said, to my surprise, “the S Class, but there’s really no reason to buy it outside of the camera.”

So, it was obvious what I would do, right? Yes, I bought the S Class for an additional $15 per month for two years, for the better camera. The phone also has twice the storage and memory of my old phone – either A or S would give me that.

It only took about 20 minutes to transfer everything from the old phone to the new. I had to reload my Yahoo and Google accounts – luckily I had the passwords. I didn’t really think about anything else, except that I made sure that all my photos transferred. It wasn’t until I got home that I realized that my FaceBook account would also require me to reload it through use of my password.

And I don’t know what the Facebook password is. I have tried to use a password a number of times, and am always told that I am using an old password that has been changed. The problem is that to change a password, you need to have your identification verified and this is done either through your email address or your backup phone. But because I went on Facebook when I was still working, and I no longer have the email or the mobile phone number I had then, Facebook is unable to verify me. Both of them were issued through my office. So, there is no way for me to validate my identity for Facebook.

Sure, I can open a new account, which I did, but I have 0 friends on that account and, as people today don’t want to accept “friend” requests because they fear being hacked or compromised, it seems to me that is going to be difficult. My old account hadn’t disappeared from Facebook – all my friends could continue to see it. But I couldn’t see it (not being a friend of myself) and I couldn’t post anything on it.

Then my daughter Michelle told me that she thought that, through WiFi, I could still access and manipulate my apps on my old phone, even though it is no longer a “phone”, and, lo and behold, she seems to be correct.

So it looks like I can continue to use Facebook on my old phone and everything else on my new phone. This is confusing since it involves two phones and I have to see if I can post a photo taken on one phone (my new phone) onto Facebook from my old phone. My assumption, since all of my photos are uploaded on a Google App which is now on both phones that this won’t be a problem, but we will see.

So, I have spent a lot of money to get a new phone which suffers from a disability and will need, for the foreseeable future, assistance from a second phone. But I do now have double the storage and presumably a better camera (among other things, a Zoom that will expand to 30x, instead of 10x), which I have yet to try.

And yes, I did get a case that fits the new phone, and I got a new, fast charger and new cables.

So….not perfect. But more perfect that what I thought I had before Michelle came up with a fix.

Two steps forward (storage and camera). Two Steps back (Facebook and cost).