A little bundle of joy landed on our doorstep recently, but it wasn’t delivered by the stork. No, FedEx left a package for us in broad daylight while we were out of the house on Saturday.

You see, Rita’s favorite holiday by far is Christmas. So last week she wasted no time in taking advantage of Day-After-Thanksgiving Christmas shopping. What’s that you say, it’s only October? Well yeah…I guess it was more Day-After-Canadian Thanksgiving Christmas shopping…but hey…minor details, right?

Among the great deals Rita found was none other than a Specialized Domestic Partner Homing Device (SDPHD) also known as a Blackberry. The reason? Neither she or I was on contract currently and Verizon was more than willing to give us the phone for free if we signed up for a new, expensive plan. Verizon has been marketing their SDPHDs quite aggressively all year, mainly because they always think the next model is going to the “iPhone killer”.

We also found out subsequently that if we upgraded to a family plan (something I don’t particularly like) Rita could get her very own Specialized Domestic Partnership Homing Device (SDPHD) too. So we did. All for “free”.

But here’s the kicker. On my old plan with Sprint, I had free incoming calls as a legacy customer with Nextel. So I never really worried about my minutes because I would have to initiate a call to incur minutes. Now, however it’s the opposite problem. We have ten numbers we can call for free, all Verizon numbers are free, and all text messages are Internet charges are included but I have to share minutes with you know who.

So as you might guess I’m sudden a big fan of text messaging, which heretofore was not something I cared much for. But SDPHD of course, expedites that problem and can turn even the most mild-mannered person into a Crack-Berry addict.

And I confess if nothing else, I have configured my SDPHD to broadcast different sounds based on what sort of communication I’m receiving, be a phone call, text message, email, IM, or Facebook update. You’d think it’d be horribly distracting I’m sure…but truth be told….I’m just not that popular.