Note: For my readers who use screen reading software, the picture above has a sign that says, “Decision Making.” From that sign flows lines with a word attached to the bottom of each line. The words are: alternatives, uncertainty, high-risk consequences, interpersonal issues, and complexity.
On Monday of this week I had the privilege of going to Dallas, which is about 2 hours from where I live. I say privilege because I’m a city-girl who likes to live in the country! That’s weird, right? It’s just that I love the things of the city such as Starbucks, Chick-Fil-A, nice places to shop, etc. But at the end of the day I like to retreat to the peace and quiet of the country where I can sit on the back deck and look at the trees and hear the faint music of wind-chimes. The best of both worlds! It was a nice escape from my wonderful, but rather small town. I used to go with the girls to the Dallas metroplex quite often for fun outings.
The primary reason for the trip to Dallas was that I had to go for a doctor’s appointment with my spinal cord injury specialist, Dr. Rita Hamilton. She was the doctor who took care of me while I was in Baylor Institute for Rehabilitation. The visit went well. Everyone has been telling me I have lost weight, and they are correct. I’ve lost about 15 pounds since coming home in April. That is a total weight loss for the year of about 55 pounds!
But back to the city…. My friend that went with me suggested we try S&D Oyster Company in downtown for lunch. My cousin Rebecca and her husband James joined us and we had a really nice visit. The fellowship and the food were both great! The service was outstanding as well. I highly recommend it. It’s on McKinney just down from the Crescent Hotel. After my appointment, we went to see my friend’s nephew, a 2-year-old baby with special needs. It was so good to meet him and his family. The baby’s mom had brought food to my husband while he was with Emmarie at Children’s following our accident. I had heard all about them from my friend, so it was nice to finally put faces with names.
Our next stop was Starbucks. First decision: what to order! I love Frappaccinos and hot coffee alike, but only the flavored stuff. I narrowed it down to Mocha Latte or Java Chip Frappaccino, and chose the later. This was my first Starbucks since August! And it did hit the spot.
Next stop: Verizon store! It was time for an upgrade from the iPhone 4s to something else. But what? The choice came down to iPhone 5c, 5s, or totally switch and go with a Samsung Galaxy. For a few years I’ve been sold on Apple because of the built-in accessibility features, particularly the Zoom feature. It’s not enough just to make the font bigger in text messaging. I need to be able to increase fonts in the entire display. I wasn’t sure if the Galaxy would allow that or not. But I knew one thing. The screen was SO much bigger! So I looked at the Galaxy Note 3 and had the sales person show me how the acccessibility features worked. And I loved it…. it IS perfect! The iPhone 5c/5s screen is only taller, not wider. But the Galaxy screen is both taller and wider and allows me to make the print larger than on the iPhone and still be able to read more than one word or two at a time. On the iPhone I would sometimes have to use VoiceOver to read content to me because on webpages I couldn’t get the print big enough. Sometimes that is nice, but I mostly prefer to read it myself. Once I was sure that my photo stream would sync with my iPad, I was more or less okay with trading in the iPhone and getting the Galaxy Note 3.
I was also upgrading the wireless card for our home internet. So that was another decision in itself, but I think I made a good choice. I hated the Verizon Mifi card that I had and so far am relieved at how easy to use the new Elipsis Jetpack is to use. Whew!
The guy at the store told me I had 2 weeks to return anything. Well, about 2 days into using my wonderful new Note 3, I was ready to trade it in and get my iPhone back! Why? Because my iPhone friends couldn’t text me. And it was SO different. I didn’t like the learning curve at all. But on the other hand, I was enjoying toying around with new technology. Mixed emotions. But I had to figure out this texting thing. Some friends helped and we figured out that iMessage in their iPhones had to be turned off and set to send texts via SMS. I think the iPhone tries to send texts as iMessages first, but only iPhones, iPads, etc can receive iMessages. So everyone did this and now the problem is fixed. I’m still trying to figure out how to do some things, but I LOVE this phone and I’m happy with my decision!
In life we are always faced with decisions. Some are big and some are small. The Lord cares about every detail of our lives. And especially in life’s critical decisions, we need to be led by the Holy Spirit. What decisions are you faced with today or in the near future? We know we can cast our cares on Him, because He cares for us.
Living Life 
I am still using a flip phone. Yeah… I know. But I’m very interested in the useability of the speech portion of the Gallaxy. Maybe some of your readers have some feedback? If noflip phone behind. Oh, how I’ll missit! t, then I guess it’s the iPhone when I decide to leave the flip phone behind.
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So far Ii’m not as impressed with the speech on the Galaxy. You would be a lot happier with the speech in Voice Over on the iPhone. Thanks for the reply!
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