Utilities

Everybody moves a lot during college. I think I averaged one move every eight months. But I always kept the same phone number. This was before the days of cell phones, mind you, when we all had to own telephones and kept slips of paper in our wallets crammed with dozens of scrawled phone numbers. When you got someone's digits, you actually got someone's digits. My phone number was 865-0175 for four years and five apartments. I came to be on a first name basis with the nice people at the phone company:
"Thank you for calling New England Telephone, this is Larry."
"It's Vance."
"Oh, it's you. Where's it gonna be this time, Mr. Wandery-Pants?"

Since moving to Boston, however, I have lived in three apartments in eight years. It's been five years since I've owned a telephone. Yet still, there is an inordinate amount of calling utility companies going on. Gas, oil, electric, cable, internet... that's a lot of service providers. What irks me, though, is not the having to do it, or even to pay for it, it's that mostly, you have no choice as to whom you hire to provide these services. For instance, I obviously HAVE to own an iPhone, yet only AT&T carries them. That's just wrong.

Where was I going with all this? Bread, of course. I've just taken a loaf of Heart of Wheat out of the oven, and boy oh boy is it glorious. Bread is the perfect example of utility (staff of life and all that) becoming beauty. Beautility.

I think I'll take my beautility to Cleveland Circle and share it with friends. Try doing THAT with your hot water heater.