Due to poor Cingular coverage in St. Louis my Treo spent most of last weekend roaming, probing for a signal that twas never to be. The constant search ran the batteries down in twenty-four hours instead of the normal ninety-six. Natch, I forgot to pack a charger or shut off the phone. Nothing like a funeral to bring out the absent mindedness streak. With a standard phone running the batteries down to zero would not be an issue; data and system settings persists in memory. Tragically, the classic Palm operating system deals with power deprivations in an irksome manner. Older Palm phones reset themselves. And not to the most recent operating state, either. They revert to day one fresh from the box brand new.

Besides my call log—a handy feature when retrieving someone’s number or the last call attempt—and a ton of pictures, nothing was irreplaceable. Except my contacts. If you haven’t heard from me lately, that is why.

Now I realize how dependent I was on the type ahead phone listings. Dialing these days is like coming home to find the front door swinging into the foyer. Oh sure, the place is still there, but it’s different.

After my grandmother’s funeral something interesting happened at the cemetery. An older couple dressed in Cardinal’s gear cruised up in a bus sized SUV. The woman tied two massive helium filled balloons—officially Major League Baseball sanctioned inflatable novelties, of course—to a bush enveloping a three-foot high brown marble headstone. She sauntered back to her car, turned on the stereo, and cranked Queen’s We are the Champions across section forty-seven.

Later when I mentioned this scene to my stepfather, he quipped, “There’s your victory parade, right there.”

He may have been right, because I witnessed the festivities downtown the following afternoon. Cemetery fans did put on an impressive showing.