What a crazy day!

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We tried to sleep in! Then Brandy wanted our attention. We got ready for a leisurely day… hahahahahahaha!!! Silly us.

Apparently the phone rang at nine. We didn’t know. At 10am, Erin rang to see if we could help Morgan move. I said yes, and started to get ready to go down and help. Hahahahaha. I checked the phone because it said we’d missed a call. The restaurant had called. Karen needed me to bake.

So, I showered and headed to work. Made bread, two coconut cream pies and did a lot of people ‘mopping up’. A refrigerator blew a coil or something and died. So, everyone was a bit frantic. Ooooooommm……. Lots of smiles, backrubs, grounding and other energy work along with the cooking. Phew! Ate lunch and finally got home around 3pm. Took a brief rest and tried to catch up on all the other calls I’d missed.

Meanwhile, when I was gone, Barbara Yule called with computer issues, and my Dad came by. He had pictures for the La Plaza Inn website for Dan.

I made arrangements with Pauline to pick up her washer and dryer and then called John to meet us at the house Morgan and Erin were renting. By 5pm, I finally had everyone in place. Wooohooo!!!! After that, I picked up some stuff that I’m taking to Stefan and Bryan in Arkansas. Gads those books are heavy.

Now to go do some sewing. I have jeans to hem for $$ and then I have two dresses to sew for the trip. Wheee…. If I am lucky, the only things I will have tomorrow will be a Huefano County Cat Coalition meeting and then helping Morgan and Erin pack. sigh….

Back into the icebox!!!

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At least that is where it feels like the world has been for the last few weeks. We get teased by a warm day and frozen the next. Brrrrrr!!! I am so ready for Spring!!!

Over the last few weeks I have… chopped down a tree, gone on a walk with my Dad and Dan and brought home a bag full of fossilized clams, done lots of laundry and school work, had fun at KnitWits and tried not to stress too much. I think I’m making progress on the stress, but some days it is in the wrong direction! Oh well.

I passed my computer class with a perfect score. No surprise there. I’m now in the middle of two business classes. yawn.. big frustration for me is that the classes are aimed at the 19-24 year olds. Sorry, but I already do most of the stuff they are talking about or… see no use for it in this economy. Oh well. 6 papers to go and I age a week off.

Let’s see…. Dan went to Denver this weekend to talk to the Government about this idea he’s had for unemployment. One meeting on Friday and one on Monday. He’s up in a hotel for the weekend. When not up to his eyeballs in papers, he has gone out with our friend Caron a time or two. 🙂 I’m glad she is willing to show him around. Denver can be fun or a nightmare, depending on how well you know it.

Today, I started out the morning slow…. Slept in a bit. Then the phone started. First my parents. Just a hello type call. Then Dan and I chatted for 30 minutes and I got caught up on his day. After that, I got a call from the Census office. An interview via the phone and then 30 minutes later, a job offer!!!! I’m going to be an assistant crew manager. Wheee!!! I could really enjoy a paycheck about now. While the Huerfano Journal has been the cement holding all the bits together most days, it would be nice to have a little more in my pocket. Plus, all the other job offers are still in the wings with no firm offers yet. sigh…. I start training on the 8th of February.

After all the phone calls, it was off to a gardening meeting. The community garden is gearing up. Wheee!!! Funny bit is that I have spinach in my bed from last year!!! Salad in a few days if it doesn’t freeze too hard. 🙂

Billing Cluster-****’s and lots of wind

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I’ve had my fill of idiots. Especially if they have anything at all to do with phones. For 4 months I fought with Qwest to straighten out my phone bill and service. No bills, wrong bills, wrong service, you name it, they screwed it up. Today I went to check and see if any of the credits I was told I would have had come through. Nope, and on top of that, nothing I asked to be canceled had been canceled. Keep in mind that I haven’t had DSL service since the end of October and no phone with Qwest since mid November. Shut off because I didn’t pay although I didn’t get any bills, or the billings I got were wrong. They even admitted that they were wrong!

So, I called. After the third person and 40 minutes on the phone, I discovered a few things:

  • I couldn’t cancel my phone while it was in suspended service.
  • I needed to pay $19.63 to have my phone turned back on so that 24 hours after I had service reinstated, I COULD CANCEL my phone.
  • I still owed $78 in phone charges
  • I have $122 in CREDIT coming to me.
  • I could not get the credit until I have the phone on, and they cycle it through billing.

So, I paid the $19.63. My phone service will be turned on and on Saturday or maybe Friday afternoon, I can cancel my service. I will pay off the $78 by January and at some point, I will get a check or multiple checks adding up to $122. I told the guy at one point that at least Qwest wasn’t as messed up as Sprint. Truth!

For the last month, I have also been arguing with Sprint via email, phone and finally in person at one point. In July, I called and told them that due to the fact that I was broke, I wanted to turn off my phone, cancel my service and pay off my contract. No problem I was told. (you can start laughing, I really won’t mind) Fast forward to August. I go to make a payment and find that my account has been sealed. No access. Hmm…. No access to my account, paperless billing…. hard to pay. I email tech support. No answer. Try again. Got told to go to my nearest Sprint store and pay.

When I cooled off, I explained that I live 60 miles one way from my nearest Sprint store. They did a “sorry, but not our problem, would you like to make a payment over the phone?” When I asked for an accounting and a paper receipt, I got told that wasn’t possible, I’d have to check that online. (What???) I said no thank you, I don’t like to make payments on the phone unless I have a paper bill to back it or an online bill I can check. Back to Customer Service.

Now I’m getting calls from a collection agent. One of them got Very Nasty. Called me a liar and a deadbeat and told me that I “just didn’t want to own up to the fact that I’d screwed up my account and didn’t want to pay”. I explained my views on payments online, especially to third partycollection agents. Reason is, I just got everything straightened out because of a small bit of identity theft. One of the things that they tell you is Don’t make payments over phones if you don’t have a bill in your hand, etc. It might not be the real collection agent, etc. So,… no bill, no payment. This collection agent told me again that I was lying! grrrrrrrrrr!

I did get to Pueblo and made a payment in person. I asked to be switched to paper billing so that I could pay my bill and keep track of my payments. This is after a 15 minute explanation of what had gone on. The guy tried. Guess what! Sprint can’t take you back from online billing back to paperless billing. He apologized.

Fast forward to this week. I finally got someone to listen to what I was saying and then got told that they had lost my payment I’d made in Pueblo. I about thumped my head on the computer. However, I talked to a real person on the phone and got the collection agency off my back until  they find my payment! gads!

In town, the weather has been either bitterly cold or just around 45 degrees. Not bad unless you add in the fact that the average wind lately has been around 20mph. BRRRR! Even the dogs didn’t want to go out the one day. Maybe it was because their water bowl froze!

This week at the chamber has been busy. Meetings no one came to, City Ordinances that look like they were written by Chinese Fire Drill and people running in at the last minute to sign up for the lighting contest.

I think I am really glad to be going to Pueblo tomorrow to finish my Yule shopping! Aieeeeeeeee!!!

Roadrunners, birthday parties and phones

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Right after I promised to try and write more often, we lost the DSL at the house. Our phone service has been screwed up since we got it. Dan tried to get it fixed. I tried. Finally in utter frustration, I called and canceled everything except the basic phone. Out of the 5-6 people who “tried to help” with our bill, only one did any good. Even he admitted that our bill was a “cluster f**k”.

I’ve been trying to keep up with email, and stuff online at work. Except for the journal. Just not enough time. I’ve gotten lots of chamber stuff done, but not much else. Dan is working on this brochure and map which has been interesting. It means that he has gotten very involved with the chamber too.

Last week, it was so warm! Nearly 75. In November!!! We went for a little drive and while Dan and Matt took a bit of a walk, I sat in the car and knitted. It was so lovely to just relax with the windows open. When we first pulled up, we saw a roadrunner sitting on the fence. That was really cool. I heard something and looked around. Nothing. Heard a noise again. Nothing. This happened 3-4 times. I was working on a green wool shawl, and was knitting away when the roadrunner jumped up into the window of the car and freaked when he realized that my green yarn was NOT a bug! I freaked too! He skittered off the car and across the bit of road to look at me like “how dare I scare him!”. Then he walked around the car a few times and hopped back up on the fence to watch me.

It wsa really very funny, when I had a chance to think about it. Dan and Matt thought it was a riot too.

I am finally feeling better too. I’ve been ill with some sort of upper respiratory infection for the last three days. I went to work, but Dan did the whole watch dog thing and kept checking on me. Granted, I work 4 hour days so it wasn’t too bad, but… it would have been nice to just stay in bed.

Yesterday we decorated the Chamber offices for the Parade of Lights festival. We have Santa here at the office after the parade. It looks really pretty and if we can get some pictures, I’ll post them.

Back at LOOOOONG Last!

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Oh my gods! We lost our phone line on August 21st. Our ex-business partner would neither turn the phone off, nor give us access to do it ourself. sigh… So, when she didn’t pay the bill, Qwest turned it off. We got the phone back on rather quickly, but it took them until yesterday to turn the DSL on. They forgot it on the first order and I had to redo the whole thing. Grrrrr……

Meanwhile, we’ve wired my parents house for telephone service. That was fun.. NOT! Dan had to crawl under the house in the crawl space. Not a fun time. He did however zing my mom. Told her that she really needed to dust down there. She told him to “bite me!” I laughed.

We’ve also dealt with tons of rain. Yesterday’s storm was so heavy with lightning that I nearly got hit. I had just gotten my feet out of the inch deep puddle at my mom’s house when there was a Flash/BOOM! That blast was so loud that all I could do is yell “Shit!” and watch the sparks from up above fall into my parents yard. We think the antenna next door got hit. It rained hard enough that the arroyos flooded and several low spots on the frontage road parallelling I-25 were full of mud. Dad and I saw this on our way to Pueblo today. In fact, one area washed out the road. At least 65 sq. yds of road and land next to the road were gone.

As mentioned, Dad and I went to Pueblo. He and Mom needed a pantry cupboard for the kitchen. Their house is sadly lacking in storage. It was really heavy, so when we got back, I dropped off Dad and picked up Dan. This way they could put it together. At one point, Dad was saying that he was use to being precise like they were on missles when he worked at Martin Marietta. Dan, who was putting on the hinges turned to him and said, “Jon, this isn’t rocket science!” They both laughed.

They got the cabinet together, and we took home a dresser that they didn’t need. Wheeee! Dan now has a place to put his clothes! As Mom and Dad unpack boxes, she is sorting through things and deciding what she doesn’t want any more. I of course get first pick.:)

Dan and I have also been working on lots of information for our other blog, The Pagan Way. We are getting ready to formally start a coven. I’ve been working on by-laws, book lists and other bits and bobs.

Wheeee….

The phones…. they won’t stop ringing…..

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You’d think I worked at a business or something! Gads! Today has been phone hell. They ring, they ring some more and sometimes there are 3 calls at once! Plus we have been having issues with Vonage and a mix up with our service. They connected the device to the wrong account numbers. What a cluster f*ck. However, I think that Dan finally got things worked out. Here’s hoping!

Stefan called and I had to put him on hold three separate times in less than 5 minutes. Wow! Poor guy, he was just trying to tell me how life was going for him and Anabell, and he could barely get a word in edgewise. I kept having to interrupt him, put him on hold and answer the other phone. Twice it was my parents who arrived in town today.

Then there were the conversations. :> Geeze! Here we are a wireless internet service provider. A WISP. Better yet, we are providing free access to Aguilar government entities. So far, two of them don’t want it! What the hell? I sort of understand the fire department. They probably have some government based contract that they can’t get out of. However, the library is not.  They’ve gotten a grant with a company that is suppose to give them WiFi. It’s been promised service, but as far as I understand it, they aren’t actually connected yet. Instead, they are costing the town money for a satellite that has been their connection for a while. I talked to the city manager, and he wasn’t sure if they were connected and didn’t understand why they didn’t want free service. Sigh….

The rest of the phone calls were about service. When would it be turned on? (it is) How long will it be free? (until the end of the week) How much? What do I need? What’s a WISP? and When are you coming to our area? (as soon as possible) Oh, and the software company called me because Dan forgot to give them his cell phone number. Wheee….

My parents arrived amidst all the phone calls. They are here for the rest of the week to work on their house. Dan was a tad crabby, so I took Mom with me to go pick up the kids. I told her all about the shopping trips. I thought she was going to laugh herself silly. Especially over the ear piercing.

Now I get to have a quiet evening. The kids are home, work is mostly done and now all I need to do is return the DVD we forgot for the last 4 days and head to Safeway for some milk. Tomorrow looks like it will be just as busy, so I think I will head to bed early again.

So much to do!

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    And so little gets done some days! The last few weeks have been busy. Every time I turn around the phone is ringing or there is stuff to do and I don’t get it all done. Or, there is a burst of energy and it is all done and I sit on my arse. I could really go for some nice consistant something! The other thing is that if I have stuff to do at the office, I’m at the house, and visa versa. Aieeee-ya!

The other thing that is going on is that we finally have the billing system up at the Budget Host hotel. Huzzah!!! Aguilar goes live with billing later today. Right now everyone has been enjoying free internet. 3 terabytes so far. I have to write some documents today so that we can give out instructions and such for people. Wheee!  off to the salt mines!

Finished!!!

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    At long last, I have finished a major bit of writing. I started this story, Sheeple, about 2 years and 3 offices ago. It took over my life for a brief bit, and I actually had time to let it do so. Granted, it shoved another story, SweetWater, to one side, but… This one had a bit more Ummph behind it. Ok, a real shove via my Muse. I wrote a ton of pages and then hit a resounding halt. Life got in the way and I didn’t write on it for nearly 5-6 months. I started to edit it and work on it a bit more and then life intruded again. However, last week I got tired of that Muse of mine hammering my brainpan. Dan had also dropped a not so subtle hint or two that he’d like to see the finished story. I can understand that as I used him as “technical adviser” a time or six.

However, I knew it had to finish soon. The hardest part about writing isn’t the idea, or dialog. It’s rounding up all the characters and making them shut up long enough to bring the story to a close. Or, at least to the end of the first volume.  I know I could have written 15-20 more chapters of Sheeple, but that isn’t where the story was. This ending is short and sweet. It wraps it up and tucks it in nice and neatly, which is where the first chapter tried to contain it. Now, if I write Sheeple II, I may elaborate more. I don’t know. However, the story is finished. Huzzah! Now once Dan finishes giggling and drooling on the keyboard, we will tidy up any little edits and call it done. What I do after that, I’m not sure. Part of me wants to just share it with friends. Other bits of me wants to find a way to publish it. I’ll see where I am in a bit.

The other thing that I have finally (?) finished is this bout with the flu. I have been sick for a week. Today is the first time I have gotten dressed since I got sick. Gads! Dan is still rather phlegmmy, but I think he is on the mend as well. Regardless of that though, we have to get back to work. I turned the phones on for the first time and was hit with a barrage of calls. We also have one appointment today. Between the phone and that, I’ve cleaned up the bedroom a bit so that it is loosing that sick room smell, changed sheets and have dumped the dirty laundry. I’m going to have a ton of it. Oh well.

Another bit of good news is that I have a story up on Literotica. Fruit Salad. :> Teeheehee! I doubt that the Muse will let me rest, so….  on to SweetWater!