Easy? Never.

I'm always the optimist. Glass half-full kind of thing. Even when past experience has told me that, no matter what the instruction booklet says, getting a computer to cooperate with a new modem will take hours instead of steps 1-4, I still hold out and hope--no, believe--that this time, it'll be just that easy.



I'm always wrong.



I've had the Crack for four weeks now. Last night I learned how to check my voice mail (Hi, Liz! You did call me to tell me that you're engaged, just like you said you did. I'm sorry I doubted you.). Since we're leaving for Florida in a couple of hours, yesterday was the deadline to make sure the stupid thing would actually "tether" to my laptop so we can get online while we're in Florida. As usual, I'd tried a few times and when it didn't work, I just put it off.



After work yesterday, I spent over 3 hours at the AT&T store. I am loving AT&T. Every time I walk in, someone immediately asks if they can help. Ntelos evidentally didn't believe in customer service; if you remember, I would wait up to 90 minutes without being spoken to or asked to wait a bit. Not at AT&T.

I foolishly procastinated trying to tether the laptop and phone until the day before we leave for Florida (1 hour and 25 minutes now!), because the booklet shows four very simple steps (the fourth being "click on the CONNECT button") and I was so sure it would be that simple. I know better. I never believe that little voice that says, "you idiot, you know it'll take three hours to get it to work, and only then after you have the help of two phone techs and an hour of on-the-phone-with-customer-service (the tech guy, not me) to discover that my phone would not connect. Would. Not. Yeah, it's a refurb, that's the only way I could afford one. For some reason, they frequently won't cooperate with tethering. So he reset the phone. That didn't work.

I was tired, but I couldn't get upset at all the time it was taking because these guys were trying everything they knew to make it work. Finally, after the store closed, they said that the phone is defective, and they'll send a new (refurb) one to me. Since we'll be in Florida, and it was too late to get it to me today, they're sending it to my daughter's house. It should be there tomorrow. All I have to do is pack up the old phone, slap on the postage return sticker that they emailed me, and drop it in a mail box after I get the new (refurb) one.

I was floored. I've never had service like that with Ntelos. I had to argue with them for months to get my name changed on my bill after I remarried. It took three billing cycles--and three trips into the non-service store--to get my niece's phone line separated from mine, and they still didn't want to do it. Fortunately I saved every freaking contact that I had with them about these issues and finally they fixed things.

So. Once the new (refurb) one is here, all I have to do is link it to the laptop, open the communications manager, and click "connect". It will work.

I know it will.

If it's this bad now, what's gonna happen when the government takes over health care?

Grrrrrrrrr.

I am so irritated/angry/pissed off at my mail-in prescription service. If I didn't save money by sending them our 90-day prescriptions, I'd never use them again.

Back in March, before we went to Florida, I mailed in a page of refills with six or seven new prescriptions stapled to it. The week after we got home, the refills arrived. Not one of the new prescriptions had been filled. I called the service and was told they hadn't received the new prescriptions. I told them that if they got the refill authorization, then they had to have received the new ones. They were all stapled to that one stinking page. No, they didn't have them. And we were out of a couple of meds.

Ron, or Rod, whoever he was, offered to call the doctor and ask her to fax the prescriptions to him. I thought that was the end of that.

A few days later, two of the new prescriptions arrived. Two. 2. Dos. I called the service again. They'd not received the others. Called my doctor. Yes, they'd faxed all of them. Once again, my prescription service screwed up.

I had a doctor's appointment last Wednesday. She told me she'd faxed the prescriptions the week before, but she'd do them again.

A few minutes ago, I called the stupid prescription service again. Only one prescription had been received, they'd filled it, and I have to allow 7 or fewer (I love that distinction) days to get them. Ooookay. I called my doctor's office yet again. They'd faxed in three prescriptions for me at the same time they'd faxed that one for Tom. But the damn service had not received my prescriptions.

My doctor's office is once again faxing the prescriptions. I am almost out of two of them.

If things are this damn f^cked up when insurance is run by private companies, what the hell is going to happen when the government takes over our health care? Will we end up like Canada and not be able to get surgery that we need because they're too busy? Like Great Britain where women with breast cancer are left to die because the drugs to fight it are too expensive?

I do not have a good feeling about this.


P.S. I am feeling a little better each day. Just a tiny bit better, but at least it's moving in the right direction.

No easy way to say it. Tom has lost his job. TJX's Loss Prevention (from the home base in Massachusetts) swooped in yesterday and grilled him for 3.5 hours, accusing him of stealing scrap metal, tens of thousands of dollars worth. Of course he didn't do it. He refused to sign any papers that they tried to force him to sign, because he said that what they wanted him to say was WRONG.

What he did do was sell some scrap metal because the price was up, and he took the $200 and had a pizza party for his employees. Company policy is that the scrap metal is to be hauled away at the company's expense. He didn't follow company policy.

He hasn't been officially notified yet; yesterday they took his badge and keys and suspended him pending "investigation". But tonight he went into his stock options account to sell any options he has before they fired him, and it's all gone.

They couldn't even fire him to his face. Some of his employees have called and are very angry that he was railroaded this way.

He spent today arranging for his Porsche to be sold (I hope it sells quickly; we were counting on that for part of our retirement funds) and went to the Virginia Employment Commission to see about possible jobs. There are two that he plans to apply for. He has four weeks of vacation; he should be paid for this week and all of the vacation.

He's gone to bed; he says he's depressed, but he says that I can't be. I told him that I already am depressed, so no go there!

Since we still have two free Airtran trips each, and probably won't be going to Cancun in the spring or CA in the summer, I told him that he should just take off and go see his daughter in Ft. Lauderdale. The sun and warm weather will do him good, and so will spending time with her. He said that he probably will. He still wants me to go to Orlando next week since it's a free trip and already arranged; it would cost about $100 to change it. Better save that, huh?

Crap. Crap crap crapcrapcrapcrapcrap.

If nothing turns up here, we just might sell the place and head to Florida earlier than we'd planned. My retirement would be a lot lower, but I'd have to get a job anyway. Maybe we could both work at Disney World!!! Woohoo! He loves Disney!

Tom is the most honorable, honest man I've known (other than Dad), and this shouldn't be happening to him. Oddly enough, his former boss (plant manager) quit suddenly in June and was told to take his four weeks of vacation and not come back. He's now working as a teaching assistant in one of the new city schools; says he wants to become a teacher. Tom always thought it was odd the way he left and took such a cut in pay, with a kid still in school, maybe two, and now we think that the same thing happened to him. Tom won't call him, though; men.

This is the same place (TJX is the company that owns TJ Maxx and Marshall's stores) that fired a woman because she had an accident right in front of the building on her way to work, she was out of vacation, personal, and sick leave. She left the accident, ran into the building to clock in, ran back out to her car, got a ticket for leaving the scene of the accident and was fired for leaving the building after clocking in. Doesn't matter what the circumstances are. Company policy.

I'm calling for a nationwide boycott of all TJX properties. You're on notice, TJX. You won't be getting my Christmas shopping money this year, hahahahaha. It has nothing to do with the fact that I won't have any Christmas shopping money or that our income has suddenly become less than 2/3 of what it was yesterday, either.

I can play dirty, too.

The drama continues

Several people have suggested that perhaps some original copies could be misplaced. I wouldn't do anything like that. Would I?

So anyway, the terribly important ASAP copies sat on the counter in here until 3:30, as I was leaving. She strolled in and casually asked me if she'd worn me out. I just laughed and passive-aggressively headed into the bathroom. She picked up her copies and left. Didn't even notice that about half of them hadn't been done.

Since I finished all the work that I could possibly dig up this morning, I ended up finishing her stuff. But since she'd taken the instruction page with her, I couldn't remember how many copies she wanted, so I may not have copied the correct number, and the copier jammed several times and some pages may have been lost. Oh well.

I know that in the long run this kind of behavior will make more work for me, but it felt so damn good. And I put hers off until everything else had been copied.

Juvenile, yeah, but I am the passive-aggressive queen.

Some of those ASAP copies are still sitting on the counter.

This morning several teachers brought in stuff that they needed right then (can we say "plan ahead", children?), 70 or 80 copies of each set, but they brought them in themselves instead of sending a student, and they apologized for the inconvenience. And since I was already copying Thursday and Friday's stuff, it wasn't a problem.

Being polite will get you far in this world.

I'm thinking of putting out a jar labeled "Tips Appreciated". I wonder how that would be received.

Her

Hmmmppphhh. She hasn't gotten her terribly important, I-nned-them-all-right-now copies that she dumped here Saturday, but she just sent a student in with four more things to copy.

My weekend

Gorgeous weather, nice and sunny and warm. Kind of end-of-summer warm, with the trees turning color and the threat of frost soon. I think that this is the latest we've gone without frost for a long while. I hope it continues. I'm enjoying my geraniums.

I gave the SAT on Saturday morning, which is good for about $100. It takes about 6 hours, but it's worth it. Then we went home after eating in a pizza place that we've always liked but seems to have lost its charm (what little it had). If you like observing the people who come out of the boonies on a Saturday afternoon, it's a good place.

I'm on Cipro for 10 days for yet another UTI, and it's doing a number on me. At least, I hope that's what it is. I've felt like someone pulled the plug on me, just totally drained. The first thing I did was check my lips and gums; they're not white, so I guess it's not stomach bleeding again.

So basically I slept all day Saturday after we got home. I had a low-grade fever, so I couldn't get comfortable; either too hot or two cold. I didn't even go outside in the sun, although it would have done my vitamin D levels some good. I got up and ate a little supper then went back to bed. Tom was up and down as well. I slept until 12:30 on Sunday, then ate breakfast and went outside for a while. The sun felt so good; the sky was an incredible cloudless blue.

After that, I forced myself to mop the hardwood floor, then plopped on the couch and knit for the next few hours.

I restarted my wrap during the SAT (on size 10 needles this time) and got about 11 inches done, at which time I remembered that I was supposed to make a buttonhole at 10". Oh well, I'm tall. By the time I went to bed last night (around 7) I'd knit one ball of yarn and Tom had helped me wind the second. All was well as I wound it (I'd draped the hank over my knees, as usual, because 1) it's too much trouble to get up and get the swift and winder; and 2) neither fit on any surface in the house) until it caught on something and started tangling. Zippy sat in front of me and woofed every few seconds; I kept telling him to lie down since he'd just been outside. He continued woofing, I looked down, and there was Chester the Cat entangled in the yarn.

I should always listen to Zippy.

So that was my thrilling weekend. This morning I once again feel brochitis coming on. I'm so happy about it.

And someone (and I know who) came into my office on Saturday and rearranged the copying jobs that I'd prioritized before I left Friday and left her stack (and I mean enough pages to kill a forest) on top with ASAP written on each job. Saturday morning, during the SAT, I came into my office to run a job, found her pages, and rearranged them in my order. A couple of hours later, her things were back on top. I am so irritated.

To top it all off, several pages that have to be copied by tomorrow, 1400 pages each for the school's newsletter, had disappeared. They were on top of the stack on the printer that had also been rearranged. I've ransacked my office and they're nowhere to be found. Probably they're stuck to something she sat down and picked up. This caused a ripple of panic and a frantic attempt to get copies of the last four pages, which hadn't been saved on the secretary's computer because they were sent by someone else.

But we managed to get the copies, all is well, and she hasn't shown her face to pick up her ASAP copies (enough for the entire six weeks, come to think of it; there's no way her classes could go through all that stuff in one morning). And if she does, they won't be ready. Because I'm passive-aggressive like that.

Payday

Finally--the first payday of the new school year and my new job. I'd estimated that the increase would be about $200 before taxes, but it turns out to be that much almost exactly! Woohoo! Maybe we can pay off a credit card faster. Or I can buy more yarn.

I vote for a laptop. I miss mine soooo much.

The bad copier is still broken. It's been over two weeks now. The other one is being overused and is acting up. Twice now it's had a miscommunication with itself and has reset, which means it reboots. I lose all jobs I've programmed when it does that. So then I take a time out so I don't kick the stupid thing.

Most of the teachers here are on the ball and leave things to be copied a day to a week before they're needed, but there are just a few who, almost every day, send a kid in with a packet of papers half an inch thick and want 50 copies, front/back, stapled and hole-punched. The copier does all that work, but these people have to know before that class started that they were going to need those papers. They're supposed to have lesson plans and be prepared for unexpected absences. But they're not, and every stinking day, sometimes more than once a day, they send in students to get those copies. Now. (Annnnddddd I just made copies for another one.)

This poor copier is overworked and overheated and I'm afraid it's not going to make it. Because I'm going to kick it.

About Verizon

We live in the sticks, so our internet options are limited. 1) dialup 2) satellite 3) dsl. Number 1 is completely unacceptable now that I've had high-speed access at work and at home. We tried satellite; it's very expensive, not that fast, and every time a cloud went by the signal was dropped. So, when Verizon offered dsl in our area in January (everywhere else in the world had dsl two years ago; like I said, we live in the sticks), Tom ordered a modem and we switched over.

We've been pleased with the speed; it's better than the satellite connection was, and it hasn't gone out once. Until this weekend.

We left home Friday morning and didn't get home till 7 Sunday evening. I noticed that the lights weren't glowing on the modem. I immediately checked the computer (which had been left on all weekend); it was fine. Printer fine. Answering machine fine. Phones fine.

Back up. The phone worked. This is dsl, which comes in over the phone line. The phone line works. No dsl. The answering machine is plugged into the same outlet as the modem. Tried plugging modem into another outlet and resetting it. No lights.

Damn. That means a call to customer "service". It took me hours on hold and then talking to an actual human back in January when we installed this thing and then hooked it to the wireless router. I just didn't think I could go through that frustration again.

But. I'm working at home off and on during the summer. Without internet access, I'm screwed. I can't even check my email to see if my boss has any updates for me. So I called customer "service".

I didn't have to wait too long for a real human voice, but the stinking menu requires oral communication, not button pushing. I don't like that. I don't like phones. Talking to a computer without cursing is not easy for me. "I'm sorry, I don't understand that response" just brings forth more cursing and more "not understand"ing.

So the human was nice and very helpful; he informed me that my modem was dead (Einstein that he was) and since it was out of warranty, I'd have to WAIT A FREAKING MINUTE HERE. It's out of warranty? We've had it for 5 freaking months. We're under obligation for 12 months, and their modem craps out after 5?

So he kindly transferred me to billing where I could hash it out with a woman who spoke heavily accented English through a tin can and unwaxed string from another country. It made communication difficult, although she "feels the same as you do, ma'am" that I have to buy another freaking modem and don't think I should have to pay for it since it was ONLY FIVE MONTHS OLD and we have to keep paying for dsl through them for another 7 months. (If I want to be totally accurate, I have to say that we're going to have to keep Verizon dsl forever or until another option comes along in the next century or so.)

So the Lady of Spain checks with her manager, but even though her empathy was oozing through the tin can and string, she couldn't do anything about it. She could have a new modem to us in "only 3-5 business days". I asked if I could go to a local Verizon store and pick one up. "Oh yes, you'll have it in 3-5 business days." If I actually went in and asked for one? "Yes, in 3-5 business days. May I order one for you?" No, I'll go to Circuit City and see what they have. "Oh, but I must inform you that you'd have to have the same modem." The same modem that crapped out after only 5 months? I think not. I'll buy another brand. "Then I must inform you that Verizon cannot guarantee that this modem will work." They can't guarantee that the piece of crap they sold us earlier would work longer than three months, either. Our old wireless router that we bought when we had the satellite access installed is still working, even with Verizon's choice of modems, so I really don't see a problem using a different brand of modem.

The best thing about the call was hearing over and over, "If you don't want to wait for a human representative (my paraphrasing), you can solve all your problems by going to www.verizon.com. No amount of shouting that I couldn't go to their freaking website without freaking internet access seemed to faze the disembodied voice, either.

P. S. I'm at work now, but it's my last day until August, so the freaking internet access must be fixed. Today. I didn't realize just how freaking dependent I am on it.

Girls?

So, what do you say? The house is perfect.

Get me out of here, con't

Remember the nasty kid who was in here on Thursday spreading Germs of Doom? He's back. Leaving class again because he's too sick to be here, but for some reason this morning he decided it was the Right Thing to come on in and share more Germs of Doom with the rest of us.

Some of us would like to avoid catching anything more than we already have, thankyouverymuch, Nasty Kid.

Get me out of here!

For the love of God, don't parents teach their little monsters to cover their mouths when they cough? I mean, this kid is in high school, he has a nasty something or other, probably the freaking flu since that's what several hundred others have had lately, and he's sitting here waiting for Mama, coughing away, spewing out germs by the million.

I've had enough. How much longer till I can retire and receive my full benefits? Less than 5.5 years, actually; 4.5 if I buy back that first year when I thought I'd never work for a school again so I took out the whole $160 that I'd contributed to the Virginia Retirement System. Now it'll cost $1250 to buy it back, but I'm thinking it would be worth every penny.

One inch of snow cripples western Virginia

Every stinking school system in this part of the state (and WV) are stinking closed this morning. Except our city school system. It took me 15 minutes to drive the 5 miles after I dropped Tom off this morning. Roads had not been treated. The damn school parking lot hadn't been touched; we couldn't tell where the lines were, so we're parked all over the stinking place.

So far at least two buses--full of children--have been in accidents and have to be towed. There have been many parents calling in saying that their kids have been in wrecks; at least two teachers have been in wrecks. My boss can't get off her street. Tardies have been totally suspended today because kids are just coming in when they can get in. Many buses are either stuck or haven't picked up kids at all.

Happy freaking Wednesday!



Okay, the lot isn't as bad as I thought. Only two or three cars are blocked in with dumb parking.

And the weather forecast is calling for another wave of snow to come through starting any minute. Wanna bet we'll be here till 3:00 anyway?

Poor choices

One of my high school's former football players yesterday shot and killed a man. This kid (now almost 20) was just plain dumb. He was in SpEd, so that's how I knew him. Not a mean bone in his body, but if provoked he would fight.

This is a kid who was almost never in class. He was one of the elite, a football player, an athlete, so he could pretty much write his own ticket in school. He roamed the halls and dropped in here and there to talk to people. He was pretty much untouchable. Agreeable for the most part, always smiling, but dumb as dirt, did very little work, but was scooted along and tolerated in class because he was a football player.

He lives in the worst possible part of town on a street that no one in their right mind would walk down after dark. Crowds of angry young men (why are they always angry? Upset about not having the advantages of other people? Then for God's sake, quit whining about it and do something about it--WORK!!!) congregate on the corners all night long. The police department is making an effort to let their presence be known there during the night, parking at one end and slowly making their way to the other. People will come outside--at 3 a.m.--to thank them for being there. But the angry young men will either bolt, confront them ("I didn't do nuthin" without being accused of anything), or just stand and watch.

This kid was given every possible chance by the school's principal (a lady who cares about these troubled kids as if they were her own); his SpEd teacher took him to the doctor (and paid the bill) when he was sick, fed him, took him to football practice, things which his crack-ho of a mother (okay, she was on crack, I'm not sure about the ho part) couldn't be bothered to do. His father is in prison and has been most of the kid's life. He had at least two prior felonies (relatively minor assault and battery--at least, minor when compared to cold-blooded murder) and the teacher's husband, a criminal defense attorney, had defended him (taking payments because the family couldn't pay it all at once). He is livid; he's worked with this kid for years, seeing another side of him (the big, dumb, lazy, easy-going athlete), but the man who was killed was the attorney's friend. This man heard the fight building steam, at 1 a.m. (and it's freezing here at night, literally, so what are these dumb asses doing outside at that hour anyway???), and ran outside to break it up. The newpaper says that several 911 calls were made about the fight, but by the time the first police arrived, shots had already been fired.

You've heard, "I've got your back, man"? Well, yesterday I found out what that means. It means that if you're dissed, your "man" will fight for you. The kid who was dissed is a total waste of carbon and oxygen, a lazy, whiny bastard (he wasn't in SpEd, but I worked with him in a class three years ago), was afraid that he was going to get hurt, so he ran and got this kid, who had his back. And who will now spend the rest of his life in prison, because he was stupid enough to have a gun and bring it outside with him, so he could have that bastard's back.

My God.

My week

This has been me lately.

Do not mess with me.