In the tradition of one of my favorite bloggers

The following phone exchange just took place. They said it would be recorded and used for training purposes. I HOPE so!

He: This is Verizon and

Me: Are you calling to sell me something or is there a problem with my service

He: Oh, no problem. Verizon is in the area, and we just see you are long term customer and thought we might lower your rates with some of our…

Me: I pay fifteen bucks a month. Are you going to lower that?

He: Oh, no sir. Sorry about that.

Me: Are you involved with FIOS at all?

He: yes

Me: I’ve had opposite opinions from verizon as to whether it is available to me, here now.

He: What is your phone number?

Me: Um…you called ME, remember?

He: stutters…mentions something about H***

Me: I don’t live in H****

He: More mumbling, F****. Yes, phone and internet available

Me: If I go away…..

He: Reconnect charge of $29.95

Me: Sounds like a deal breaker to me

He: We have vacation package where you pay $15 a month

Me: For service you are not using?

He: Mumbles

Me: BTW, saying you are ‘in the area’ sounds a lot like the gypsy home improvement scammers. You might want to try for a better opening line.

I Wanna Go Back To Dixie

I Wanna Go Back to Dixie

That was the title of an irreverent song (as were they all) penned by one of my heroes, Tom Lehrer in the late 1950’s. It is not simply the choice between temps in the low seventies versus wind chills close to zero, though that IS an additional incentive.

But, truly, now I have one home and two houses, and it makes me unspeakably sad to see the look in four beautiful eyes on Skype.

And darnit, I miss my good lawnmower too! Just inside trying to regain feeling in fingers that were wearing insulated gloves while I re-set the gutter drains and picked up forearm sized branches from the 16 Oak trees which have little purpose in life, seemingly, other than to dump garbage on the ground twelve months out of every year.

Guys- I’ll be back as quick as I can.




Trust me on that!!!

For Ben B mostly

When is enough enough?

For years I have defended the customer service of Direct TV, because it has always been good or better.

Today, returning to my lair in the cold north, I found no service, so I called their eight hundred number.

Shortly after nine AM. I got a recording basically with three messages interspersed with mellow piano music.

I have gotten pretty familiar with those three messages, having now heard each of them well over ONE HUNDRED times.

It is coming up on two PM. When it has been five hours, I will disconnect and see if I win a prize for the longest hold they ever got. Even Dell at its worst was better.

I have actually managed to do quite a few things while using portable phone to listen. One was to call on a letter I got about FIOS, using a cell phone to call while listening to the recording on my home phone.

FIOS has the good grace to answer with a recording saying they are very busy, call later. A bit more honest, n'est-ce pas?

Ben, when (if) I DO reach them, I will definitely take a page from your playbook and suggest that they owe me a free month for my five hours.

My fallback position is pretty strong actually...they can lose a good customer of many years.

So Dear to My Heart

Once Upon A Time, Walt Disney, way back when he was alive, made movies which were quite beloved by children of that era, but which apparently do not get much play these days.

One such was about a little black goat, and starred the same boy star who had been in Treasure Island, Bobby Driscoll, who was perhaps about my own age. I suspect that I may have been a little jealous of his fame and fortune, and was somewhat brought up short some time later on, when I read that he died alone and undiscovered for days in a tenement in a ghetto in NYC somewhere.

Anyhow, Blogger Girl and I went for a local bike ride and found this little fellow bleating up alongside the fence in a herd of Longhorn cattle, lots of other goats, and an emu. It reminded me of that movie, and a simpler, gentler time that I suspect many of us older people miss.

'Tis The Season

But I don't WANNA be Santa!!



But I will, 'cause I WUV You!

Looks Like Someone MISSES Howie!

Howie Says Hi

Hi.

My name is Howie, but some people call me black Benji, because that is who I look like.

I am almost one year old, and I live in a nice house in Dixie, with lots of woods out back, and three loving people to take care of me. I am a very happy dog.

One day though, I was playing on the side of our house away from the woods, and suddenly out of nowhere, a big car came by and before I knew it, I was rolling and rolling sideways and I hurt from where the car hit me.

I was very scared, but my people were not around and I could not get inside, so I crept into the deep, dark, scary woods and lay down to sleep. When I awoke, it was still very dark and I could not remember which way was home

Although it hurt to walk, I wanted to find my people, so I walked and walked in the woods to find my home. After a long time, I came to a clearing in the woods, and there I saw a house, but it did not look like my house. Still, I walked up to it and found a little-dog-sized place to get inside just under a hose.

But when I got inside, it was still very dark there, and the little strip of metal that let me inside closed behind me, and I could not get out. It was very dark, and I was cold and tired and scared and hurt where the car had hit me, and now I was hungry and thirsty as well.

So I went to sleep, because it was all I could do.

After a long while, I heard a car drive up to the front of the house and people got out, and they had a dog with them. As they went to go inside, I heard their dog come up to the wall right beside where I was lying and start sniffing and sniffing the wall of their house, just opposite me.

I could hear their footsteps above me for awhile, and then it was quiet and I slept some more.

This went on for three days and three nights, and I became very weak and of course very hungry and thirsty. I could hear them walking around and coming and going in their car, and every time they went out with their dog, he would stop and sniff the house where I was resting.

And then finally, one of the people walking the dog on its leash let him sniff his way around their house to the little hole though which I had pushed my way days earlier, and suddenly, there was the head and then the shoulders of a big brown hound sniffing inside under their house.

A few minutes later, a Nice Lady with a flashlight and a lantern came crawling under the house where I was lying. “There’s a dog under here” she cried out. “Alive” she answered the question yelled from outside. And so she came back with some hotdogs and a little leash and very slowly and patiently she tried to get me to come out of my hiding place. It took close to half an hour before we were out.

She made a nice little bed on her porch for me and gave me some food and water, while the Big Dog Who Lived There tried to play with me, only the man kept him tight on a leash so he could not reach me more than nose smelling. For several days, the Nice Lady fed me, and looked at the place where I had been hurt, and then she even gave me a bath! The Big Dog Who Lived There wanted SO much to play, but the man on the other end of his leash never quite let him do so.

And then, on Thanksgiving Day, a car pulled up and My People were in it! I was SO excited that I jumped and wagged and even barked a little bit happily. They hugged me, and hugged each other and hugged the Nice People That Found Me, and I went home for Thanksgiving. Seems that while the Nice Lady was feeding me and bathing me, the Man Who Lives There had a picture she took of me, and he was walking up and down the long street, knocking on doors and asking if anybody knew who had lost me.

And on the second day of doing so, he stopped a passing car who knew just who I was, and they called My People who came very quickly, stopping at the little General Store to take down the little sign that he had put up there with my picture on it, and we all had a Happy Thanksgiving.

I hopeY’All did too!