It was a frosty 48 degrees in the living room this morning, after Herb’s temporary boiler fix broke in the middle of the night (when it was somewhere in the mid-teens). He’s back now, having finally acquired the necessary replacement part, so I’m hoping I’ll stop being cold soon.
Yes, the heating repairman and I are on a first-name basis now. Remember that, guys: the secret to establishing a succesful relationship is calling back after the first encounter.
Driving down I-40 between Winston-Salem and Kernersville today, I saw this electronic message warning me about potential inauguration traffic next Tuesday.
On I-95.
In Virginia.
Three hundred miles away.
These signs were repeated all the way to Durham, at least. This is sort of like driving on the 101 in San Francisco and being warned repeatedly about a potential upcoming traffic jam on Highway 99 in Bakersfield.
It’s nice having heat again.
And a big “fuck you” to the guy I called first, who came on Friday, said he had to go back to his shop for some information, and then more or less never called me back, leaving me with no heat for four days. Yesterday, after one last effort to get him to pull his head out of his ass, I gave up and called someone else. I’m just waiting to see if the first guy has the audacity to call back now (or to send me a bill for his “house call”). Guess the economy’s in pretty good shape if he can afford to piss off potential long term clients that way.
The sad thing is that I’m largely starting to expect “no discernible customer service at all” as the default in most situations.
This is where I wish myself a happy thirteenth anniversary and commemorate the fact that Planet SOMA, the predecessor to this site, made its debut on 13 January 1996. Thanks especially to the three or four of you have been around pretty much since the beginning.
Hmmm. The thirteenth anniversary of a site that made its debut on the thirteenth. If I were a superstitious sort, that would be very troubling.
If you’re interested, the trip journal is now posted for your amusement. Not one of my most introspective or analytical, I’ll admit, mainly because my time is limited right now. I’m pretty sure I’ll be writing lots more about Pittsburgh, though.
Sometimes I miss the old days when all I had to do was call the landlord when the heat wasn’t working, never having to worry about how much it might cost to fix it, nor about choosing who should do the actual work.
Unfortunately, that’s not the weightiest thing I have on my mind today. Alas.
I seem to have returned home bearing a nasty cold alongside the other souvenirs.
It’s kind of hard to believe that my five-week break from school is sixty percent over before it really even seems to have started. It was a really intense fall semester, and I was sort of looking forward to a few moments of calm. They sort of never came, what with the trip to Fresno in December, followed by the actual holidays, and the big road trip to Pittsburgh last week. I have a lot of things I really want to catch up on before things get crazy again:
I have my doubts that I’ll get it all done.
Christmas, family, food, etc. You know the drill. This year, we hosted my dad’s side of the family (a dwindling group, alas) and my mom took care of her side of the family, which meant she had a much bigger group to face.
Mark and I are off to Charleston WV, Pittsburgh, and Richmond for a week starting tomorrow morning.We’ll be giving the new (to us) Buick its first major road test, and hoping today’s three hundred bucks worth of repairs will have corrected all the problems we inherited with it.
Just in case this turns out to be the last post of 2008, happy New Year.
This son of a bitch stole an entire page from Groceteria, posted it on his own site (images linked directly from my server and all) without attribution and didn’t even include a link to the page he stole it from. Far be it from me to suggest that you add a comment telling him what you think of that, but…
By way of an update, the page was removed shortly after I commented on his site and made some creative edits to the photos he’d leeched.
Back from Fresno and other assorted points west. More later about: