Just Chillin'

Not a lot new here, I went for a job on Saturday down in Novi, I didn't mention it because I thought maybe we had an odd number of things crossed and that was what the problem was. They said they would be making calls one way or the other on Monday or Tuesday but Mommy hasn't called to tell me that they called so I guess not. Sunday was bitter, bitter cold. We went to Gordon's Christmas party at G's in Houghton Lake (we brought the family standard cherry pie cake, except we made it with apples and spice cake). To say I was looking forward to going would be stretching things way beyond the imaginable, they were having free drinks and kareoke, the other employees are Bob, Robert, Ronnie, and a bunch of young kids. But I had a great time, I spent most of the time with his boss who went to Holy Redeemer until the third grade when they moved to the east side, his dad graduated from Holy Redeemer. Al, Gordon's boss, is retiring from the police force after 33 years and used to ride with the Big 4 and spent 20 years as the Harbor Master. He's a great guy that really has no clue how to run a restaurant, it's a family business his father started it in West Branch and his brother Chris has been running it for years, this past year Al bought Chris out of the Houghton Lake store and has been trying to run it from downstate with his 23 year-old daughter in as a manager. She wants to be everybody's friend and the restaurant lost money this year. Al is hoping to turn things around next year as he retires January 3rd and will be spending more time up north.

At one point I was talking with Al's wife and one of the barely legal and yet over the drinking limit waitresses asked Gordon to dance. He danced and then went to the bathroom, the waitress came over and started apologizing for dancing with him and leaving me with Pat (Al's wife), I said not to worry about it that I was doing what I wanted to do. Five minutes later she was back gushing about how she hoped that I wasn't mad at her for dancing with my husband. Like I was the slightest bit worried. I just looked at her and said that I had been married way too many years to concern myself with who he danced with. She then turned to Pat and said that she wanted to dance with Al too, but she was afraid that Pat would get mad at her, Pat laughed and said "we've been married just as long dance all you want." There was a lot of really bad kareoke and some pretty darn good kareoke. They shut down the party at 1:00 and then we had to clean up since the were open for business at 11:00. Bob and Dorothy left pretty early and I drove the rest of the West Branchers home. When we passed the bank in West Branch the temperature was registering -14! I've got to assume that the thermometer was in the wind and included the wind chill, but it was cold!

I got all of my Christmas presents wrapped, pretty easy since my list is down to almost nobody this year. (Just the kids and a couple of regifts.) Robin is going to bring hers over on Thursday for me to wrap, she used to just use my paper (I bought paper three years ago after Christmas and haven't had to buy any since) but it frustrates me, even though I have a ton of paper to watch her wrap, so it's easier for me to just do it. Plus I do enjoy it.

Bryan has been teaching me sign language, I remember most of the letters but always forget some like k and x. He was asking Megan one day if something was D and she was getting frustrated because she had no idea of what he wanted to know was D, I finally looked up and realized he was doing the sign for D. I was pretty amazed.

Tomorrow is laundry and library - how much fun can one person have in one day.

Tis The Season

For school Christmas Pageants

In other news I got a call today from the company I interviewed with and they have made an offer to someone else. The search goes on.

Is it only me?

The Sunday before Thanksgiving I went on line to my bank’s web site and paid my bills, just as I do every month. I enjoyed the holiday just as if everything was taken care of. The week after Thanksgiving I get a call from Cellular One saying that they have not received payment for my cellular phone. I explained that this was probably because I do not have Cellular One service I have NPI Wireless. They explained that NPI was now part of Cellular One and that my payment was overdue. I told them that I had paid the bill on line through my bank on 11/22/04, they said they would make a note of that and that they should receive it shortly. I got another call on Thursday that they had still not received payment. I told them that the payment showed on my bank statement. They asked what address I had sent the payment too since they do not accept electronic payments. I looked it up through my bank and read them the address. They replied, “Oh, that’s the old NPI address the payment needed to go to ‘blah, blah, blah’ Cellular One’s address. I pulled my bill, and explained that the bill came from NPI with the NPI remit address on it. This did not faze them in the slightest, “yea well the payment should have been mailed to the new address.” I was then told that I could make a payment over the phone if I liked, but without payment my service was to be disconnected on the 14th. They advised that I call them today (the 13th) to verify that they had received payment. Incredulous, I said, “I as your customer received a bill for your service I sent in payment for that bill to the address you told me to send it to, you at some point changed your mind about the address you wanted payment to go to and because of this have not yet received my payment. I would suggest that you put a post-it on your computer to remind yourself to call me – your customer – to make sure that my service is not disrupted.” They explained that they could not do this and that my service would be turned off on the 14th. I explained that I had procrastinated finding a better plan since my contract with NPI was up anyway, and that I was sure Verizon would be glad to have me. I then went to my bank’s web site and sent an email to customer service explaining that a payment showed on my statement but the company the payment was sent to claimed to not have received the payment, giving the bank the pertinent company information, amount and date of payment. On Friday I received a reply that the check had been cashed on December 2nd and if I could supply a fax number they would fax a copy to the company in question. So I called Cellular One, where I was told that my account was not overdue that they had received payment on November 29th. When asked why someone called me on December 9th to tell me that I needed to make an additional phone payment, the rep was able to read the notes on the phone call and verify that the phone call had been made but was unable to explain why. I really need to stop procrastinating.

Today started early with a list of errands to run, I needed to go to the court to get something notarized, go to Wal-Mart and get packing tape so I could go to the post office and ship the California package, go to the library and pick up books, and the office supply store to fax the notarized papers. The courthouse went fine, I should have known then that the day was not going to be easy. I forgot my phone so I stopped at the house to get my phone so I could call the library when it opened and give them my list of books. (Our library is closed until the new year, they had planned to stay open during construction but cannot, so they do window delivery of books if you tell them exactly what you want you can knock on the window and they will check them out for you. They are on line with a library service so I can search books and make sure that they are checked in when I make a list of books.) For some reason I thought I could do K-Mart since it was closer, but they didn’t have rechargeable batteries or barbeque fritos so I went ahead down to Wal-Mart. They had the batteries and the fritos, but would not make the 8x10 picture for Kathy since it was a professional photo. I gathered up my purchases and went to the self check out, I love those, unfortunately I’m not so good at clearing the security crap they attach to the batteries, although I did swipe it over the star like they told me and I was stopped going out of the store. They determined it was the batteries and they were on my receipt so I was cleared to go. With the wind whipping me around I got the package together (did I mention we have a winter storm warning?) and headed to the post office. There was no parking out front so I circled the block a couple of times until there was a parking spot open. I got in waited in line, put my package up and was told, “Well, you could send it first class that’ll take one or two days and is $15.75” there’s nothing that important in there, the total contents of the box isn’t much more than that. So I asked what my other options were, “well, you could send it parcel post that will take 4-6 days” “and how much is that?” “$15.35.” A decision was made to try UPS, I know we have a UPS I pass it all the time when I take the back road into town. I’m in town, so all I need to do is take the back road the other way. OOPS, must be the other back road. So now I am out of town, drive around to the other back road, yep there it is. Back up, turn into the totally empty parking lot, think aren’t small towns great, see sign that says Customer Service open 3-6pm. Oh well, I guess I’ll have to go out again later today. Back into town for the Office Supply store and library (same parking spot for both). Go into Office Supply first so I won’t have all those books in my way, hand paper to clerk and tell them I need it faxed, clerk goes into office and comes back charges me $2.12 (it’s usually $3.18 - $1 to dial phone and then $1 per page) I asked if the price had changed clerk said no $1 to dial phone and $1 per page, I said it’s two pages – oh you want to fax both of them – back into office. The library had all of my books ready and I was on my way home. Now all I have to do is my Tuesday cleaning (Wednesday morning is trash pick up) since I have a second interview for the accounting administrator position tomorrow at 1 – cross all crossable body parts!

Sean turns 4 

WB Christmas Parade

Using Imageshack,

Angels in Silent Pictures and When They Are Sleeping