My 3 am restroom visit was, as always, an outstanding success, until the toilet backed up rather than flushing. Since my house has plenty of drain cleanouts, I went to work with a drain snake right away in the middle of the night. Outside, of course. At about 530 am it became clear to me that I was defeated. I was able to locate the problem, but it was going to take more equipment than I had available. Plumber made it out at mid-afternoon, and had it clear in about 15 minutes. Power auger for the win. Easily worth the $135 fee. My fear was that since the house is slab on grade, concrete cutting was perhaps in my immediate future, but that fear was fortunately overblown. Glad to keep this one in the mini-rant arena.
I was planning on leaving for a long weekend trip tomorrow, but the lack of being able to do laundry today pushed that back a day. Still, things are good for now.
I had a mini-rant all prepared pitting Mother Nature, because today is garbage day and Mother had dumped the biggest snowfall of the season upon us. Wouldn’t normally be a huge problem but I hadn’t bothered setting out the garbage in several weeks (hey, it’s winter!) and things were getting dire. I looked out the window and there was no way I could get out there and haul the garbage bin to the curb.
But Snowplow Guy came by at around 7:00 AM, for the first time this winter really and truly earning his keep. So I was inspired to put on a jacket and venture out after all.
It worked out great! All the neighbours were busy shoveling or snow-blowing and I rather smugly walked out (in my sandals) on my pristine driveway and rolled the bin to the curb just as the garbage truck was arriving.
My Ukrainian plumbers charged me about five times that much, but to be fair, my problem was very different from a Big Poop. I have endlessly captivated my readers with my enthralling tales of my mushroom and sausage pasta sauce poured down the kitchen drain. It was a particularly insidious blockage because the crap got carried far, far through the drainpipes, one long section of which had to be basically disassembled, cleared out, and glued back together again. They must have been here at least two hours.
Plumbers are my support system these days. I feel grateful that I have a team of responsive and capable plumbers to call with my recent pipe emergencies over the last couple years.
And this past year I snagged a very versatile handyman who is part 2 of my support system. He can fix just about anything.
Praise for plumbers and handymen(and women) everywhere.
My beloved has never seen The Rocky Horror Picture Show. I haven’t seen it in a movie theater in decades. So, when we saw there was a showing on Valentine’s day, we planned to go. I did not realize until last night, this Friday is also the Eagles’ victory parade. Traffic will be crazy. Public transportation will be packed. Combined with the fact that it will be too cold for my beloved to wear a costume, we decided to cancel and just have brunch on Saturday instead.
I am, of course, very happy to be seeing her on Saturday and brunch is always good. But, I was really looking forward to Rocky Horror.
Spectrum is crap. I don’t have any other choices because my crappy apartment complex forces us to use them. My cable box suddenly quit working this afternoon, and when I finally got to talk to a person (after (1) a phone number that could only be used to start new service and (2) a useless chat), I learned that my cable box needs to be replaced (it’s less than a year old) and I need all new cable and internet equipment. They will mail me the new equipment, but I have to return it to the Spectrum store, which is one of the minor circles of hell, and I really don’t want to go there. I won’t have TV service for 2 or 3 days.
You would think that a chatbot would be able to diagnose the problem and get me where I need to be, but no, entering my problems into the chat resulted in three options of which I had to choose one, and none of them applied to my problem. It was like playing Zork, which I was never good at. But I did finally find the magic words to get connected to an actual person who could actually help me. I’m going to be so happy when I move and I never have to use Spectrum again.
I returned some Spectrum equipment after an upgrade, and I was able to just take it to a UPS store for the return — and I didn’t have to box it up, the store handled that.
Here’s the quote from the Spectrum website. Note that I’m less than 2 miles from my Soectrum store and was still able to return via UPS.
UPS Return*
If there isn’t a Spectrum store near you, equipment may be returned at The UPS Store locations. Advise The UPS Store center associate that you’re returning Spectrum equipment, and they’ll package and ship it to Spectrum at no cost to you. Remember to save your receipt for tracking purposes.
Just save and photograph your receipt, while my return was received and processed without incident, the woman at the UPS Store seemed to suggest that Spectrum makes lots of mistakes processing the returns.
I’m used to seeing dopey clickbait headlines where “doctors” are either “baffled” or “begging” people not to eat certain foods or do something perilous like hanging a necktie on their motel room door. Now we’re getting cross-cultural doctor pleading:
Japanese Neurologists Urge Americans To Throw Away Their Old Shoes
Is there an old shoe plague ravaging Japan, and public-spirited neurologists there are convinced that it’s heading for our shores?*
*you will be shocked to learn that it’s apparently about selling a particular kind of shoe, without which we will all be crippled or at least walk funny.
**Japanese endocrinologists are also said to be warning us about something or other, which sounds so dire that I don’t dare look it up.
I knew when I turned on the local nightly news that there would be a lot of coverage of this parade. I was stilled stunned by how much there was. At one point, there was a brief mention that two people had been shot at the public gathering at the end of the parade. This coverage lasted literally less than thirty seconds. Then, it was back to footage of the players giving speeches and fans being fans. I expected some mention of the changes to public transit that had been made for the day. There were none. I expected some mention of what streets were closed and how traffic was. They didn’t mention that either.
Did you just type “echo”? That solves at least one puzzle.
My wife told me a story about Saquon Barkley (one of the biggest stars on the Eagles) recognizing the team’s ball boy in the crowd of the parade, and pulling him in to say he needed to join them because he’s part of the team too. Pretty classy move.
But at the same time, I actually thought, “DocCathode is going to have a lot to deal with, with that parade going on in his town.”
Got an email notification about my 3 Amazon items: a box each of biodegradable knives and forks, and a triple Blu Ray for the 3 Men in Black movies.
Already having experienced some shenanigans related to deliveries here at this apartment complex, I raced down my stairs as fast as I could…
Only to be greeted by this sight:
I focused most of my attention on the blue and white envelope, since that is usually where the DVD is, but instantly noticed it had no weight and no depth, and I quickly noticed it was open. Felt inside for the DVDs, and it was completely empty. You can see on the delivery pic (taken by the driver not me, a new thing Amazon is doing, which last year helped me track down a package which had been misdelivered to a neighbor across the drive here) that the envelope is empty.
I then opened the other one. Except that this is the one which had the DVDs. But only the forks, knives nowhere in evidence.
Given that the picture exactly matched what I got, it means the driverdeliberately delivered an empty envelope. But why would he do that? A sane decently-trained remotely competent person would have either (A) noticed it was open and empty, and would have then either (B) looked for it in the truck, or (C) notified Amazon Central to deliver a replacement for me, or (D) he wouldn’t have even delivered it in the first place-I mean, what’s the point? Not even mere stupidity can explain this, IOW.
The fact that this pic was taken by the driver and is therefore on file on the Amazon site should be very helpful to getting compensation or replacement from Amazon, as a mere glance will tell anyone that these are torn and damaged packages. Whether the driver was responsible or someone ripped open the packages and stole stuff somewhere upstream in the delivery chain is not your problem, it’s Amazon’s.
BTW, those doorstep pictures are not new, Amazon has been doing this for years (or was supposed to). It shows up on your order information as proof of delivery – but in this case, clear proof of non-delivery. Get on the phone with them!
