Yesterday...

Oh what a day.

I spent another 4 hours on the phone with the telephone company, getting more irate by the second. I had paid my bill in full the other day, and should have reasonably been able to simply get the account reinstated, but no. Seems that since I had a combined billing account, that the stranger-than-fiction way I had my telephone and internet service 'on hold', while still enabling the mobile phone service to work caused some idiot in the billing department to take one look at my account with it's past-due balance during our previous fiasco (clerical error on my part, I admit it), and say 'Well golly gee, if the account is closed, let's close the account!', then they did so. *boggle* No notice of suspension in my email, no warning, just cut off without a word.

When I called today, I was shipped all over the country, from call center to call center and departments galore, where I managed to confuse the living daylights out of five customer service people. At one point, a female got so upset with me that she transferred me to the Spanish-language customer service. This was only annoying though, and not debilitating like she had hoped, and with my limited skills in Mexican (a different language than Spanish, I swear it), I soon reached a friendly voice who was bilingual and listened to me relay my tale yet again (after I got him to speak American ~Again, different from proper English by far~). He seemed genuinely saddened that he was going to have to transfer me yet again because he couldn't access my account, but he found me someone with whom I could speak reasonably and who could understand what was going on.

Even still, the new fellow had to contact the land-line phone people to see if they had received the payment that I had given him the transaction number (receipt) for, and it took him 30 minutes to see what he could do, then another 45 after we got off of the phone and I went to work, for him to be able to convince someone (anyone!) to allow the return of service to our family's cell phones. We didn't know that until later, however...

Now on to work...

The other day, I said that Eeyore would get us to the upcoming day's events. I was almost wrong. See, as soon as we dropped my mother off at the car place to sign all of the paperwork to get herself that car she has fallen in love with (that she somehow did not return home with) the car started having serious problems.

Chugga, pause, chugga, pause, rev, stop, coast, repeat. *sigh*

About 1/4 mile from the party, he finally gave up the ghost and died in the middle of one of the busiest streets in town. We pushed him into the chicken lane and continued to push for about 2 blocks or so before I was too tired to push anymore. Though I think I got the point across that we were going to get to the event with him in tow however, because when I tried the car again, he started back up and successfully limped the rest of the way there.

Chugga, pause, rev, stop, coast, chugga, pause, repeat.

We were later than we had planned for the event (but still arrived before it started), but were forgiven when I told the coordinator that we pushed the car two blocks somewhere en route. *chuckle* Sometimes honesty is the best excuse, even if it is weirder than all heck.

The party went great, Ladybug had her first paid performance as a poi-spinner, and after a few false starts, we got the car back on the road to grab ourselves a Littlebit from the sitter before we headed home.

Something is burning in the car now, and we have to drive with all the windows open.

Chugga, pause, backfire, chugga, coast, roll...

We let it sit for a while (and let our systems clear out a bit) when we stopped for Littlebit, in the hopes that it would cool?, rest?, reset?... Whatever. In the hopes that it would run better if we did.

Upon stopping at the sitter's, I checked my phone. Still there was no signal, and I was starting to get upset, so I just turned it off and gave up. But after turned it off, I got the strangest urge to turn it back on again and see if the sim card would re-register...

It did! *grin* They got it turned back on, we found out later, less than 1 hour after I left for work. Of course, nobody had any way to tell us that, because our phones still weren't working. *rolls eyes* Keeb flipped his phone off and back on, then nearly died laughing. The phone company had sent him a text message on his phone with instructions on how to reactivate/re-register his sim card with his device so it would work again for calls...

Only he couldn't have received the text unless he had the phone working again...

I maintain that massive corporations are run, at the highest levels, by nincompoops who mostly sit around all day creating special policies to make everything as annoying and confusing as possible. Speaking of which, I still haven't heard from those folks who run the Cody's chain of convenience stores either. I think I can reasonably assume that they are blatantly calling me a liar and think very little of both their customers and their PR.

Letting the car sit worked, though.

After about 45 minutes, we all piled back inside and tried our little Eeyore again, and he cut off once on the journey, but he did get us back home.

We have an appointment for a mechanic on Tuesday.

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