Author: Allegra

Born when atmospheric carbon was 316 PPM. Settled on MST country since 1997. Parent, grandparent.

1800 dollars poorer, I emerged

I have expensive hobbies, by damn.  I went to pick up Ziva and between all the brakes and calipers being replaced (the rear calipers being more expensive as being entwined with the emergency brake) and three engine mounts (which instantly reduced the engine noise on acceleration to a “healthy roar” as opposed to this weirdass growlyticking which a noob like me could mistake for bearing noise) I had to reach a little deeper into my pocket than the original estimate.

Another unintended side effect was that the engine idle revs finally dropped below 1000, which is where it’s supposed to be.  It had been up over 1200 for a couple of months, probably starting when the first engine mount collapsed.  When the car is running perfectly and brand new, excuse me, idle revs are supposed to be 750, but I’d settle for her revving under 1000, as there’s a little issue of gas consumption.  It will be interesting to see if the mileage gets better as a consequence, but even if it does it won’t likely be too noticeable, maybe 20 k on the tank.

Katie and I watched (or she fitfully snoozed through) the first three eps of The Wire.  I shook her awake for the explanation of chess as if it was the drug game; it’s one of the best pieces of writing in the show, and that’s going some.  It was also interesting to see how each character was introduced, not as if this was a first episode, but as if you’re joining a continuing story and it’s your job to keep up.  Of course I noticed dozens of things I hadn’t the first time around.  Like Deadwood and Saving Grace and Homicide, it repays repeated viewings.

Katie’s off at Dax’s now.  She knows he’s no good for her, and still she goes. (Part of his current attractiveness is that he’s living with a young married couple with a two month old babby).   His latest is to suggest that they go to a casino…. on her money.  Her response was “Put the money in my hand and we’ll talk about it” so I guess not all the sane has rubbed off yet.  Sigh.  Given her parental history (mater and pater) of absorbing troubling amounts of abuse and neglect, she could go like this for years, and we’re coming up on 8 years they’ve been spinning around each other like a couple of eccentric Kuiper Belt objects.

Now that I have a car again (I wasn’t planning for her being gone for two whole days) I have a very very very large running around list.

The temporary crown went on without mishap.  I am getting a blast of cloves into my mouth from it every once in a while, and thinking of Katie K every time I do, because she’s hideously allergic to cloves.  I wonder how that makes dental work for her. Anyway I recommend Dr. Katz.  He does precision work and is very civilized, and what the heck else does one want from a dentist anyway.

Birthday roundup

I banged on Jeff’s door at 6 am: “Where’s my present where’s my present where’s my pre—-sent!!!!??”

“Sheesh.  Close your eyes and open your hands…”

“Sheeeeeit!  All five seasons of THE WIRE with special bonus features!”  Happy dance.

Last night Tom and Peggy feasted me (Jeff, Paul, kids in attendance, w00t!) with Roast Beast, roast taters’n’garlic, peas, corn, and Katie brought a fabulous pumpkin swirl cheesecake and Peggy made her unbelievably awesome gingerbread cake.  It migrated home.

Happy happy sigh.

Katie and I walked home from their place – I slept quite soundly.

The Castle episode was loads of fun (I love how Becket does not cave to pressure to ‘believe’) and the House episode WTF!? Since when are patients s’posed to die??

Now I have to go to the dentist to get a crown.  Happy birthday to me!  Also, must get to the krankenhaus and bail out Miss Ziva, who is a very, very expensive habit.

Elevator to work

That would be nice.  Watched the Elevator episode of Nova last night… the Burj Khalifa is one DIRTY GREAT tall building, I must say.

I am very slowly recovering from my recent trip to completely-depressed-and-unable-to-focusland, and of course details are unavailable at this time.  Possibly California sunshine helped.

Although I had scheduled it off, I have to work Friday, so there you go.

Tuesday roundup

Jim Morrison is dead, but Florida may pardon him for his brief self-fondling.

On the other hand, if you manage a Morgan Stanley fund, you can get your free pass now.  Since this has been reported a number of ways in the press, here’s the DA on the subject.

Rare earth metals shortages are going to change how we do recycling, I guarantee it.  Anybody notice that gold got over $1420USD recently?

Atheists ain’t got no songs. Oh Steve Martin, how cute thou art.

Buffalo whisperer lives with his pet. After all, ya canna live with an elephant.  Watching the car suspension groan under the buffalo’s weight cracked me up.

Maybe we’ll have to reconsider You’re Full of Shit as a slur.

You bet your ass I went through the scanner. But I’m never flying through the US again unless it’s on business and somebody else is paying.

That’s the way to do it!

As for me I’m okay I guess.

Some woman tried to kill me today

Blue Maxima, licence 338 TGG, pulled out onto 10th without looking. I swerved, a very alert human in the oncoming lane swerved, the alert human behind me didn’t run into me, and as for crashstyle, you couldn’t pass your hand through the gap she left. She pulled in front of me.  I followed her for ten blocks, watched her make TWO cell phone calls, pulled up next to her at 16th and 6th, and got a good look at her.  I wanted to follow her some more.  But I didn’t.  Folks at work are teasing me to call it in.  Why, so I can spend a f*cking day in court?  Puhleeze, Louise.  I have amazing reflexes for an old broad, and thank Darwin I had help.

If we had collided, we would have blocked a major traffic artery blocks from the turn off for the bridge.  And it wouldn’t have been my f(cking fault, for once.

While I was in Pleasanton….

staying in John Madden’s boutique hotel, the Rose, which is GORGEOUS (and John M was actually there in the lobby bar the night we arrived, oddly enough but of course I had no reason to speak to him or harass him so I just smirked)… I had a dream.

About five in the morning the night before I came home, I dreamed that Katie K was taking me to meet a friend.  We climbed the stairs to say hi and the woman took one look at me and started screaming “What is she doing here?  I don’t want to meet her, get her out of here!”  I obligingly booked it down the stairs and out into the street and across the street to a little park, where I sat down on a bench.  I felt warmth next to me and turned my head.

John was sitting there, dressed in black, and hatless (which would not be normal at this time of year… felt like Vancouver on an overcast day).  His hair had grown out a little and he had a much better pair of glasses, but it was John all right – nobody looks, smells and sounds like him.  He commiserated with me briefly on my contretemps, and then, and a couple of times he laughed, that breathless chuckle, and then with that same brainwoosh that had accompanied the sensation of him joining me on the bench, I realized I was dreaming.  I don’t lucid dream, at all, and it’s actually been many months since I had a memorable dream.  As soon as I realized I was dreaming, I knew John was dead, and I was FINALLY getting my visitation dream, which I have longed for.

“What took you so long?” I asked.

He smiled.  And we all know that shit eating grin.  And just like the Cheshire Cat, he faded, and left the grin hanging in the air for a few seconds, and then I woke up.

I’ve been a little teary for the last few days, because honestly I had given up.  Somehow my brain gave me permission to let him visit, and I am so, so glad.  Cried my eyes out at the Remembrance Day service yesterday at church, because I’d been going to say his name and Tom did it for me.

Pointless, but o so satisfying – Rogers letter

Office of the President
100 Westmoreland St
Moncton NB
E1C 0G1

customer.service@rci.rogers.com

Dear People,

As an aside.  Office of the President, my lavishly upholstered sitzplatz.  Who on earth are you trying to fool?

I would like to advise you folks that you have something seriously, seriously broken with your customer support.

It’s not that the phone I paid for over many years dropped calls and generally did unspeakable things to long dead goats for the duration of its life; nor that Rogers made transferring ownership of the account to someone else, ie the person who was using the phone during that time, impossible; not that going to paperless billing after I was harassed into it nearly wrecked my credit and how I had to go back to asking you to kill trees to bill me, because your website is a universe-destroying abyss of suck; nor that your pricing was abominable, because all Canadian cell phone pricing, thanks to the CRTC, sucks a Greyhound bus station men’s room mop; nor that every person I spoke to in customer service sounded like they’d all been whipped and shown pictures of puppies being tortured prior to being allowed the privilege of answering the phone for you….

Nope, this is something quite simple.

Your accounts receivable department…. an important department to be sure …. DOESN’T LEAVE A MESSAGE when it calls.  No name, no TELEPHONE number.

Does anybody see the delicious irony in how A TELEPHONE COMPANY …. because in essence, that’s one of the arms of the Rogers cephalopod … doesn’t leave a TELEPHONE NUMBER when it’s harassing customers to pay up?

I owe Rogers money.  I feel quite comfortable saying this.  I owe you money, and I’m gonna KEEP on owing you money until I get a final, paper bill.  I have no intention of giving you any money until I get my last piece of mail from Rogers.

Yes, I owe you from the previous month.  Yes, I’m supposed to keep my account in good standing.  Yes, there were a few months in that three years when I didn’t pay promptly, but I always cleared my account.  Not the best customer, far from the worst.

I cancelled my account.  Let me repeat that.  I cancelled my account.  I will never, ever, so long as Rogers is a legal entity and the Dominion stands, buy a Rogers product or service again.

Here’s my earnest request.  Give me a paper bill after November 14 and in the meantime, leave me alone.  Not because I don’t owe you some money, oh yeah, I do.  But because your system is too stupid to advise the poor sods who work for you to LEAVE A NUMBER where they can be reached.

As a phone company – or a feeble simulacrum of one – Rogers does not deserve to survive.  If we had American style competition in this country (and no CRTC), not that I want it but in Rogers’ case I’ll make an exception, Rogers wouldn’t survive into its third year.

I promise I’ll pay up, but if your poor accounts receivable employees or collectors or whatever stupid weasel word you use, don’t start leaving a number where they can be reached, I’ll be advising my brother, with whom I live, and who has received EVERY ONE OF YOUR CALLS so far, just to hang up if you don’t reach me in person.

My regards to the workers of Rogers, all of whom probably need that crappy job or they would indeed be working elsewhere; as for the management, may the great winnowing fan of Capitalism wreak its havoc on you soon.

Allegra Sloman
Proud to be a recovering Rogers customer

Here in Pleasanton

Pleasanton is extremely pleasant.  The hotel is lovely, the meal we had last night at Terra Mia was of surpassing excellence, the company was intelligent and convivial, and we have an appallingly hard day of presentations and work ahead of us, followed by another appalling hard and long day.

Obviously the loaner laptop is working fine.  Nice big keyboard, ya gotta like that.

Okay, back to work.  Oh, just one more thing.  Who needs boys?  Not this snake!