Fix One Problem

Two More Appear...


Well, I'm back online at full speed again as of about noon yesterday. The resolution wasted about twelve hours, involved two calls to Comcast Technical Support (and at least a half dozen other "attempted calls,) and one trip over to Office Depot to buy a new cable modem.

I guess that the good news is that we are no longer renting our cable modem from Adelphia/Comcast to the tune of $5.00 a month, and I guess the $90 price tag for the new Linksys Modem is a bargain compared to the $239 we've spent thus far on the rental unit.

Of course Comcast would have replaced our old modem for free, but I managed to resist taking them up on their generous offer of sitting here in the Internet dark ages until sometime late Wednesday when a technician could stop by.

In renovation/construction news, nothing at all has happened in my absence.

Imagine that?

I've been waiting for three weeks for the City of Brunswick to pick up two giant piles of leaves and tree limbs which I placed on the curb on each side of the property.

The Sanitation Department is in theory supposed to pick up lawn debris every Friday, but three Fridays have passed and I'm getting tired of picking beer cans, discarded lottery tickets, and other trash conveniently deposited on top of my edifices by passers by. In the spirit of being neighborly, it seems that any time you build anything resembling a trash heap the locals feel obligated to assist you by adding their own contributions to the assemblage. I fill at least half my curbside trashcan each week with their generous donations.

My hired man James is appearing to be either a scoundrel else he is in Jail or something because when I left town I paid him in advance for a half day of work clearing overgrown vegetation off of the rear of my property. I also left him in possession of a cheep new digital wristwatch and over a $100 of tools like a sling blade, a machete, pruning shears, and "loppers" for his use.

From the looks of things yesterday morning, neither he, his watch, nor any of my tools had been anywhere near the place since last Monday.

Just Damn...

He was supposed to work at least the five hours I prepaid him for in my absence, and we had a deal that the entire job was worth fifteen hours of time which he could work and be paid for Monday morning upon my return from Alabama.

I'm afraid that I am about to learn a cruel lesson about human nature and the rewards of trying to assist the "downtrodden." Jessie Jackson and the bleeding heart "homeless advocates" can cry all they want to, but I've bent over backwards to give James every chance to earn as much money as he can (at $10 per hour) and he continues to waste my time and challenge my goodwill as I've rearranged my own schedule countless times to make work hours available to him--only to have him show up late or in this case not at all.

I hope that he'll show up today with some reasonable explanation and get caught up on things, but our relationship has gone backwards at least a couple of months as it appears that I cannot trust him to get anything done without employing direct supervision.

The new house is finally vacant as of last Saturday, about three weeks later than first scheduled so we're getting screwed out of a new interior paint job. We went by last evening and most of the walls didn't look too bad, but the entry foyer and the bedroom hallway will definitely need a coat of paint once we move in because of the wear and tear of the moving process.

Speaking of moving, our moving company rep managed to dodge my three phone calls yesterday and not return my request to tell me whether his truck and three gorillas would be here on Thursday, Friday, or Saturday of this week. He better call today or I'm buying another machete and driving down to Tampa for a face to face discussion on Wednesday.

I'm already virtually paralyzed in the Kitchen because almost everything relating to cooking and eating is sitting in boxes waiting to be taped closed. We're over half way through the packing process, but we've got to LIVE HERE for at least one other day beyond today, and it would be nice to know the move schedule so I don't sit around eating peanut butter sandwiches and wearing dirty clothes because we were ready on Thursday and the truck didn't show up until Saturday.

It also costs us an additional $34 per day plus utility costs to sit here beyond Wednesday, but that expense was incidental to the process--I just hate to do all of this planning and have some moron that has already cashed our $350 deposit check jplay immature games and jerk me around at the last minute.

Needless to say that my other professional endeavors are festering in nearly finished but not quite complete piles on the coffee table. If I could put the time I've put into fixing Internet related computer problems I'd be finished by now.

Now I have to go get organized to spend another half day making sawdust, praying that my hired help shows up, and that the now daily thunderstorms abate for the rest of the week so when we move the furniture doesn't warp and have the veneer fly off of it into outer space.

It is, after all, tough being me...Isn't it?