Fall was fleeting, it's summer again.

I'm sort of grumpy today because my allergies are driving me nuts and I slept in this morning. We had a really late night last night and it threw us right off of our schedules. The grounds guys have been cutting the lawn around the office and the grass and diesel smell is making me sneeze my head off.

That rain we had yesterday was brutal. We got 39 millimeters in an hour. We had so much rain in fact that it knocked our home phone out of service. I love the logic of the phone company, "so, you can make outgoing calls but you don't have a dial tone?" I'm like, "HELLO!! I'm on a cell phone!" From the same company, it's not that they can't tell that from our records. The nicest part of is the "thank you for choosing Bell" remark as you hang up. It's not like we have a choice, not for local service anyway.

A technician was there this morning apparently and partial service has been restored. We have phones upstairs but not downstairs. Apparently there was a short in the box that connects the line to the house. I'm pretty sure that we don't have one of those fancy dancy new-ish jacks in our place (the ones that have the little plug so you can see your line coming into the house -- I had to have one installed at my old place). If they have to do anything inside the house, it could get expensive. Or it might not, you never can tell.

A few years ago, they started charging an arm and a leg for anything a technician has to do in your home. They tried to sell me a "maintenance plan" this morning, so they could gouge me every month instead of once in a blue moon. I know that the problem is with their equipment, not ours, so I'm hardly going to buy what is basically an "extended warranty." I'm not Homer Simpson stupid afterall. I guess the phone company likes to think that we are all that stupid, afterall, everyone who works for them seems like they are!

The technicians however, do not work for Bell, not anymore anyway. They are contracted from other companies although most of them used to work for Bell and got fucked over by Bell so I've had experiences where the technicians have done stuff for free that they probably should have charged for. They reason that Bell should provide it anyway and I tend to agree, particularly when it saves me $85!