Bad Day at Black Rock

We all have bad days but today was surely one that I’m glad to put behind me. I’m often slow to get dressed in the mornings—it takes time to move my feet around and into pants and shoes, and I have to put on my brace. Today I lingered in bed until it suddenly dawned on me that I needed to use the potty—yes, I had one of my sudden GI attacks. By the time I got over that and redressed, I had spent an hour—and was pretty demoralized.

I went to work at my computer with a certain determination. I’d had a couple of spells of drifting off and then catching myself at my computer, and I surely didn’t want that to happen again. I think it’s the only bad thing that didn’t happen today.

AT&T sent me a friendly reminder that my bill was overdue for the cell phone. Checked the bank records and I made two payments in September. Result was that I spent about an hour and a half on a conference call with the bank and AT&T. The representatives of both were cheerful and helpful but it takes time to dig through records and find the solution. I am incredibly indebted to the two women I talked to, but I was so frustrated spending all that time on hold when I could have been doing something—anything—else.  We have it straightened out, I think.

Jordan came in just as I finished the call and sympathized, which was a help. I doctored the tuna from yesterday and in futzing about the kitchen managed to flip the tuna fork onto the floor, spattering tiny bits of tuna all over the kitchen area. Let Sophie in—it took her a few minutes, but when she discovered the tuna, she cleaned it up for me. I had a box of wine (shh! Don’t judge) on the counter and when Jordan came back in she discovered I hadn/t turned the spigot all way off and it was sending a steady stream of chardonnay to the wonderful wood floor in the kitchen area. On hands and knees, she wiped it up—and left me feeling apologetic and guilty. Nothing I did went right today.

Subie called and came by for a quick visit—during which time I had another GI accident. Fortunately, she’s an understanding friend, and it didn’t bother her at all. After she left, I settled down to edit the blog draft I’d written last night—not for my blog. Napped about three and slept till shortly after five.

No more major or minor upsets but I figure I’d had enough for the day—including spooning my dinner soup all over my pants. Neighbors came over to see my digs and then I got back to work. I’m ready to put this day to bed.

Computer woes

Monday my internet connections--Facebook, Explorer, Chrome--began to act weird. Sometimes they'd connect; other times they wouldn't. Finally, they just wouldn't. Called the TCU Help Desk, where they told me what I dreaded to hear: call your service provider. It was too early in the day for wine, so I refilled my coffee and called AT&T. Eventually, after three calls to the robot and three reboots of my modem, he referred me to a tech--a nice young man, with a heavy accent difficult for my aging years. He was soon clearly beyond his range of expertise--he kept saying, "Hmmm," which made me nervous. Several times he asked me to type something into the URL line, and I almost shouted, "You don't understand! I can't get a screen. I can't type anything in." Finally he concluded I needed a new modem, which would arrive the next day. I looked to it as the be-all, end-all savior of my problems. This was not the first time an AT&T tech has led me astray.
Not so. The modem arrived, and I asked neighbor Jay (you know, the good-looking one) to come install it because I knew it was beyond me. It was almost beyond him. What should have been a quick set-up took almost an hour at the end of which he concluded it wasn't the modem at all: Explorer needed to be re-installed. He did that and it was magic--the computer, which had been dreadfully slow for a new machine--speeded up, and I could get all my internet sights and connections.
You don't realize how much you rely on the internet until you start piling up emails that you can only deal with by going to the net. So here I am, a happy camper, with a functioning fast computer.
It hasn't been an easy road. About three weekends ago my younger son, Jamie, walked me through buying a new computer and got it started. Then he spent about three hours at my house getting it attached to everything. All in all, it took the better part of one of his weekend, which he treausres. But I was grateful and all set to go.
Not quite. The week I spent at my older son's house was one of fine tuning. Every night when he came home from work I presented him with computer problems and he, my most patient child, worked through them--how to attach pictures to blogs and Facebook and similar issues.
I hope now, with the help of three good men, I'm in for clear sailing on my computer. As for learning Word 8, don't ask!
But I'm blogging again, and that's good news--at least to me.

Frustration

Not my best day. I spent it trying to straighten out various technological aspects of my daily life. First of all, my U-Verse bill shot up. I solved it by "chatting" online with someone from AT&T--it took forever, but we finally did find that the promotion I signed up with had expired. Got some new promotion, and the result is a bill only minimally higher than it used to be. But I am not patient during those long pauses while the chatty person looks up my record, etc.
Next problem was that my cell phone had developed an annoying habit of telling me I had the wrong voicemail password. It would announce this at odd times, mostly in the midst of a phone call which was blocked while I hit cancel. Two seconds later, same message would appear. I spent quite a while with an Apple chatter, only to find out Id have to go back to AT&T. Did that and Josh, nice as he was, gave me one little bit of wrong information which led us both on a wild goose chase. He concluded I probably had to go to the Apple store. When I signed off--it was dinner time and I was hungry--I happened to find the link he was talking about--not where he said it was--and fixed the problem.I do have to say everyone I chatted with was most helpful and polite.
The sum total of my accomplishments for the day is problems with U-Verse and AT&T solved, newsletter proofed, yoga done, and 1,000 words written on my work in progress. Makes me feel a lot better to look at the day that way rather than as a waste spent chatting with Apple and AT&T.