Have you ever noticed how everything always happens at once? Wonder why that is…
This has been one of those uphill-haul days, wherein every single damnfool thing you want to do has to be done the hard way, and you have a LOT of damnfool things to do.
That’s because you’ve left the damnfool things to do another day and, yes, this is another day.
I cruise back into town after this morning’s networking group meeting, having heard an excellent presentation and been the target of a rousing pep talk, after the meeting, by the presenter himself. I’m hot to get to work and full of ideas. But first…
But first, I have to go by the electric supply house and pick up the lamp that was left to be rewired by way of repairing Ruby’s latest cord-eating depredation. It looks nice, and they charge me less than a quarter of what the last predator charged.
But…
Yeah. You get what you pay for. Twelve dollars and change does not enough wire to reach the outlet purchase.
The damn wire is about four inches too short.
I call. They agree to rewire it.
But this entails trying to get across Conduit of Blight Boulevard AGAIN. As you may recall, the city is building a ridiculous lightrail line up Conduit of Blight, making the entire corridor nonnavigable and rerouting rush-hour traffic through the middle of our neighborhood. You cannot get across Conduit of Blight at Main Drag South at all. So you have to drive up to Main Drag North, taking you way afield of the electric outfit, or else you have to drive two miles to the south and one mile back north — three miles out of your way — to get around the construction horrors. Make that three miles x two, if you have any designs on coming home.
Either way, the environmentally chummy public works project converts a four-mile drive into a six-mile drive. One way.
I decide to drive up to the Depot and just buy a damn extension cord. There I pay almost nine bucks for a six-foot piece of overkill.
While I’m there, I return the hose connector that the very nice sales clerk told me was a set — male and female — and that was not. Whatever it was, it was not what I wanted. It was unusable.
I hate shopping in Home Depot. Hate it hate it hate it HATE. IT. Today there’s not a soul, not even an incompetent wretch who has no idea what she’s talking about, to help. I find the paint roller I need (only because past safaris have taken me into the Veldt of Paint) but have a bitch of a time finding the extension cords, which are nowhere near where two of the worthy employees pointed me.
When I get the eventually found extension cord home and discombulate its intricate packaging, I see it has a connection that would accommodate enough plugs to light a half-a-dozen Christmas trees.
Come ON, guys. This is for ONE freaking LIVING ROOM LAMP. And I have to tape it to the floor, the table, and the wall so as to keep Ruby from eating the lamp cord for the fourth time. A big honking clunky umpteen-plug connection does not lend itself to discretion. Or to transparent packing tape.
Two choices now: Take the lamp back to French Electric and wait another week to get it rewired again, or take the lamp cord back to HD and try to find one that works.
I believe the Depot does not have regular lamp-cord sized extensions, because two HD Dudes tried to help me find the same. We all failed.
Finally I decide to check the local TruValue and, if I can find a normal 1950s-style lamp cord with one count it (1) plug on the end, I will keep the short cord on the lamp and defer returning the ridiculous extension to a day when I’m in the vicinity of an HD for some other constructive reason.
Over to the TruValue. Yes, they have such a thing: four dollah.
Climbing into my car, it occurs to me that Home Depot is upselling by quite deliberately NOT STOCKING lamp-sized extension cords.
It is hot, and it is humid. By hot we’re talkin’ upwards of a hundred degrees.
As per usual, every moron in the county gets in front of me on the road. How the HELL do they KNOW when I’m out?
The last time Ruby ate the living-room lamp cord, I moved another lamp in there and used transparent packing tape to stick the cord to the inside of the table leg, the floor, and the wall between the lamp and the light plug. This a) worked and b) was very easy.
Not so today.
It may a) work, but it was b) incredibly NOT very easy. I ended up with broken fingernails from trying to peel the damn tape off of the damn roll and wads of stuck-together tape strewn all over the living room floor. By the time the job was done, my hair was yanked and my teeth were ground.
While I was at the electric supply store, we tried to remove the lamp shade. The finial was frozen on. None of us could get it loose. But we did succeed in ripping the fabric.
This lampshade was purchased back when I had a job and could afford nice things.
I get on Amazon to try to find something comparable. The cheapest selection: Seventy-five dollah!
Holy shit.
I take a more or less functional lampshade off another lamp (which now goes naked) and put it on the repaired lamp. It looks like what it is: a cheap piece of junk from Target.
Lurking at the back of consciousness: Pay the $1,588 Medigap premium! Find out how far in hock you are to AMEX! Figure out where the money to pay these extravagant bills will come from!
AMEX? Exactly $1,000 over budget. That is twice the amount I paid on the shoe extravaganza. We will have to wait for the itemized bill to arrive to figure out the other charges.
The Medigap premium, surprisingly considering the past year’s medical misadventures, is inflated by less than $100 over the 2014 gouge. And of course, it’s allowed for in the annual budget. But still. Fifteen hundred and eight-eight dollars is fucking painful.
Because I had a meeting halfway across the city at this morning’s crack of dawn, I have not cleaned the pool pump pot, which must be cleaned every morning because the fucking palm trees cannot be trimmed because DUCK has taken up residence in the tree trimmers’ direct line of fire. DUCK is absent this afternoon, it being afternoon and the time at which she forages. Does she not KNOW about the damned garden slugs that overrun the yard at night and that are turning the basil plant into a skeleton of itself? Why is she not doing her DUCK job out there? And where the Hell is she, anyway?
One of the eggs DUCK has hidden lies exposed. What part of “grackle” does DUCK not understand?
Avian concerns, however, do not form a major part of today’s Day from Hell qualities.
Web Guru’s bill needs to be paid. I try to get online to pay this quarter’s bill. His auto-collect software wants me to sign in as…HIM!
Naturally.
I crash out of his auto-collect software and reboot. Now it tells me I owe an extra payment, which I happen to know I paid.
Meanwhile, I’m trying to cook my lunch, it being 3 o’clock in the afternoon and only slightly past lunchtime, by a mere three hours. Trusty Kitchen Timer is called into action to remind me when X or Y minutes have passed, so the grill will not carbonize the food.
Trusty Kitchen Timer is killed in action.
I try to revive her by replacing her battery.
No dice. TKT is deader than a doornail.
Why doornails are said to be dead is a question that has always plagued me, given that a) I do not know what a doornail is and b) I can’t imagine why anyone would impute either life or death to such an object.
So it goes.
The work I intended to get done was not, repeat, NOT done by 4 p.m., when I shook off the worst of this miasma. Instead of doing anything meaningful, I guess I’ll spend the rest of the day formatting another Fire-Rider episode.
And so…into the fog.
Someone told me earlier this week Mercury is retrograde, which tends to cause havoc for a lot of people. If you believe your life is ruled by planets thousands of miles away, this could explain the horrible day. 😉
DUCK won’t be foraging at night, and I’m sorry if you ever got that impression. Birds aren’t nocturnal. If there are slugs hiding out during the day, she’ll find ’em and happily devour them, though. I hope tomorrow is better for you!
Interestingly, some birds are. Recently I read a post on a hunting site (natch) to the effect that ducks will get up at night and forage around. So, especially given the unholy heat here, it’s not impossible.
The palm trees are shedding their unholy worms right now. They clog up the pool equipment. Sometimes I shake them out of the pump pot filter near Nest. But think it’s unlikely she’ll eat deceased worms.
Some of the resident slugs live in the flowerbed within waddling distance of Nest. But Duck seems not to spend much time around the pool. When she’s out of Nest, she absents herself altogether. I don’t know where she goes, unless it’s down to Other Daughter’s house. O.D. is a notorious feeder of wild birds and stray cats. And coyotes, unwittingly.
Holy Crud Funny! Sorry to hear of your trials and tribulations. I’m especially alarmed at your take on Home Depot. In my neck of the woods these guys are “stellar”. And it appears that because I’m there so much (too much) I’m considered a “Pro” and therefore have “Pro benefits”. One of those benefits recently was “Appreciation Day” which included breakfast….lunch…freebies…and discounts. Yep my guys at HD are A- OK.
It must be the time of year for craziness. While away one of my properties (vacant thank goodness) evidently developed a gas leak in the front yard. A crew from the utility arrived and dug a hole in the road big enough to put a car in….turned off the gas ….and promptly put a piece of steel over the hole 6 feet by 10 feet. When I returned I discovered a card on the door to tell me the service had been turned off and provided a number to call. I called the number and met no less than three different folks from the utility and no one could find any record of the work and disconnect to my house. Did I mention this company operates a nuclear power plant?….scary as hell. The last guy from the utility said “no big deal…straight shot….1.5 hour job”…. Well I met the contractor on sight at 7AM and was there until 6PM when the hole was filled. And it was ANYTHING but easy. Thank goodness it wasn’t occupied no gas for almost 2 weeks! And the bill from the contractor to the utility….right around $11K….one day…
And lastly why is your Medigap premium so high? $1588 a month?…I feel faint
Yipe! Did I write “a month”?? NO! That’s “a year.”
LOL! There’s a reason our motto used to be “Every Writer Needs an Editor.”
What a story! Two weeks!!!
So if your place had been occupied and your renter used this as an excuse to abdicate the lease, or if you’d had to put up a family of renters in a hotel somewhere for two weeks, would the utility (or your insurance?) have paid for your losses?
One thing’s for sure about our utility companies here: if there’s a problem, they show up to fix it right NOW. If you have a water leak, SRP will be on the job within two hours, and the gas company…they fall all over themselves to keep you from blowing yourself to Kingdom Come. The city and county have some sort of laws about habitability — if the utilities aren’t on, whoever lives there has to vacate, especially if it’s a rental. You can imagine the implications…
But I don’t know that I’ve ever seen guys show up on those kinds of jobs who appeared to be contractors. They always surface in SRP or Southwest Gas trucks, and they wear uniforms bearing their company’s emblems.
Yesterday…what on EARTH was the deal with Home Depot? The place was almost empty. Literally, there couldn’t have been more than ten or fifteen customers in the store, and a few of them were in pairs or threes. I parked right next to the door. Tho’ that store isn’t like Costco, where your photon torpedoes have to be armed in order for you to seize a parking spot, there usually are a fair number of cars and trucks there.
I was glad to get my money back for a snap-together hose coupling that a saleswoman had told me was a male and female pair — it was zip-tied together so I couldn’t take it apart in the store to be sure that’s what it was…and it wasn’t. Don’t know what it was, but it wasn’t two pieces.
Usually their service is pretty good, although there’s always the continuing annoyance of having to go back and forth and back and forth to get parts that fit and actually work for your job. And the continuing annoyance of created by the sense that now that HD has put most of the local hardware stores out of business, they can charge what they want and carry whatever they feel like carrying. It’s exceptionally annoying to feel they deliberately upsell by simply not carrying cheaper commonplace items like an ordinary lamp-cord-style extension cord. The one I found at the under-patronized Tru-Value down the road was exactly half the price of the thing HD sold me.
Oh well. The new handyman is supposed to surface in a couple of hours. He’s going to replace the disintegrating bifold closet doors installed by a previous homeowner. They’re literally falling apart. He really does NOT want to paint them — this is a guy who can pick and choose what jobs he’ll do, such is his reputation. I picked up a roller for smooth surfaces, lest he throw over the traces and refuse to paint the things. It should be fairly easy. The hard part his installing a new pair of doors with a new track to fit.
Our utility IMHO didn’t take this opportunity to …”shine” shall we say. This job was a real pain and was worse for the contractor because I was there the WHOLE time. Made sure it was put back right with no short cuts….thus the $11K price tag. As for Home Depot….I go thru the “Pro” checkout and since being “annointed” service couldn’t be better. I agree with you, during the week my HD is virtually abandoned mid day. The place does crazy business on the weekend…Sunday it’s a mad-house, so I steer clear. A while back I was “chewing the fat” with the manager of my HD and he shared with me that the “Garden Center”….”carries”….my HD. Evidently BIG profits in plants, mulch and such. And the least profitable?…. white-goods …. fridges … stoves … etc … evidently “paper thin margins”.
So $1588 A YEAR for “gap insurance”….. seems like quite the bargain. But that’s on top of paying Medicare? So $300 a month for just basic insurance a month not including co-pay….For some folks this would not be doable in this neck of the woods. A very basic residence is $1K a month….add to that car expenses…meds….etc. and you’re at $2K….and you haven’t bought groceries or clothes….How do folks do it?
And a “heads-up” the folks at SNAP (food stamps) consider someone 60….”elderly”….. I was shocked….Your thoughts?
{cackle!} Good for you, hanging around all day and keeping an eye on them. Heaven only knows what kind of shortcut they might have taken if you hadn’t been at hand.
Back in the day, I used to have a contractor’s discount with Dunn Edwards. And similarly, one did get better service. Their staff was (and remains) very nice no matter what, but when you whipped out your contractor’s discount status, they would go out even further out of their way to accommodate.
Yes…I was a little shocked at what it costs to get full coverage through Medicare, especially since at the time the State of Arizona self-insured, and so our coverage was excellent and our costs were very low. All told, Medicare B, Medigap, and the accursed Part D added up to EIGHT TIMES what I paid at ASU for the same coverage.
It’s still less than what many people are having to pay for health insurance, though.
And the Medigap coverage paid for itself several times over. The post I wrote the other day, the one that got “disappeared” when something freaky happened on a certain server, that post detailed exactly how much it covered. I came away from around $70,000 worth of surgery and hospitalization with a bill of exactly $0.00.
Oh, and PS: If they think you’re elderly at 60, by all means take advantage of their naivete. People give you things when they think you’re old, like discounts and freebies and stuff. Get it while ya can.
I forgot to add a plug for the small hardware stores. In my old neighborhood in Chicago, I loved that there was a small Tru-Value where I could always get help. When I had a small project, I always preferred going there where I was greeted immediately upon walking in and asked if I needed any help. I could also take my knives there to get them sharpened, and pick up canning supplies there.
Here in my new neighborhood, I’m pleased to report that there is likewise a small Tru-Value within walking distance of the rental house with the same excellent service. Their prices are competitive with the Home Depot (which is further away and only accessible by car) and they even give out dog biscuits when I make a quick stop while out walking the dog. 🙂
Beloved Ace, beloved Tru-Value!!!!
The TV up the road is very small and it’s seriously underpatronized. It’s like not many people know it’s there, tucked away in a corner of a strip mall.
The Ace that’s further southward always has a steady trickle of customers.
I dearly love hardware stores. They’re the closest thing we have to an old-fashioned general store, and if you’re lucky enough to find an employee who a) knows the trades and b) knows the store, you’ve got a gold mine. There’s so MUCH stuff in them, and it’s just plain fun to walk through the store and browse the merchandise.
The Tru-Valu underpriced HD simply by stocking a commonplace item that HD didn’t carry. However, hereabouts the Ace significantly underprices the Tru-Value on cutting new keys. As for HD, it is far from the most economical place in town to shop. After it’s driven out the competition, it raises prices above market value.