Coffee heat rising

Scams & crooks

Hmmmmm….?

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Idly reviewing recent posts here and…well…thinking holeee shee-ut! 

Pretty clearly, I’ve got somebody working for me who is not my friend. Some of the things that have happened lately ring of plain old-fashioned vandalism. 

Which one of my honored employees has been up to this stuff? Don’t know and, short of setting up an army of cameras and paying someone to review their films, I cannot imagine how to find out. Just now it looks like I have three choices:

* Sell the house and move into an old-folkerie
* Fire everyone who’s working for me now and start all over again
* Select one person that I imagine I can trust (which one???) and fire all the rest of them.

What a f*ckin’ nightmare!

And what kind of person deliberately torments a sick old woman?  

Forgodsake, it’s not like we have that much more time left for me to annoy you and make you miserable. Just because you don’t like me is no excuse to behave…well…downright immorally. If you hate me, fine! Quit you’re f**kin’ job and go to work someplace else!

Scam-a-Rama!

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Am I the only one who tires of being the target of a scam a day? 

Honest to Gawd, sometimes it does feel like some new scam comes in over the transom almost every day. 

How the Hell do these people get enough information about you to concoct a convincing-sounding pitch? The current effort (now consigned to the trash) comes from someone who knows who my (now long former ) mortgage lender was. We’re told I must hurry and call this number and blah blah blah blah….

Well. If I hadn’t paid off said loan some time back, I very probably would have fallen for that one.

This is the major reason I have call-blocking on my phone: the blitz of crooked hustles. I do try to filter the incoming emails, but you can’t strain out every one of them.

And yeah…some of them are amazingly persuasive.

Egad! $$$$$

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Just realized that two of the five Panasonic telephones in my house are gone. 

Yeah, I had five extensions. Now I have three.

Ducky.

Got a suspicion of who the perp is: one of the cleaning crew. But which one? No clue.

Generous of her to leave me three, eh? Some kind soul came into my home and stole TWO of my phones.

Not sure how to cope with this. If I buy new extensions, can they be programmed to work with my system? Or….what???

Without a car, I can’t get to the store where I bought the phones. So replacing them will not be easy.

What the FUCK is the MATTER with people?  Stealing some old lady’s phones? SERIOUSLY????

Looks like it costs somewhere between $14 and $60 to replace one of these handsets. Here’s one online: $53!!!!

To get new ones, I’ll have to go up to a store in the nearest shopping mall, which I can’t reach without a car.

Can you believe this?????

WHO would do such a thing??????

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Holeeee GAWD!  I just went out in back and discovered that ALL of the watering system has been turned off.

When, I do not know. It sure as hell wasn’t turned off by me. Not in 110-degree heat, of that  you may be sure.

So either one of the yard dudes did it (not bloody likely) or some visiting workman vandalized my yard.

Think I caught it (I hope) in time to save at least some of the plantings. Just now, water is POURING to the citrus trees. They’re bone-dry…normally get water a couple times a week. But forgodsake: the hedges? The citrus trees — ALL of them? The climbing roses? The cat’s-claw vines in gay abandon….

WHAT KIND OF PERSON WOULD DO A THING LIKE THAT???

They had to have known what they were doing…because they turned off ALL the watering zones!  There’s half a dozen of them!!

And it has to have been someone who had a key, because the back gate is kept locked.

Holeeee shee-ut!

Well…I guess I’ll need to have all the locks on the exterior gates changed….how many is that?  Let’s see…

1…1…1…in back…plus the garage side door. That’s four. Oh, shee-ut! What d’you suppose it’ll cost to have a locksmith come in and do that?

More than I want to pay, you can bet. About four times more than I want to pay. 😮

Godlmighty. I hope they didn’t put any kind of poison on the trees and vines.

The plants look OK just now… Maybe the jerk figured just turning off the water to them would do the trick, in 110-degree heat.

Ohhhh man!  The hoses are POURING the water to them right now. It’s getting dark out, so I’m gonna have to turn off the faucets pretty soon. First thing tomorrow morning, I’ll have to get back out there and turn the water back on.

This defies belief!

Why would anybody do such a thing????

WTF?????????

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How in the name of GOD do these clowns get their jobs????? And when a company hires some jerk, do they NEVER test them to see if the jerk knows what he’s doing???????

ARRRGHHHHH!

So….I go out to the pool and start to mess with the pump equipment, by way of cleaning out the filter’s strainer — which by now should be jammed with leaves and stuff, by now, right? Because Pool Dude was here several days ago.

And yeah, no question about it: I SHOULD have gone out there two or three days ago and checked the equipment. But no. I didn’t Because I was too damn lazy. And because, after all, that’s what I pay THEM to do, right?

Arrrghhhh! You’d think by now I’d know better, eh?

So I wander past the pump this afternoon and notice…uhhhh….waitaminit.

The pump’s strainer basket is sitting on the step stool.

Huh?

It’s not inside the pump, where it’s supposed to be. Some moron has taken it out of the pump and LEFT IT SITTING OUT. So all the leaves and crap can get sucked inside the equipment!

Ohhhh F****ck!

Shut everything down.

Take everything apart.

Clean everything out.

Swear, cuss, and swear some more.

Put the parts back together.

Seal the unit back up.

Pray to the Swimming Pool Gods…

Turn the unit back on…

SHHHHHHWWWWWWIIIIIIIIISHHH…..

A miracle!

Looks like the damn thing is working. And there’s even a chance it’s working right.

Well…Helle’s belles. We’ll know along about this time tomorrow afternoon if it actually IS running right. Because by this time tomorrow we’ll have a pool guy out here, to the tune of a pretty penny.

We can pretty much bet that the thing is busted or, at best, cattywampus.. Can’t hurt to hope, though.

But….in fact…. No. It looks like Harvey is probably busted. He’s just going around and around in little circles. That means tomorrow I’ll have to take him to the pool store…which will be quite the trick without a car!

Waitaminit…. Let’s take that back: It looks like Harvey is working but his hose has been shortened to the point where he can’t travel all the way across the bottom of the pool, shallow end to deep end and back. Hence: the elegant circles… Lo! the Explanation: Somebody stole several lengths of pool hose! Then disguised the theft by reconnecting the remaining hose to Harvey.

Goddammit! 

WHY DOES EVERY MORON ON THE PLANET HAVE TO GET IN FRONT OF ME?????????

If  they’re a moron, they’re guaranteed to come my way!

Man! Am I ever sick of STUPID STUFF. 

Who’s That Knockin’ at My Door?

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Just realized…. These days, I never answer the door when somebody comes a-knocking. Or a-doorbell ringing, either.

Seriously: it used to be — back in the Dark Ages — that when you went to someone’s house and rang the bell or knocked on the door, they answered by opening the door(!!) and greeting you. Today, I won’t open the door unless I know who’s out there.

Actually, that’s not entirely true. My front door is secured by a heavy-duty prison-like screen door, on the outside of the usual decoratively wooden door. So, the exterior door — the real one — has a set of bars and outside that, a thick sheet of solid metal screen. Getting through that would not be easy!

My next-door neighbor has a camera installed above the front door. It relays an image of any caller to a screen inside the door. And no, she won’t answer the door unless she knows who you are and why you’re there.

Awful that we have to be that scared, isn’t it?

One might say times have changed and so our door-answering customs have changed…the implication being that in the good ole’ days you didn’t have to worry about who or what was out on the doorstep.

But no. I don’t think the folks who show up at your door are any different than they used to be. If they’re not a friend or neighbor, then they’re trying to sell you something or (of late) they’re census takers, surveying the locals. It’s a rare bird that poses a real threat.

That notwithstanding: These days I peer out a window before I go to the door. If I don’t recognize the person, I don’t answer. Or else I holler through the window to ask them what they want — and nine times out of ten, send them away.

Now I will say: I don’t want to be hustled by some door-to-door seller. Period. So one reason that door doesn’t get answered is to make it easier to repel those jerks. As for census takers and the like: they need to show me a mighty authentic-looking ID to get me to the door.

Fine times we live in, eh?