spoken for

The other day I got a phone call from a guy who said he was from ATT. The callerID was blocked. I could not understand half the things he was saying but from what I did understand, he was saying that my speed on my DSL could go even faster, and he’d like to check and see if that was possible on my line. Um, okay, whatever. He comes back and says that it is, and before he could try to pitch me anything I hit him with the basic “so how much would it cost me?” He said something like, “you’re paying $39.99 a month now, right?” NOooOOooOOooOOooOOooOOooOOoo, I had to say, it’s supposed to be $24.something. He seemed confused, said he’d call me back, and good-bye. I’ve not heard back. That was Tuesday or Wednesday. Looking at my bill online… it says $38.26 for DSL. I figured our bill was up higher last month because we’d gone over our long distance or something. Guess not. They’re going to be getting a phone call from me later today.

Later that night, I got a phone call from GoDaddy. This struck me as weird because they’ve never called me before, ever. I thought I’d opted out of phone calls but looking at my account now I cannot find a spot for that, only email preferences. And according to GoDaddy then, I’ve missed out on $312 and something in savings because I said “no” to their newsletters… strange, because I seem to get them all the time… Anyway, at first I thought she’d be calling me about my numerous support requests (I kept getting locked out of my account last week, long story) but then she started talking about domains or something and informed me that I had a domain that was going to expire soon, so they “just thought that I should know about that.” Well, which domain, I want to know (though I know already all the happenings of my account). Oh that one, yeah we’re not renewing it. :P Duh. If I was renewing it I would not have told it manual renew rather than automatic and then ignored it. I guess they’re crying because I’m letting something like 10 domains go over the course of this year…

I got door-to-door salesmen yesterday. Now this is weird because in all of my six years of living here, we’ve not had one of these before. Not one. We’ve had a politician, once. But no salesmen. The doorbell rang and I ran to the door because I hoped against all hope that it was the DHL or UPS man bringing my new camera or memory card or candle supplies. I was sorely disappointed. E was in his room where he was supposed to be taking a nap, but he freaked when he heard the doorbell. He thinks all doorbells = MeMaw. So I get there and it’s these two punk college students and the one is right there, the other is off to my right, about ten or more feet away from me on my patio. I’m like what the heck? It takes this kid forever to get out why he’s there. I ask again what company he’s with, he says a singleword with a tone of voice an attitude that assumes I’m supposed to know what he’s talking about. I don’t. At one point I think I know what he wants and I say I’m not interested and try to go back inside. He laughs and looks at me with this look that makes me stop and second guess what I think he wants. He says, “I guess no one’s told you about me yet.” with a tone of voice that makes me wonder if he’s sent out by the county for a survey or something. He’s rattling off names, common this-town names, first and last and I’m just like WOULD YOU GET TO THE FREAKING POINT? He was so slow and… strange… …and looking at me so weird… it took me forever to figure it out. He was selling something afterall. “Books for little ones that will help prepare them for what they will be doing in school.” Ooooookay, I get it. NO. No books. I’m tripping over them in every room as it is. I say I’m not interested again and I get the same look and laugh and so I’m just like, look, my kid is in there by himself, I am going inside now. He knew I had a little kid before he came, he said something to that effect when he started. So I watch out the window and they just stand there for a minute. I’m still trying to figure out why the other guy was standing so far off and not saying anything. Okay well it was all just weird.

Reminds me of another time for some reason. This car pulled up outside as I was putting the dog out on his chain as I getting ready to leave. They parked directly across from my lilac bush (as seen in these photos), not on my side of the road, on the neighbor’s side. The dog got free and ran over to them and I had to go get him. There were three people, two women, one man. 50′s and 60′s in age. This has been a while ago, so I don’t remember what all was said then, but I start to go back to the house and I realize that they’re not walking up the road to my neighbor’s house on whose side they parked, no, they cross my back yard to walk over to my other neighbor who’s house/land does not even border my road! What would they have done if we’d had that fence we want? Sheesh. The guy was almost tripped because Rimshot ran out the back on his chain because I didn’t know he was going that way. Had he been tripped, he coulda fallen on the patio and hit his head, and we could have been sued because it’s our property and our dog, even if I did not authorize their being on my property. Now they were walking aimlessly around neighbor lady’s backyard like they didn’t know what they were supposed to be doing. I had a kid to get to the doctor’s so I had to go. I went back in and got ready, came out, put the dog in, and was trying to leave when they started talking to me from her carport where they were all sitting. They started asking me for cuttings of my lilac bush. I’m like, I gotta goooooo, take what you want, lol. Thankfully, where they were parked did not pose a problem for me to get out of my garage, or I’da been ticked. When I came back but half an hour later they were gone.

And the part about my driveway reminds me of something else. Before we got the neighbors that share the road with us that we have, we had some other neighbors. These people were moving to an apartment so they were selling a lot of stuff and had an auction one day. We went to leave that day and came out of the house to find cars all up and down the highway and our road, and even the auctioneer with his big butt truck partially in our yard, tearing up our grass with his fat tires. We could hardly get out of our garage (it is right on the road and the road is not all that wide). Steve was soooo mad he made the one guy get his truck outta our yard.

Yeah I wish we had that 6-foot privacy fence we want…

But, ya know, we really are nice people. When that neighbor who shares the road with us needed to put out a new water line a couple of months ago and the guy behind us who, we thought, was friends with the first guy, refused to let him dig on “his” easement to put the waterline in, Steve said, heck, I don’t care, go into our property as much as you need to, just be sure and fill it in and get grass going again. And, really, I don’t think the second neighbor could really object to him using the easement because the city owns the easement… or maybe it’s the phone company, or something, but that neighbor doesn’t own it. Well, if he wants to be a jerk, so be it…