theology&geometry

Thirty-seven that I can see. There are more I can just feel.

I wear Deep Woods Off! like a fine perfume but I get nibbled up just the same.

Grrrr.

Got my first batch of mosquito bites of the season. Two on the arm, two on the leg. Keepin’ it symmetrical.

• Woke up before my alarm went off at 6:30. No snooze buttons were harmed.

• Went to the Campbell Clinic way out east to get pictures taken of my bones and let a resident feel me up (just my arm!). The doctor told me these elbow shenanigans amount to classic bursitis, which is a pointless and insulting affliction, in my estimation. That’s right, America, I got injured FROM SITTING ON MY ASS AND LEANING ON MY ELBOW A BIT AWKWARDLY FROM TIME TO TIME. The doc hooked me up with the sweet little elbow maxi-pad-in-a-tube-sock you see up there and a prescription for some anti-inflammatory medicine and told me to lay off the elbow checks. Just kidding, he totally didn’t say that, so watch your tone with me, mister.

• I drove out to Bartlett to catsit Stinky and Sammy, who, for the first time ever, were actually more than marginally interested in my existence.

• Drove back in to Midtown to pick up my (mercifully generic) pills.

• Drove back toward the U of M to make it EARLY to my tire rotation/oil change appointment at Firestone. Decided that sitting in their waiting room might not be the best use of my time, so I left my car with them and darted across traffic to the Fantastic Sams, and was delighted to find myself their only customer. Snip snip. $20 later, I feel much much much lighter and less Pentecostal. Sadly, they only took off six inches and apparently you need ten to donate to Locks of Love.

• Hopped across traffic in another direction and hoofed it to my gym. Former gym. Where I was told that in order to reinstate my membership (which expired in May 2009), I’d have to pay $205 to get me back on track, and then another $130something to renew from May 2010 until May 2016 or something. Unable to wrap my mind around that horse shit (are all gym memberships this borderline criminal? there are only four ways out of this one: Moving to an area not anywhere near this chain, paying off the $700 two-year balance, terminal illness with doctor’s note, or death), I had them sign me up for a new membership. Because my ass? Has gotten way out of hand. They were all butthurt (god, I hate that word but I need it in this instance) when I balked at scheduling a time for my complimentary fitness assessment. It’s just that I know better than to try to get motivated by having some muscle-bound dude watch me huff and pant on a treadmill, and then tell me that I just need to spend more time on the treadmill. I’ve got it, dudes. I’ve done it before, I’ll do it again, and then I’ll get fat again, and come pay you even more money to re-re-join!

• Hopped back across traffic to pick up my car. Which wasn’t ready. So I sat in the waiting area. At some point, some dude came out to tell me all the shit supposedly wrong with my car, including something about a PCV valve and my alignment being borked. Which is insane, since Sig’s minions fixed up my alignment, like, a month ago. And I haven’t hit a single moose since then. Not a single one! So I don’t know. I told them no thanks and then sat there for another damn half hour so they could wrap things up and come get me to check out. I got sucked into Jerry Springer for a while. Then, while getting a cup of coffee, I noticed that my car was outside, ready. No idea how long it had been there. I stood and waited for a desk dude to help me, at which point he realized who I was and called me before I could be all “WHAT THE HELL, DUDE, IT’S 12:30 AND I BROUGHT THIS SHIT IN AT 10:45!” I noticed that my janky-ass hubcaps seemed to be in the same position I had left them, and I asked how they had rotated my tires — diagonally or front to back. Front to back, I was told. I paid up and went outside and I began to continue to kind of be suspicious, because the tires didn’t appear to have been moved; the front passenger side was hubcapless and looked low. Just like I’d left it. I went back inside and told the guy that, and said, “Are you sure they rotated them?” He was annoyed, of course, because I am a stupid girl with an AWESOME haircut, and went to ask the mechanics. There was some confusion, with one mechanic even accidentally being all “well maybe not” before another one jumped in and was all “I helped him do it!” I don’t know. They told me they moved the hubcaps so they would be in the positions they were before. I wish I’d marked a tire with a grease pen or something so I’d know for sure. The only way I’ll be able to tell is if my right front tire shows a slow leak. That tire (which, incidentally, that same shop was supposed to have patched several weeks ago, but it still leaks) should be the back passenger side now. We shall see. Oh, we shall see. God, I hate getting my car serviced. Hate hate hate.

So, that’s it, really. I’ve now been awake for a really long time, and my day hasn’t even really begun yet. I’m just inside that window of time where taking a nap would be a bad idea, but I can’t go in to work just yet because people will look at me funny.

Guess it’s fat pants and coffee ’til then.

I resisted getting an iPhone for a long time, because I am one of those people who switches on the inner Luddite randomly and without explanation. There was just something about the way so many people were iPhone-gasming at every turn that made me curl my lip and run toward the seemingly much more utilitarian Blackberry when I decided to upgrade to a smart phone a year and a half ago.

And then, less than a year into our love affair, my BlackBerry starting being a total jerk and I realized, quickly, that perhaps it and I were not going to be compatible for the long run. So I waited and waited until I qualified for a phone upgrade, and upgraded the shit outta my phone. Cool thing is, this snazzy little 16gb iPhone isn’t going to cost me any more per month than my stupid BlackBerry, which was deleting all my texts and logged calls roughly every other day. And, mind you, I wasn’t doing anything particularly data intensive on the Blackberry. Lots of texts, sure, and the occasional MMS. But I kept photos deleted and I even got rid of a few native programs (Brickbreaker, ahem) to give me more storage space. Note to BlackBerry: If you are going to charge $50 a month for unlimited texting, you might want to offer a phone with an out-of-the-box setup that can handle lots of texts incoming and outgoing without fucking deleting them every other day. Otherwise, expect to see disgruntled customers like me bolt for the iPhone once given the chance.

[Project 365]

If you’ve spent some time on Twitter, you’ve probably spent some time bitching on Twitter about some company that provides some service to you. And if you have spent some time doing that, you have probably spent some time reading super friendly replies to your bitchy tweets from CSRs who spend their time searching all of Twitter for mentions of their company. If memory serves, Comcast was really the first out of the gate on that front with @comcastcares. Which, given the unholy amount of bitching about Comcast that happens on Twitter (and elsewhere, presumably), seemed like a good, ahead-of-the-curve move on the company’s part.

And maybe it is, in some ways.

But this week, as I wrestled internally and then externally on Twitter with whether I should dump my AT&T service (land line and DSL) in favor of Comcast (wireless and potentially cable TV), it occurred to me that having a company’s CSR crawl Twitter and find your complaint and then offer to fix your problem — even after you have called the company directly to address that same issue — could be damaging to the company anyway. Because — and maybe this is just me — it fucking pisses me off that a company wouldn’t dig its heels into my problem when I asked them to do so. Why do I have to passive-aggressively bitch and moan about a thing on some social networking platform before someone at a company will pay attention to what I am saying and offer to fix it? Is it because said company is trying to do damage control and squelch potentially bad PR from going viral on the web? Because, as we all know, we internetty people get loud when we get irritated.

I have no doubt that both Comcast and AT&T agents will find their way to this post because of Google alerts or some such. And they might even take a moment to comment and assuage my fears or assure everyone reading that their intent is true and they really are trying to help people. And I hope they will read to this sentence where I say that I have no doubt that there is good intent in their efforts to meet customers’ complaints head-on in an arena whose popularity is growing. My beef is with the entire customer-service structure that would lead to so many people going online to air their issues with companies to begin with.

My specific issue is that when I moved into a new house and neighborhood, I asked AT&T to transfer all of my DSL/phone services as-is. (Quibble with my DSL choice if you must; I was trying to a) keep costs down b) compromise because I need a phone line for the alarm system and c) hold out for U-Verse to be rolled out here.) So I got to the house and realized I had a bunch of dead phone jacks that need repair work, meaning my only internet access is in the kitchen, which means that until the phone jacks are fixed (tomorrow, hopefully), my internetting is done standing up on my laptop in the kitchen with wires running EVERY WHICH WAY. But that’s not even the dealbreaker, since it’s a stop-gap measure. No no no. The dealbreaker is that when I moved, I traded my maxed-out Midtown connection speed (6.0mb/s) for a more quaint Middle East 3.0. Which, granted, isn’t horrible. But I do a lot of file transfers. With big files. And I like to have lots of tabs open so I can multitask so I don’t spend every fucking waking moment of my life trying to finish all the stuff I need to get done.

So 3.0 doesn’t cut it for me and my needs. But the man who set up my new service when I called to tell AT&T about the move never told me that my connection speed wasn’t transferable. (This is the same really sweet man who also tried to sell me a long-distance plan by telling me my cell phone was full of harmful radiation. My cell phone is powered by AT&T. Sigh.) So it wasn’t until I called AT&T to complain that I was told that 3.0 is the fastest I will ever be able to get from them. Which, had I known that from the get-go, would have caused me to completely rethink my connectivity options and NOT pay the connection fee and NOT base my alarm system on a landline and et cetera and so on and first-world dominoes hooey. All this amounts to me probably being out more money than I had originally planned. Which, whatever. It happens, I know.

I aired my frustrations on Twitter and got a very nice inquiry from one of AT&T’s roaming Twitter CSRs, who asked for my contact info and told me her DSL team was looking into my issue. Which is very nice, right?

Except it fucking pisses me off. Because I already spent more time than I care to recount on the phone with AT&T trying to hammer out why I wasn’t told what my connection options were and why I was still going to be charged for 6.0 when I was getting half that (I can’t wait to see my first bill). Why can some CSR on Twitter do more to help me than the person I called SPECIFICALLY TO TALK TO ABOUT MY ISSUE? I haven’t responded to the Twitter rep’s most recent request for my contact information because a) she seems really, really nice and I am far too bitchy to engage right now and b) because if she tells me that she CAN help me and I CAN get a faster connection, I am going to LOSE MY FUCKING MIND. Because I was already told that I couldn’t get anything better than what I have. And because I shouldn’t have to beg and moan and bitch and hem and haw to get good service from a company I pay good money to.

And if this rep tells me yep, sorry, you’re really out of luck, then what? She has wasted her time and gotten my hopes semi-up for nothing. I guess I’m supposed to feel grateful that she went out of her way to seek me out and help me, and in a way I do because awww they really do care, but at the same time? I want to be able to bitch in peace.

Internet’s been wonky since the move. I’m having some issues with phone jacks and then had some issues with my AT&T username and password. I actually got someone helpful from AT&T on the phone at 2 a.m. The only hitch is that she told me to stop using Mac internet sharing to juice my laptop and buy a wireless router because I’m only authorized to use my internet on one computer. Um, huh? Yeah, I’ll be ignoring that magnificent nonsense. And now I notice that they’ve got my DSL settings set to slack-ass instead of the moderately speedy I’m paying for, so it looks like I will make some more phone calls next week. But for now, I’m a go. Even if it’s a slow go, and in the dining room instead of the office.

[Project 365]

My sick week really threw me off my game, and by the time actual moving day rolled around, I didn’t have the kitchen or the bedroom packed up at all. So when I had helpers Sunday, we just moved furniture. That left everything else for me by my lonesome Monday. Plus I still had to clean the place.

As usual, I underestimated the amount of shit I had in my possession. I got to the apartment at noon, thinking I could get everything carted to the house by 10 and the place cleaned by midnight. I didn’t close the door behind me until 5 a.m. At which point I came home and took a bubble bath and plotted ways to travel back in time to find the asshat who invented stairs so I could shank him mercilessly.

[Project 365]

Just been without internet for a bit during the move.

Quickie mytery illness update: I am mostly better except for my throat, which hurts with the fury of a thousand suns’ angry balled fists pounding against piles of broken glass. I’m seeing a specialist tomorrow. It may mark the first time in my life that I have been excited to go to the doctor. I just want an end to the pain. Every swallow, every yawn, every movement of my neck is excruciating. It ain’t normal. My general practitioner (whom I suppose I should call my ex-doctor, starting now, since he has been kind of worthless during my week-plus ordeal), has seen me twice and done three strep cultures and seen fit only to prescribe a week’s worth of antibiotics for me. “Be patient,” he told me the last time I was there, looking up at him sheepishly, sorry I was pestering him twice in a week. That was a week ago. But fuck patience; I want to be able to swallow without fantasizing about falling off a cliff face first and ending the misery.

My head’s better, though. That’s a relief. I’m still tired as a mofo all the time, but I blame all the stress and sickness and the drugs I’m on.

I’m all moved. I’ll update more on that a bit later. I think tonight is the night that I will seductively pull the DSL modem out of a ratty box and reconnect it to my computer while doing an interpretive dance. And then cuss when it doesn’t work right.

Until then…

When I woke up this morning and was greeted by the same headache I’d been living with since Monday night, I knew I’d better haul ass to the doctor and list off all the random, weird symptoms I’d had since last week when I started feeling generally and non-specifically craptastic, or else I was never going to leave the bed ever again EVER. The doctor had not a lick to say about the weird bone pain, muscle soreness, fatigue, hives, sore throat (culture said no strep) or ear popping I’ve enjoyed these past few days. But he did send me home with a diagnosis of a migraine and a scrip for some strong ibuprofen. I was a little sore at the prospect of handling my three-day headache with kid gloves, but I guess that’s why he makes the big bucks, because the gnashing lion that’s been prowling around inside my skull has finally been tamed back into its cage, and only here and there mewls pathetically to remind me it’s still around if I get my blood pressure up too high.

I feel like I have lost so much time these past few days. So much stuff at work and at home needs to get done, and I’ve just been lying in bed, trying to outlast the pain. I’ve got my work cut out for me the rest of this week. But I’m ready to do something besides lie around and daydream about drilling holes in my temples to relieve the pressure. You think I’m kidding.

[Project 365]

Routine checkup. Shocked to learn that after a year of stability (eyes not getting weaker), I jumped up significantly (from -7.50 both eyes to -7.75 in the right and -8.50 in the left). I don’t know what this means, other than my eye doctor was totally lying to 12-year-old me when he told me that my eyes would get worse until I turned 15 and then start getting better. No, no. Since then it’s been steadily downhill, my eyes getting more and more useless as the time passed.

Looks like last year’s lack of movement was just a fluke. I’ve more than made up for the lost time.

The good news is that my vision isn’t quite shitty enough that corrective lenses can’t make me 20/20. Small miracles, I guess. Hope my luck holds out.

[Project 365]