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July 27, 1998
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The vacuum cleaner doesn't suck. I think I mentioned that last week sometime. When I got home from Kevin's house on Friday (after getting stung by a bee and getting detoured around a flood on Rt 114) I found a note from my cleaning lady saying: "The vac needs help!" To tell the truth, I had forgotten about my observation of its dysfunction. Darn. So all weekend I worried about having to lay out more money to fix the vac. Why I should be thinking about the vacuum cleaner with all the other things on my mind and going on in the world I have no clue. So, first thing in the morning, before breakfast or coffee, I drove to Essex Country Vacuum and explained it all to the lady behind the counter, who was not the same lady I dealt with before. She dug out the records of my previous repair and attached it to the work order. She said she didn't know whether they would charge for this or not. They'll call me. This took about an hour all told - driving there and back, describing the problem, waiting while she looked for the records, etc. Off to the Post Office to buy some stamps and mail two post cards to Lizzy so she'll get some mail at 4-H camp. I asked the postmistress for the botanical print stamps 'cause I kinda like them. She had to open the safe and kneel before it, sorting through everything in there to find them. I felt awkward and embarrassed when other customers came, waited a bit, got impatient and left. Finally, she found the stamps I wanted, and sold them to me. I mailed the postcards to Lizzy and a couple to Charla, and decided it was clearly time for a food and coffee break in my interminable round of errands. I didn't' stay long at Starbucks as none of my friends were there. Ned is in Iowa playing golf and who knows where Tom is, while Julie swelters in the attic writing a play for which she will be paid the princely sum of $200. That probably comes out to less than the 3 cents an hour we figured her book on Child Labor came out to. Anyway, she's got a deadline for this play and has no time to be sitting around drinking coffee. Like I have time to be sitting around drinking coffee? I've still got a pile of errands and chores to do today. Back here at my humble and disorganized office, I call my doctor's office to get a renewal on one of my blood pressure meds. Busy signal. Repeat dial. Busy. And so on. I give up on that and call Mac Connection to try to get the bad memory chip replaced under its alleged lifetime warranty. I sat on hold for 23 minutes.I am a patient person, but 23 minutes is ridiculous. The music on hold was interrupted every 2 minutes by an ad for some sort of Sony tower system that's on sale. I got sick of being sold a PC while waiting for help with my Mac. I checked the number and decided maybe the customer relations number or whatever it was called would work better than the number they claimed you should call to get an RMA number to return a part. I dialed it and waited 10 minutes on hold before I really couldn't stand the Sony ad anymore. I called my doctor's office again. Still busy. I got on the web and went to the Mac Connection site, where I ordered more memory and wrote them a stirringly nasty detailed e-mail about how I just want to return the bad chip and won't they please give me the info I need to do that, please, pretty please with sugar on it? Oh by the way, the disclaimer on the order page says that ordering on-line may take an extra day as opposed to ordering over the phone, which will get it to you overnight. I thought the internet was supposed to be faster? When is the "new "technology going to make life easier? Inquiring minds want to know. By now the afternoon is wearing on and I still haven't gotten a new prescription, which means I will miss tomorrow morning's dose if I don't get ahold of him soon. I decided I am about to have a stroke if I don't get this prescription. News flash - I haven't missed the dose yet. It's all because Billy had a stroke that I'm getting this paranoid. So I decide or am compelled to drive over to the doctor's office. I get there, find a parking space (not often easy in downtown Lowell) and go in to find the door locked. His office closes at 4:00. But, it's not 4:00 yet by my watch. I imagine his practice has closed forever and he has vanished without a trace. I speculate about how long the wait will be at the walk in clinic when I have the stroke tomorrow. Back home, I settle down and start reading Alan Booth's Looking for the Lost, which I bought months ago. Tomorrow will be soon enough to start in on the errands again, with calling the doctor first on the list. |
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