The current conversation bouncing around my head at the moment this morning:
Hey DTE, it sure would be swell if you'd update the gas account online or just send the paper bill we usually get and tell me how much it is for the last billing cycle -- we're halfway through the current cycle, and not one shred of a charge yet. $0 owed and I'm all set, according to the online account? I'm skeptical. Don't get me wrong, it'd be sweet as hell if you decided we don't need to pay for gas anymore, but I seriously doubt anyone could ever get that lucky, so how about you get your shit together and send out the bill already?
Judging by comments on their Facebook page, Spyder's upcoming call to them about this odd issue is going to be a resolution dead end -- many people are missing their current bills, and many of those folks haven't received bills in months, and DTE doesn't seem to really be all that hot to fix whatever the problem is.
Queen of English Language Mangling, Master of the Edit button
That's not good. It likely means that once they do get their act straightened up that you will owe all the past due that they messed up the bills for. I hope that they will at least be flexible with payment plans and not demand it all at once. Maybe a good idea to just put the amount that you had available to pay the bill into savings just in case they do pull a demand for the full amount of past due up front at once.
Glencairn , that's the idea we're going with right now. At the very least, I can just go outside & make note of the CCF reading on the meter, deduct the figure noted on the last bill from it, do a bunch of math, and have a reasonable ballpark guesstimate to base payment savings on.
Late payment charges, from what I was reading, are hit & miss. So are sudden shut-off notices and full payment demands, it's very unpredictable how the company will react. It took a couple of years, but now I get why they're so outright loathed in MI. I've heeded advice & have the online complaint form for the Dept of Licensing & Regulatory Affairs on standby, if needed.
Nyiah, I hope they get it straightened out for you before it comes to late charges or anything else. It sounds like they are a mess from a business standpoint. I can't imagine running a company that way.
On the bright side, the gas bill came in and was almost right on target from monitoring the meter. So there's that!
Today, I'm playing Martha Stewart making gingerbread houses for the kids to decorate, kind of an occasional tradition we don't do every year. Except I tried a slightly different gingerbread recipe this year and it was a frakking pain. in. the. ASS to work with, much stickier than my go-to was. Also, my first batch of house parts burned badly and I set off the fire alarms last night & reeked up the house The rest came out ok after timing & temperature adjustments. However, the parts are warped today because the kids just could not keep their damn hands off them while they cooled. Oh, this is so not fun putting the walls together tonight, they keep collapsing And, and! Somebody ate half my bag of confectioner's sugar I specifically bought & set aside for royal icing making for decorating these. I was going to dye the royal icing & fully ice each house part, but I don't think I'm going to have enough for that level of artsy-fartsy. Thanks, kids
Queen of English Language Mangling, Master of the Edit button
Post by Michigan Swamp Buck on Dec 4, 2017 23:28:34 GMT -6
I could find something to whine about I'm sure. Nothing seems to matter much after my brush with death about two and a half years ago. So liberating to be sure. Wait! One of those stupid Japanese lady bugs just flew on my computer screen. Too bad the lizard won't eat those.
Post by Michigan Swamp Buck on Dec 4, 2017 23:41:47 GMT -6
Wait! Got another one. Why can't I have money in the bank like I got here in Hernando money? Hell, screw them anyway. Why can't I have money stuffed under the mattress like I got here?
Michigan Swamp Buck, I feel your pain on the money thing. I would love to have my offline bank account fill up like my HH bank fills. The irritation with the Japanese beetles that look like orange lady bugs I also understand. We get swarms of them in the spring and fall and they always find ways to slip into the house. They bite or pinch or something and I can't have one land on me without getting bitten. I would be thrilled if I never saw one of those things again.
My big whine right now is that I'm sick. I just have a cold, but it is still uncomfortable.
And now the cold is starting to go away, but the congestion that came with it is still getting worse. Ugh. It hurts to breathe and feels like I have a truck sitting on my chest.
I hope you're feeling better, Glencairn, holiday colds suck big-time. Nothing worse than trying to get in the spirit of things while feeling like total crap
I'm about halfway done with Little Kid's scarf, but while working on the scarf, I've begun having bad cramps in what diagrams say is the Abductor Pollicis Brevis muscle (the meaty one under the thumb) This is slowing me way, way down and irritating as all hell (and it hurts like a charley horse in the foot or calf does, too) It doesn't kick in until I'm actively crocheting, so it's definitely muscle stress from holding the needle. I'll get it done, but it's not going to be very pleasant.
And my final order from Amazon I put in a week ago STILL hasn't shipped yet. Well, a few things have and have been delivered already, but the bulk of the order is still not yet shipped. Tick tock, Amazon, come on...I have a feeling these'll be delivered Christmas Eve like one time before in years prior. I felt bad for the delivery driver having to work Christmas Eve. If it doesn't make it before Christmas, it's not that big of a deal, there's just going to be a couple of late gifts under the tree. Still won't be too happy about it, but what can you do?
Queen of English Language Mangling, Master of the Edit button
Nyiah, I understand the frustration with the gifts not arriving in time. We had that happen with a couple of things from Amazon a few years ago, too. It is frustrating, but like you said, if they're late what can you do. Late is better and just extends the feeling of Christmas a little bit, so there is always that.
I just got my Christmas present early. The computer that I had been using that bit it over the summer from a power surge (that killed more than just the power supply) and had me using Russ' work computer when he wasn't using it for work, just got replaced. Russ found a computer that cost a bit more, but has much more memory and speed and I forget what all he told me that made it better, but it just got here yesterday evening and we set it up and let it do its updates and all and I was able to start setting it up this morning. So far I am really loving it. I'm still tweaking settings a bit here and there to get things "just right" how I like them, but I am loving having my own computer again and this one is a nice one to have.
The good -- the Amazon shipment I'd been waiting and waiting for finally arrived yesterday, whew! That's a couple of kid gifts and a Spyder gift that'll be under the tree as planned
The shitty -- Big Kid & Little Kid are doing Advent calendars this year. Nothing fancy, just the kind with a chocolate behind each door. Big Kid thought she hit the jackpot last week when she opened one and found not one, but TWO chocolates in it. Except I think I found where it came from today -- the Christmas Eve door has nothing behind it. See, the cardboard isn't fixed to the plastic tray inside, and I can slip a finger under the border and feel around adjacent doors' spot. The one for Christmas Eve is totally empty, so I think it must have slipped under the cardboard and fallen into another chocolate's nook. I'm trying to figure out something small to slip in there in place of that. My grandmother had a lot of post earrings she never wore, and we got Big Kid's ears pierced for her birthday this month, so the idea is to find a nice pair and sneak it in there for tomorrow's reveal. Open up the last Advent door and find nothing in it? Not happening!
Queen of English Language Mangling, Master of the Edit button
Nyiah, Did you find something to slip into the Christmas Eve door on the advent calendar? Quin got those every year when she was younger up until about 2 years ago from her grandparents and they shipped them because they live far enough away that it wasn't feasible to deliver them or have us pick them up and almost every year we ran into that same thing. The little chocolates would shift and slip during shipping and some days had a couple of chocolates and a couple of days didn't have any. Quin was never that bothered by it, so we got off lucky on that front.
I am glad that your Amazon shipment made it in time. That is wonderful. How did they like their scarves? Do they know that you made them special for each kid?
My whine is that I have an owie. A fairly decent level one. On the 23rd we went to my brother and sister-in-law's house to celebrate Christmas with my side of the family and I was playing with their dog. I got her a bit too wound up and right as I leaned down to kiss her head, she jumped up trying to give me kisses. She jumped at full strength. We collided and her head smashed into my bottom lip.
With my dog that would have been nothing, he is a chihuahua and weighs only 11 pounds and a collision just doesn't hurt. The problem is that my brother's dog is a pit bull and she weighs almost as much as I do (okay, not really, but she does come up and lean into your side to show affection and is strong enough to knock me on my butt when she does that), her head is just about as big as a good sized smart car and so when we collided her head split my lip and I ended up with the cut and a bruise on my chin, a fat lip, and a bruise on the entire inside of my lip and a dark black and purple bruise in a huge wide stripe in the middle of my lip. It was still black all day Sunday and Monday and is only just turning into a sickly green-ish color today. At least on the outside of my lip and chin. The inside of my lip is still cut from hitting my teeth and purple. I look like I got mugged by a Mack truck.
Glencairn, I did indeed find a little something to slip in the advent door, a small pair of butterfly earrings. She was pretty happy with that
Yes, they did like their scarves! They wore them today for a trip out to the store :)
Ouch to the busted lip from the dog! I had a Boston Terrier that was good for that once in a while. I mean, he came pre-trained as an adult dog, graduate from obedience schooling, but he was generally a pretty well-behaved, obedient dog, especially for a terrier breed. Until he got too excited to contain it and bounced off the walls. spyderw1 was good for winding him up like that just to piss me off (he used to wind him up on walks. YOU ASSHOLE) but occasionally I'd shoot myself in the foot and accidentally wind him up while I was wound up, he'd get all jumpy-licky and bean me in the face. Nothing like a dog-supplied splitting headache, right? (your 'mugged by a mack truck' quip made me laugh, lol)
One major complaint that I can't wait to remedy later this coming year -- the keyboard on my laptop is lowly dying. I'll either end up with a new laptop, or a new keyboard, either works for me. Right now, the lower left corner is slowly dying & spreading. My Z and F keys, and the left side of the space bar need to be mashed hard to work at all. Sometimes the Q, W, A, S, D, X, and C keys don't work unless I mash them, too. Tab & Shit keys occasionally need mashed, but Caps lock seems ok. It gets really frustrating typing, it looks like my language mangling graduated to a whole new level of WTF. It's even less amusing in games, my directional hot keys for movement are W (forward), A (left), S (backward), & D (right), X is my interact key & shift is my run faster key, lol. I could always re-key (re-assign) everything, but it would be extremely cumbersome, I'm very used to the exact spot where my hand rests. On the occasions I need to log into Spyder's account for him to do something on his behalf when he's at work, I about have an aneurysm trying to remember where all his hotkeys are, his are defaults (such as directional, mine are default also) but others are re-keyed like mine are, just to different keys than I chose.
I'm not sure if it's a complaint or just a musing, but damn is it COLD. It was -10*F this morning, wow. And the same, if not colder, tonight. MSB's north of me, I bet it was just toasty where he is /sarcasm It's warm enough in the house, the thermostat is set for 67 and it's staying there for affordability's sake. I'm not exactly hopping to run outside or anything (even the kids aren't) But it sure was pretty out there today, sunny and a really brilliant blue sky. My joints ache like hell, though, pretty sure the weather has something to do with that even though I'm not cold indoors.
Queen of English Language Mangling, Master of the Edit button
Nyiah, It sounds like your Boston Terrier and my brothers dog are similar. At least in the getting wound up department. Theirs hasn't been through obedience training, but my brother and sister-in-law did a lot of their own training. She knows commands and a handful of tricks. She made up for the owie after I came out of the bathroom from cleaning up the cut and had gotten a paper towel with some ice for my lip and was sitting down by creeping up very slowly and gently (and making a big show and production of it, too) and got over to me and very gently slid her head into my lap and just starred up at me with the most pathetically sad look on her face. No one had reprimanded her or anything (and it really wasn't her fault since I was the one who got her all wound up and was playing with her, just bad timing), but she seemed to just know and it was ridiculously cute. The cut is almost all healed and the outer bruising is gone, but there is still just the tiniest bit of bruise left on the inside of my lip and it is a little bit tender when I put pressure on it by eating something crunchy or putting lip gloss on, but otherwise I look more or less normal again.
That sucks about your keyboard. It sounds frustrating as heck. I don't know how hard it is to re-key your hot keys, but from what you said, it sounds like a pain. I hope that you are able to get that fixed or replaced soon without too much cash outlay.
It was cold like that here yesterday and today. I don't know if it got as cold as you and MSB did, but it was in the negative single digits. We have our heat set at 70 for the same reason as you in trying to keep it somewhat reasonably affordable and I am chilly and bundled in layers, but Quin and Russ love it and are completely comfortable. We didn't even have the sun to make it pretty out, though. It was just ugly and grey and then today it snowed again. Nothing horrible, and it wasn't the big sticky flakes that accumulate, just mid size more frozen flakes. Those aren't too bothersome except that it snowed for about 7 hours and there was about a half to 3/4's of an inch and, despite not even being the first snowfall, suddenly every idiot on the road suddenly forgot how to drive on snow and were going about 30 miles an hour. I didn't look at the forecast, but Quin did and said that it is looking like it will be snowing more tomorrow. I'm not working (the week between Christmas and New Years is flat dead at work), so Quin is taking my car to work since hers is a little convertible mustang sports car and mine has all wheel drive and handles better on the snow. I just hope that it warms up soon. Driving to work all this week has been horrible. My car gets stupid warm if I crank the heat (and I can set it to whatever degree I want - this past week I had it set at 82), but it takes a while to heat up that high and the first 10 minutes or so are frigid.