next time you have an hour free...

...please watch this.

unintended consequences

I'm trying to wrap my head around this. Sometimes I'm so incredibly grateful to have been born into the family and country I was.

multifaceted

Yesterday I chopped wood for a while and then got my ears pierced (for the first time in my life! It feels WEIRD!). Maybe today I'll change my oil and get a pedicure.

A long time ago my friend Hillary made me a great t-shirt (ah the perks of working at Kinko's) with one of those '50s housewife cartoon ladies looking horrified next to a thought bubble that says "Oh my God! I think I'm becoming the man I wanted to marry!" Maybe I'm becoming both the man AND the woman I wanted to marry (except for the necessarily "wanting to get married" part). Sure would make some things simpler.

Other things, not so much.

snippets

The best bumper sticker I saw in Israel was on my cousin Susan's car: "We will have no peace until we talk to each other." (p.s. it's been ripped off her car more than once by people who are apparently don't share the sentiment.)

Second best bumper sticker I saw in Israel was on a car in front of us on the highway near Tel Aviv: "The car climbed Mt. Washington"

putting words to it

I feel like I got back from vacation and jumped back into work and my regular life, except instead of landing on solid ground, I landed in quicksand.

it's like joe biden writes their script

Sure, it seems like years since I posted, and yeah, I went to Israel (and Jordan! for a whole day!) and got into grad school (!!!!!!) since then. But here's what I really need you to know:

I hate (HATE) (yes, in big angry red letters) FairPoint Communications.

Remember (those of you in the neighborhood) last year when FairPoint was trying to take over Verizon's residential business in New England and the regulatory people said "Hmm, we're skeptical about you actually having the capacity to manage all this" and FairPoint said "No no! We can TOTALLY manage all this! We are awesome and powerful! We are telecommunications superheroes!" and eventually the regulators said "Oh, well then, it must be true" and approved the takeover?

You're totally not expecting what I'm about to say. Nope, not painfully absurdly obvious at all...

Turns out they don't have the capacity to manage all this.

I, for one, am shocked, just shocked. They lied? To us?? Didn't they realize the consequences? Didn't they see that when they took over the system, totally f-cked up the process of switching the old Verizon customers over to their system, put everyone on hold for two years just to be transfered to the wrong person, refused to answer their phones, and had their computer system offline for TWO WEEKS (I'm not kidding), that we'd all pick up and run straight to...

Oh right. There's no other phone/internet company here.

Monopoly (like dictatorship, as it turns out) can be a great thing; all depends where you're sitting.

In the meantime, I clearly don't have to be spending all this time on hold (or under the illusion that I'm on hold, when really they've just cut off the phone call with no plans to ever answer it, as I realized today). I just need to follow the friendly advice at the beginning of the FairPoint automated customer service message:

"If you are having trouble with your internet access, please visit www.fairpoint.com for assistance."

I hope these guys were never lifeguards. "I'm drowning, I'm drowning!" "It's OK, just hold your head underwater for a while!"