Raincharm’s Weblog

I guess it has been a few days since I posted. They have been busy. Work centric mostly – last night until 9 with a public meeting. Then there are those things that pop up from no-where to steal your time (and give you blog fodder).

It actually started yesterday, or really on Sunday. But for us – yesterday. We got a call from the police department saying that a phone that is listed in our work name was calling 911 and hanging up.

So – first you have to figure out which of the many phone numbers you have it is (that was easy – they told us), and then where that phone number is used. It turns out it is a number for a line we have running to one of our well houses. We had to put it in when we built the well house because it has a fire sprinkler system, and is supposed to call a monitoring company when it detects trouble.

Well, after a few years of paying a company to wait for a call we were able to convince the fire marshall that an uninhabited cinder block well house could probably call the District over our telemetry radio that we use to report its operational status (like – I’m running, I’m not running, and the good old intrusion alarm). So this particular phone line is not in use. And there is no telephone. And even when the line was connected to a box that could dial people waiting for its signal it would only send a fax type tone, and it didn’t know how to dial other numbers.

So we did the intelligent thing and unplugged the alarm company’s box from the phone line. Now it couldn’t even think about calling them.

Except that it did not stop the 911 calls. Had one (or some) at 8:48 this AM. So one of the crew is off to investigate. We did tell the 911 operator that it was not a real alarm, but we were met with one of Sammamish’s finest parked in front of the wellhouse. (It is behind a high school, so maybe he just wanted to see what the kiddies were up to as well.) Well, he watched our guy unhook every wire in the phone system that could possibly be considered ours (not the phone company’s), disconnect the battery, and basically leave it so the only phone line was from the phone pedastel behind the building to the interior of the building. Done.

Except that less than two hours later it called 911 again. Getting chummy with the 911 supervisors about now. They gave me the list of calls the well had made over the last three days, usually in series of 3. (Since we did not hear about this until day 3, the cops must have been spending lots of time at the well.)

So – the next course of action was to call the telephone company. Note that we left this until last because they are so pleasant to deal with. The midget I spoke with (sounded rather large actually, but I am thinking this is the size of the brain located in his head) said it had to be our equipment, and kept interrupting me. I finally asked him to let me tell him the entire story, that we had disconnected everything we had, it wasn’t our wireless phone (no physical phone exists), and on and on. He graciously agreed that for only $110 minimum he could send a technician out to tell me the same thing in person he was telling me on the phone. So I politely told him I thought we would just cancel our account instead. He gallantly gave me a different phone number to call (couldn’t transfer me – interesting).

So I got tired of the whole mess and gave the new phone number to our IT person to handle the disconnection. November 20th sometime between 9 and 5. So one more night of 911 calls, and then we’ll see what happens. If the midget mind had been nicer we might have gone the, “let’s figure it out” route, and they would have MAYBE gotten to give us a bill, if it turned out to still be our equipment, and would still have us paying a monthly bill for a number we don’t currently use.

Customer service – in these times you think it would be more important.

Well that’s enough words to count for a few days.

Latest realization from the two trees down. I went into the basement and there was light streaming in the windows from the backyard. I really need to spend some time in the backyard to determine what the next step is in regaining full use. Just some vision time. But soccer is coming up soon today, and then I think the bathrooms are calling for some visualization as well.

Yesterday was a work day through and through. Fun and did accomplish identifying at least 26 boxes for offsite archive, a fairly good number for shredding, cleaned up the archive room floor, and gave direction for the next step. We – 5 of us – were all tired enough that an offhand comment near the end put us into laughter and tears. It really wasn’t that funny. When I tried to explain it to Carl after getting home he just looked at me and said, “Here’s your turkeyburger”. Everyone needs a cathartic laugh now and again.

UPDATE – We won our soccer game – 4-3. It has been a tough season from the win-loss point of view (not the only POV for sure). I go for the cameraderie and exercise, but winning at least occassionally makes it more fun. We had been winning fairly consistently, so this season they moved us from Division 5 to 3. It was a huge leap, and our record reflects that we are generally older and a step slower than most of the teams. But today was good, dry and I felt good playing. Tomorrow will most likely be a stiff day, but that is good too as it tells me I am pushing myself a bit.

I am more tired than I thought I should be.
Work was, well hectic, today. It was all that I expected to do, with a few deadlines thrown in.

Home – workout on the bike for a bit.
Stretching. The part with the head down on the rug – well, I don’t think I snored, but Carl had dinner ready when I pulled my head up.

Now – early to bed and early to rise – we’re having a work archive party tomorrow.

I am now one second closer to my 15 minutes worth.

Last week revolved around public meetings – and here is my moment.
(Notice the coke bottle glasses)

http://sammamishreview.com/2008/11/06/camden-park-and-company-edge-closer-to-annexation

It was “wet” today. I suppose the sky was crying.
Tonight and tomorrow are supposed to be wetter.
And windier.
So, tonight I am going to try and get as much work done as possible, so if power becomes an issue tomorrow, it won’t be so important to me.
We do have a generator at work, and outside of not having heat we get along pretty well.
But, the potential for loss of work when the power flicks, and the needing to restart can slow one down.

So let me go so tomorrow it can blow, blow, blow.

I felt like this was a busy weekend – but in retrospect, it really wasn’t.
I did a little work on Saturday, and should have done a little more on Sunday but didn’t.

We attended an annual “Ski Party” which started over 20 years ago as a party to bring your skis to and wax them up. Not too much ski-work, but still a great get-together. Many of the friends are from before kids – generally around soccer. Carl knew some from U of Illinois, and reconnected here through soccer (unintentionally). But between kids and getting older, we don’t all see each other too much anymore.

The Saturday party is followed by a Sunday morning soccer game followed by breakfast. The soccer game has morphed as well – especially when many smaller kids were playing. The kids are larger and better, and the game today was alot of fun. Unfortunately for me I had a second soccer game today, so I had to cut breakfast really short.

Now I am nursing sore legs, kind of a jumpy feeling. Probably just need to go to bed and sleep it through.

Does this remind anyone else of an ad for insert drug of choice here.

I can always tell when Ashlan is home because the shade in the upstairs bathroom gets pulled down. I leave it up to let the natural light in and enjoy some outdoors. Mom often mentions how people note that they don’t even have curtains on the living room windows on Glenwood, and of course the cabin is curtainless. Always looking to bring the outdoors in. Anyway, when Ashlan is home, she always pulls the shade down, despite the fact that nobody could see in, unless they were on a ladder against the house. And I always put it back up. Repeat.

Well, the trees came down yesterday, and now the upstairs bathroom has a clear view of two realtively close houses. I was actually struck by how much the view reminds me of the view when we first moved into the house 14 years ago. So – Ashlan, maybe there won’t be so much up and down going on. Although I still like the light, so maybe …

The tree cutters left a fair amount of wood on the front lawn. Part of the price was that they got the wood. We have had several people ask if they can take the wood. I may have to call the tree people to see if they want it or if I should let it go. [Things are often put out on the curb for free removal in our neighborhood, and they usually get picked up within a day.]

I have often been called a tree-hugger. But it was raining so hard today that I did not hug two trees in our backyard goodbye. goodbye. Anyway, Carl is the sentimental one amoung us, so I will leave that to him. If all goes as scheduled two of the five trees in our backyard will be taken down today. The largest, a sweet gum, is a sewer sucker, and is the impetus for this move. The two trees also have branched into all other trees in the vicinity and blot all sunlight from the backyard. On the positive side, they do traspire alot of water skyward and keep the house cooler in the summer. But, we still have three trees to pick up some of the slack.

So – we still have a rainier cherry, blue spruce and some sort of asian fir (I asked the tree guy what this one was). Next steps may be to try and level the backyard some, and get a lawn back for Carl’s kids to play on. The current lawn is more moss and weeds and sweet gum seed pods than grass.

We have had so many seed pods over the past few years that Carl would go out with the kids and play counting games picking them up and putting them in buckets. The seed pods  do their job of digging into the grass too well, prickling the bottom of bare feet, and clogging the lawn mower (reel, but not with bare feet anyway).

The question is now how well I manage to revamp the backyard with my limited gardening/lawn care skills.

I wonder if just that much will lead to anyone knowing the rest?
Remember when the beach cousins were younger and used to have fun with their names

Nosyalnif anyone?
I just got a “you need to update your connection” message to a site I am registered with.
They provide the initial password, and then you get to change it to what you will remember.

Well – guess what password they started with.
I recognized it before I even finished reading the word, or grouping of seemingly random letters.
Made me wonder about how things like that are imprinted in our brains.
LOL to start the day – always good.

OK – anybody that is not family may have a tough time with this one … sorry.