Thoughts.com

Cabinfever awoke with a start.  "Ow!" he shrieked.  "Something just bit me!"  He looked blearily over at his friend Charlie who was attempting to maintain an angelic expression on his face.  Cabin rubbed at the sore spot on his arm and noticed a full crescent of teeth marks in his skin.  Funfreak, who had been watching the whole thing with interest, piped in:  "I told you to stay awake, Larz.  You can't let your guard down.  Look," she said, pointing at her calf, "I still have the bite mark on my leg from when he tried that on me."  

"I'm so hungry..." said Charlie with a pathetic whimper.  "We've been floating around in this lifeboat for months."  

"Aww, c'mon, Charlie," said Funfreak, "it hasn't been that long.  Someone will rescue us."  This, her oft-repeated mantra, had lost conviction days ago.  

Their situation was indeed dire.  What had been a meager food supply was long gone, there were no rain clouds to be seen anywhere in the dazzling sky, and there was little hope that the Thoughts cruise ship they'd been aboard would be missed.  It had blown way off course long before it capsized and went down.  Suddenly, Funfreak looked around.  "Where's PastorMike?" she asked, alarmed.  

"Bait," said Charlie.  

"Wha...?"  Then she noticed the rope dangling off of the stern.  "Oh Charlie, you didn't!"  

"Did," said Charlie.

Inspired by the newly resurrected Scribbles Challenge!  Give it a shot!  :)

GGGGGGGGGGAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  

Why is it that I'm the ONLY one who knows jack about customer service??  Is it a dying art and I'm a dead dinosaur?  Is that what the problem is?  

The other day I went out for lunch with my 87-year-old boyfriend, Don (yes, Mr. Boots knows all about him :p).  We ate at what is, in this country, a GIANT chain called Swiss Chalet.  It's very popular with older folks because the food is good, in a digestible way, and it's reasonably priced, so Don and I dine there oftenish.  

As is the case with pretty much every business these days, when they present you with the bill, they point out to you that if you'd care to take a short online survey, you will be rewarded with...well, nothing, really, but you might win some sort of bagful of cash or some such.  In this case, I was to be given a free appetizer next time I darkened their door.  I wasn't so much excited about that as I was interested in critiquing the eating experience.  It's something I'm into of late - if I experience either really good or really bad service, I write emails to the company.  In this case, the service was excellent and I was interested in praising the server.  Having a professional server in my family, I'm well aware of what such praises from customers can do.  

Anyhoo....  I got home and typity-typed the given web address into my browser and a scary thing happened.  I got a very angry-looking message saying that I was being redirected to a very bad place and that the web address I'd been aiming for was most likely hijacked by some crazed hacker bent on shenanigans (I'm paraphrasing).  Cripes!  I figured that these Swiss Chalet people might like to know that the web address they were handing out to every single one of their customers was corrupt, so I went directly to their website, hit the "contact us" thing and told them what had happened.  Several days later, they replied to me with this:

Hooboy...yet another company hiring chimpanzees to answer customer service queries...  I responded as follows:

It's a not-so-closely-guarded secret that I know less about cell phones than the average eight-year-old.  I'm not proud of this fact, exactly, it's just that there's really not much point in lying about it to make myself look cool.  I always sorta figured I could be cool without such knowledge.  

Truth be told, I became summarily disillusioned with the whole cell phone business a long time ago.  I had a cell phone back when they weighed enough that if you swung your handbag at someone's head, the resultant thunk was impressive to say the least.  But that's about all cells had going for them back then.  They were weighty, but not much for useful unless you were willing to drive to a well-populated area, pay $27.50 for parking, then find a cell tower to shinny up so that you could acquire a signal.  And, even then, you were hard-pressed to stay connected long enough for the person you were calling to say, "What?  I can't make out what you're saying!"  

Fast-forward a few years:  Cell phones had become much lighter, and the signal was somewhat improved.  My daughter had become a teen and, as such, was getting dodgy to keep track of.  So, when she asked if she could get a cell phone and pay for it herself with money from her part-time job, we agreed, thinking that it would be nice to be able to call her and tell her to get her butt home NOW!  :)  It all went swimmingly for a while. Then she came to us one day and said that she'd gotten a "bit behind" on her phone bill.  How "behind" are we talking?  Just under (I'll say it slowly) nine...hundred...dollars!!!  How is this even possible??  I imagine some of you out there are just nodding like this comes as no surprise, but, to me, well, I'm a still a bit surprised I didn't hit the floor clutching at my chest.  

The final straw came when the same beloved daughter was very, let me just stress, VERY nearly killed in a car accident involving a cell phone-wielding driver.  To view what was left of the car she'd been riding in, it was almost as though Scotty had beamed her out just before impact.  We counted our blessings and grew to loathe cell phones.  

For the past several years, we've had vehicles equipped with OnStar.  It's absolutely brilliant, and, although they are (sadly) not paying me to say this, I highly recommend their built-in phones.  My new vehicle doesn't have OnStar and I am not adapting well to being car-phoneless.  It was so nice for traveling, for calling ahead to make reservations, or even for calling home and checking on the intactness of the abode.  

So, the time has come to bite it and get another cell phone.  I find myself staring into the abyss.  I went to the cell phone store yesterday and spoke to a nice young lady there.  Now, I am a savvy salesperson myself so you can dance all you like, I don't fall for words like "popular" or "best."  I say things like, "Let's cut to the chase here.  Pretend I'm your mother, listen to what I need, and tell me what you have.  I don't need 'shiny' and I don't need 'popular.'"  It usually works well for me and this was no exception.  The young lady came right off of her pitch and got real with me.  Unfortunately, I didn't like what she had to say.  Oh sure, I can get the el cheapo supremo deal with the free! phone, but the second I hit the road, my 67 zillion free! minutes become $2-a-minute minutes.  (They don't tell you this unless you specifically ask.  Shady bunch they are.)  So, essentially my free! minutes are only good if I stay home and call my next-door neighbour (who I wouldn't speak to even if you I was handed a bag of cash).  

In the end, I decided that my best course of action, being a savvy consumer, was to take all the paperwork home and study it for a bit before arriving at my decision.  I was doing all right until I got to that last page there with the itty bitty print...  

Here's a bit of what's in there:  

This includes the Government Regulatory Recovery Fee of $2.35/line/month for voice only...blah blah blah...what?!  It's applied to help fund fees, costs, and other amounts related to federal, provincial and/or municipal mandates, programs and requirements.  (I was already laughing and I'd only just begun reading.)  It is not a tax or charge the government requires.  We, the cell phone company charge this because you are stupid enough to assume it's some sort of government fee and will, therefore, pay it without question.  Oh, and it's subject to change without notice.  There is also a $35 Activation Fee, which varies by Province so it's safe to assume that whatever Province you live in, the said Fee is substantially more.  The next bit deals with an extra special fee which has been only just levied at a date only just gone by, meaning...you guessed it...it applies to you!  Then there's something called a DSRF.  Of course there is...  A Device Savings Recovery Fee (DSRF) applies if you have been granted an Economic Inducement (a what?!) upon entering your new term, and if, for any reason, your wireless service or your new term is terminated  (my term is terminated? Ohgawd!  Can that actually happen??) prior to the end of the term (Oh, come on!!  Really? Who writes this schitt??)  I'll spare you the rest even though it becomes increasingly more amusing.  There's even an elaborate mathematical equation in there wherein the Extra Special Dufus Fee gets multiplied by the square root of the number of calories you ingested at breakfast last Thursday, and divided by the derivative of the quotient of the denominator of your shoe size and then multiplied by six.  

I suppose it won't surprise you that I'm still staring into the abyss.  Sigh...  

All I want is the cheapest possible way to plug a phone into my Blue Tooth thing (whatever that is) in my car so that I can pretend I still have OnStar.  I don't wanna pay the Extra Special Phone Dufus Fee and I don't wanna pay an extra $28 per second if it's raining in Spokane or if the pope has flatulence.  Why can't it be easy?  Why can't it be straight up with no secret stuff?  Sigh... 

By now you've likely read a tidbit here and there about some sort of gathering in Florida last week.  Well, you know how Charlie likes to make schitt up, so I'm gonna tell you what REALLY happened.  

It all began one day last month when I was sitting in my igloo gnawing on a branch to make some fire wood.  There I was with a mouthful of twigs, when suddenly I heard a sort of ringing in my ears.  I grunted at Mr. Boots, and he grunted back.  Then he said, "That's the phone.  Are you gonna answer it?"  

"We have a phone?" said I.  

"Indeed we do, my dear," he replied, rooting around in the mukluk cupboard.  "Ah!  Here it is!"  He stared at it for a moment while it rang, then he furrowed his brow.  "Who do we know in Florida?"

"Well, there's that Charlie guy we went to visit last year, but he knows better than to phone me while I'm hibernating..."  I took the phone from him, poked the "talk" button and said, "Eh?"  It was Charlie, all right.  "Boots!" he said.  "You gotta git down here!"  

"Charlie!  What's going on?  Why?"  

"It's warm!" he said.  

"It's warm here too, Charlie.  Spring is only three months away.  It's up to minus ten already!"  

"I'm floatin' in my poo'..." he said.  He's lost it, I thought.  

"Charlie, honey, that's disgusting.  Now tell my why you're really calling."  

"I wantcha ta come visit wifey 'n' me an' I wantcha ta bring that furry cabin guy and that naughty freaky chick with ya."  "You mean Larry 'n' Jo?"  

"Yeah, them.  Will ya do it?"  

"Okay, but on one condition."  

"Sure," he said.  "What's the condition?"  

"Y'know that I quit smoking, right?"  

"Right..."  

"Well, there's about twice as much of me as there was last year, so NO pictures, okay?  I mean it!  I look like a walrus..."  

"Of course!  I promise, Boots:  NO pictures!  As gawd is my witness, I swear!"  Then his voice dropped conspiratorially.  "Keep this whole thing on the down-low, okay?  I would hate for any of our other friends to find out and feel left out.  I wish I could invite everybody, but I just can't."  

"I understand completely," said I.  "Mum's the word."  

So I threw Mr. Boots in the car and we headed south.

(For those of you who know skippy1957, this was shot as we were passing through his neck of the woods.)

We arrived in Florida a few days ahead of the appointed time, so we farted around on our own, looking at stuff like this:

And this:

A couple of these:

Some of these:  

And a buncha these:

After we'd done that for a couple of days, we went to visit Charlie.  We had met (and fallen in love with) Charlie and Wifey last year when we were in Florida.  We had also (sorta) met funfreak at the Thoughts Launch Party in Orlando two years back.  It was more of a quick hug between dancing and carrying on, so I could safely say I didn't know her well.  So, technically, cabinfever was the new guy.  What an entrance they made!  I'd post pictures, but I AGREED NOT TO!!!  

Larry and Jo arrived in style.  Both dressed to kill in their tacky tourist finery, complete with loud prints and fake-flower leis.  As it had been with Charlie and Wifey the previous year, it was love at first sight with these two amazing people.  I don't think I've ever spent three days laughing so hard in my life.  

Y'know, I've been lucky enough to have had the opportunity to meet quite a few folks from this site and I have to tell you if you ever get the chance, don't even blink - just DO it!  You won't be sorry.  Well, okay, you might be if they turn out to be a complete whackjob or possible serial killer, but mostly these people are amazing!  We've come together here on the internet, drawn by whatever it is that draws people together online, and that's all very nice, but meeting face to face with people like Curly, Larry, & Jo? (er...I mean Charlie, Larry, & Mo...Jo)  There is nothing like it.  

I wish we had had time to stop off in Georgia to visit Kyle again, cuz that guy is beyond cool.  Hell, I would have thrown him in the car and brought him along if I could have.  The point is, some of you may scoff at Ben's One Love vision for this site, but there IS love here and I have seen it and felt it.  

Wow...that totally dissolved into Sappyville, eh?  Meh...it's how I'm feeling.  Deal with it.  

To Charlie and Wifey:  Thank you, from the bottom of my heart for another wonderful visit.  Oh, and thanks SO much for posting all those flattering pictures... :p  

To funfreak:  Girl, you are astonishing!  Your energy makes me wanna take a nap, but while I'm awake, I would love nothing more than to laugh and go shopping with you.  

To sweet, beautiful cabinfever:  I knew I would love you before we ever met.  What an honour it was to hang out with you.

:heart: