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feng_shui_houseCalled the taxi around 10 a.m. and again it went to 6-7 rings. I hung up without leaving a message. Taxi guy returned my call almost immediately.
Taxi guy told me he'd got 7 phone calls yesterday that NEVER RANG for him, and instead went to voice mail, and he didn't even get a voice mail notification, so he didn't know anyone called until he went home at night and checked the phone.
The phone company told him a tower had gone down and they'd fixed it so everything should be fine. But still, he didn't hear his phone ring today until I'd hung up after the 7th ring.
He took me to the thrift store where I resisted a sack of plastic cookie cutters (I have 100's I don't even make cookies any longer), and a wooden M to hang on the wall covered with Marvel comics characters (my initials are MM and I love Marvel, but do I need wall decor? I do not).
But then there was a bag with 3 rolls of 2 1/2 wide ribbon in nylon/polyester one wired in gold flocked swirls on fine mesh, one wired in deep grape, one wired in burgundy with gold edges, and a roll of narrow gold curling ribbon for packages. I do not need, but I WANT and it was $2.
And I put back one book about a ghost cat solving mysteries- part of a long running series, well thought of apparently, but when I was glancing at it while waiting in the checkout line the first few pages had the devil as a goat fornicating with sheep and then wandering around a prison and kicking the prisoners when they fondled its genitals... and I'm... No, this is not the Mystery I'm looking for.
BUT I did pick up a Bird guide to No. America (sadly it did not include the Limpkin I saw at the park but 200 pages of full color detailed drawings of birds for $2 -original price $17, yeah, I'll buy that) and I picked up a fat paperback Book One of Septimus Heap 'Magyk' for $2 It's like 700 pages long and printed on the cheapest grayish newspaper type paper, but I suspect I'll only read it once! Life is too short to re-read 700 page Volume 1 books. It looks like the kind of book you can read and bookmark and go back to it later.
I had MEANT to be looking at T-shirts and maybe trousers, but I just wasn't in the mood. Found myself on an aisle with scarves- laughed at a fake fur dog hat/scarf, but then I saw a knit, multicolor chevron stitch scarf in pinks, teals and bronzy browns and I thought... THAT would make a great 'sock' dragon. $5, but it's around 2 yards long and quite wide, so you get a lot for that. And then I bought another $5 scarf about the same length, not as wide, colors knit lengthwise in sort of rainbow brights. NO IDEA what to do with it, but the colors make me happy.
And as I was edging up the checkout line, I saw a bin marked t-shirts 95cents for 2. And the shirts were all the same, a sort of mustard color with brown text... One Ring to Rule Them All. Ok, I picked one up. The back 'The Lord of the Rings The Motion Picture Trilogy'.
Hey, I just watched it for the first time! So I bought 2. Be good yard shirts, anyway, they're top-quality Hanes, Beefy- T. The color is probably fugly on anyone, but eh.
So, then I called the taxi guy and AGAIN the phone rang 7 times. I thought I heard him at the end, but just then a fire truck pulled up right next to me to park in the 'no parking fire zone' and blasted their air brakes so I couldn't hear and I hung up. He called me back and said he only heard one ring. Yep. Not working right. I told him I was going in the grocery store right next to the thrift & would be quick (only had half a dozen things on the list).
I couldn't call him from inside the store, my phone never works in that store & last time I asked customer service to call him from their landline they called a different taxi, so that's why I called him first.
The whole store had been changed, a bunch of display areas were completely removed, down to the flooring, everything shifted around. So I went up and down the aisles hunting for my few things. At one point I gave in and asked a worker for help. I said 'Do you know where the SOAP is?' while making a 'holding soap and rubbing it on my arm' gesture. She nodded and led me to... SOUP. I tried again, and got to the soap. *sheesh* Do you usually rub SOUP on your arms, lady?
Got to the checkout. No plastic separators, so I waited until there was a gap of about 10 inches after the groceries of the customer ahead of me (she didn't even have that much, maybe a dozen items) to put my things on the conveyor. She's got her money out, she's ready to pay-- the clerk reaches past the gap, grabs my first 3 items and adds them to the other lady's total.
*SHEESH* So we had to wait 10 minutes for the supervisor to show up and approve the fix.
Went out and taxi was there. He said he'd taken his phone to the phone store and they told him it was fine. And the guy called him, and his phone did NOT ring the first two rings even though it showed as ringing on the phone calling him, and he said, 'well, 2 rings, ok'. But 6 or 7 before he hears it?
He took me home and helped me carry the groceries to the porch. His phone rang ONCE, and he tried to answer. They'd hung up. ANOTHER lost call. I said They should just put your chip in a new phone, that one is obviously broken no matter what they say, and he agreed, he lost a whole day's wages yesterday and it's still not right.
I asked him if he knew any taxi guys who were willing to work in Hellholeah, that I'd only call them if I couldn't get him, and he said, no, BUT he did know a guy who HAD been a taxi guy (and actually had been someone he'd sent to get me a few times) and the guy now drove an ordinary car and did UBER driving.
GREAT! I didn't want to go with UBER with strangers, but I remember this guy. He didn't get lost and didn't leave me hanging when I needed to be picked up. SO now I have an emergency back up driver.
Felt a little restless, and needed to avoid trying to paint the AC wall- the glop is hardening and shrinking and cracking. I think I'll fill in the cracks with paint, but best to wait until it's finished shrinking and cracking.
SO I looked around and remembered I had some cement fixups to do. Two of the back windows are kinda moldy on the inside (the lazy buggers who put in the windows didn't seal the bottoms fully), and Leonhard had broken tail again (probably when I was piling bougainvillea on top of him), and I had 5 fallen off tiles from the edge of the step by the pool. I didn't have the right stuff (I never do) but I did have some leftover stucco cement from when the neighbor put in the ACs a few months ago.
I put a couple spadefuls in a plastic gallon ziplock freezer bag, added water and squished until it looked about the right mushiness. Then I cut the corner of the bag and used it like a pastry bag. Worked pretty good, and wasn't too messy. Here's hoping it works. If the tiles fall off AGAIN I may give up on them. :^)
Taxi guy told me he'd got 7 phone calls yesterday that NEVER RANG for him, and instead went to voice mail, and he didn't even get a voice mail notification, so he didn't know anyone called until he went home at night and checked the phone.
The phone company told him a tower had gone down and they'd fixed it so everything should be fine. But still, he didn't hear his phone ring today until I'd hung up after the 7th ring.
He took me to the thrift store where I resisted a sack of plastic cookie cutters (I have 100's I don't even make cookies any longer), and a wooden M to hang on the wall covered with Marvel comics characters (my initials are MM and I love Marvel, but do I need wall decor? I do not).
But then there was a bag with 3 rolls of 2 1/2 wide ribbon in nylon/polyester one wired in gold flocked swirls on fine mesh, one wired in deep grape, one wired in burgundy with gold edges, and a roll of narrow gold curling ribbon for packages. I do not need, but I WANT and it was $2.
And I put back one book about a ghost cat solving mysteries- part of a long running series, well thought of apparently, but when I was glancing at it while waiting in the checkout line the first few pages had the devil as a goat fornicating with sheep and then wandering around a prison and kicking the prisoners when they fondled its genitals... and I'm... No, this is not the Mystery I'm looking for.
BUT I did pick up a Bird guide to No. America (sadly it did not include the Limpkin I saw at the park but 200 pages of full color detailed drawings of birds for $2 -original price $17, yeah, I'll buy that) and I picked up a fat paperback Book One of Septimus Heap 'Magyk' for $2 It's like 700 pages long and printed on the cheapest grayish newspaper type paper, but I suspect I'll only read it once! Life is too short to re-read 700 page Volume 1 books. It looks like the kind of book you can read and bookmark and go back to it later.
I had MEANT to be looking at T-shirts and maybe trousers, but I just wasn't in the mood. Found myself on an aisle with scarves- laughed at a fake fur dog hat/scarf, but then I saw a knit, multicolor chevron stitch scarf in pinks, teals and bronzy browns and I thought... THAT would make a great 'sock' dragon. $5, but it's around 2 yards long and quite wide, so you get a lot for that. And then I bought another $5 scarf about the same length, not as wide, colors knit lengthwise in sort of rainbow brights. NO IDEA what to do with it, but the colors make me happy.
And as I was edging up the checkout line, I saw a bin marked t-shirts 95cents for 2. And the shirts were all the same, a sort of mustard color with brown text... One Ring to Rule Them All. Ok, I picked one up. The back 'The Lord of the Rings The Motion Picture Trilogy'.
Hey, I just watched it for the first time! So I bought 2. Be good yard shirts, anyway, they're top-quality Hanes, Beefy- T. The color is probably fugly on anyone, but eh.
So, then I called the taxi guy and AGAIN the phone rang 7 times. I thought I heard him at the end, but just then a fire truck pulled up right next to me to park in the 'no parking fire zone' and blasted their air brakes so I couldn't hear and I hung up. He called me back and said he only heard one ring. Yep. Not working right. I told him I was going in the grocery store right next to the thrift & would be quick (only had half a dozen things on the list).
I couldn't call him from inside the store, my phone never works in that store & last time I asked customer service to call him from their landline they called a different taxi, so that's why I called him first.
The whole store had been changed, a bunch of display areas were completely removed, down to the flooring, everything shifted around. So I went up and down the aisles hunting for my few things. At one point I gave in and asked a worker for help. I said 'Do you know where the SOAP is?' while making a 'holding soap and rubbing it on my arm' gesture. She nodded and led me to... SOUP. I tried again, and got to the soap. *sheesh* Do you usually rub SOUP on your arms, lady?
Got to the checkout. No plastic separators, so I waited until there was a gap of about 10 inches after the groceries of the customer ahead of me (she didn't even have that much, maybe a dozen items) to put my things on the conveyor. She's got her money out, she's ready to pay-- the clerk reaches past the gap, grabs my first 3 items and adds them to the other lady's total.
*SHEESH* So we had to wait 10 minutes for the supervisor to show up and approve the fix.
Went out and taxi was there. He said he'd taken his phone to the phone store and they told him it was fine. And the guy called him, and his phone did NOT ring the first two rings even though it showed as ringing on the phone calling him, and he said, 'well, 2 rings, ok'. But 6 or 7 before he hears it?
He took me home and helped me carry the groceries to the porch. His phone rang ONCE, and he tried to answer. They'd hung up. ANOTHER lost call. I said They should just put your chip in a new phone, that one is obviously broken no matter what they say, and he agreed, he lost a whole day's wages yesterday and it's still not right.
I asked him if he knew any taxi guys who were willing to work in Hellholeah, that I'd only call them if I couldn't get him, and he said, no, BUT he did know a guy who HAD been a taxi guy (and actually had been someone he'd sent to get me a few times) and the guy now drove an ordinary car and did UBER driving.
GREAT! I didn't want to go with UBER with strangers, but I remember this guy. He didn't get lost and didn't leave me hanging when I needed to be picked up. SO now I have an emergency back up driver.
Felt a little restless, and needed to avoid trying to paint the AC wall- the glop is hardening and shrinking and cracking. I think I'll fill in the cracks with paint, but best to wait until it's finished shrinking and cracking.
SO I looked around and remembered I had some cement fixups to do. Two of the back windows are kinda moldy on the inside (the lazy buggers who put in the windows didn't seal the bottoms fully), and Leonhard had broken tail again (probably when I was piling bougainvillea on top of him), and I had 5 fallen off tiles from the edge of the step by the pool. I didn't have the right stuff (I never do) but I did have some leftover stucco cement from when the neighbor put in the ACs a few months ago.
I put a couple spadefuls in a plastic gallon ziplock freezer bag, added water and squished until it looked about the right mushiness. Then I cut the corner of the bag and used it like a pastry bag. Worked pretty good, and wasn't too messy. Here's hoping it works. If the tiles fall off AGAIN I may give up on them. :^)
