On Tuesday morning, I was just sitting down to work (feeling behind and rushed) when I got an unknown number calling on my cell phone. My usual rule is to never answer an unknown number, but this time I threw caution into the wind and answered it. Verizon, my fickle lover, was back at the church wondering where I was – so I scrambled into the car and was there in 5 minutes. I smiled and said..um, I asked that you folks call me to give me a heads up because the church isn’t staffed all the time. The person holding the piece of paper on a clipboard and kind of shrugged and said – it’s my boss’s job to make the appointments. No matter, I can roll with the random dating/courtship pattern I’ve got with Verizon contractors. Anyways, today was the big day – to see if the conduit from 1960 was still accessible from the telephone pole to the phone room in the building. If so, we can get FIOS pretty easily. If not, I would have to call in a private company to trench a new conduit. Which means a lot of moola which I do not have. I wait with tense anticipation. I thought they were going to send a little robot or camera down the tube, but no. They are working with technology circa the rotary phone. They started pulling on an old string at the end of the conduit – is that string from 1960? Maybe.
New string unwound from the pole.
And god almighty, the conduit runs true. I might have done a little dance of victory in front of three phone technicians. Praise the (hypothetical) lord. OK, so now the conduit is clear, we can run a FIOS line. There are two more random appointments to keep, from what I understand. One to install the line, one to turn service onto the line. We will see. Right now, I’m in a $580 relationship with Comcast and I can’t get out of it. I think if I start dating Verizon, maybe I can play them off each other and get a better monthly rate. You better believe it that I run when Verizon calls.
Tuesday afternoon, I found myself at the outdoor pistol range. I’m getting steadily worse which is discouraging. Even my pistol is getting worse – I’m borrowing a Ruger Mark 2 – which apparently needs to be cleaned. My magazines jammed twice during my match. OK, so when your pistol jams and you can’t complete the total number of shots, you are supposed to call something called an “alibi” which means that you get a do over while everyone else waits for you to finish. I haven’t gotten the courage up to do that yet because I don’t want to make 7 other people wait for me. I’d rather take the lower score than make people wait like….20 seconds. lol. I think I shot a total of 10 shots out of 20? I told Susan, the range officer – ummm, the pistol jammed twice, but I didn’t call an alibi because….I’m shy. I continued – I’m working on it! And she smiled said….I get it, I get it.
