Pbenjay's Blog

WTF?

I don’t know whether to pick up the last couple of days of Ice Cream week at Pbenjay OR tell you where I’ve been and why!

Well, promises made are promises to be kept and I said I would explain why I just disappeared for a couple of days.  I was all set to post Thursday’s Top Ten list of ice cream flavors but didn’t get to write it before we left for the Shore.  I figured I could write it when we got there.  Never assume! 

Getting everything out of the apt, onto the cart and into the car is not fun thing it’s cracked up to be and Thursday was a WTF day!  I wheeled the cart out to the curb and took one look at the car and GULPED! The right rear fender has a huge dent in it. Oh shit! That was the mildest of the curse words that flew out of my mouth! I mean really, I am rebuilding this car fender by fender and bumper by bumper as it seems to be magnet for the most careless, rude, mean-spirited people that have hit my car and NOT ONE HAS EVER LEFT A NOTE ! There’s a real F U hit and run attitude prevalent in New York City.  I was just sick over this latest offense and thinking about yet another $250 deductible.  Naturally I asked Peter about it and he related the story of how he went to get the car from where it had been parked on another street and as he approached the car, a young man who was tinkering with his bike asked if this was his car because he thought it had been hit by a truck that had tried to park behind it and couldn’t fit and drove off.  Yeah he couldn’t fit – guess he knew that when he bashed in my rear fender!  This was not auspicious beginning of the trip or weekend.

We left New York a little after 3pm AND that was a mistake AND not the first time we’ve done such dumb thing and as a due reward for our stupidity it took us an hour to go from the UES to the Lincoln Tunnel.  I’m going to blame the late afternoon Starbucks for my very uncomfortable  situation;  we moved along excruciatingly slow and I wondered if I would make it to the service area about 2 miles outside the tunnel on the New Jersey side.  Ay yi yi…. I don’t need to fill in the blanks.

We were carrying things into the cottage and I remark to Peter that there must have been some rain here because there was a pile of mud and debris in our walkway (this always happens when it rains).  All of sudden Peter says, “hey there’s no power on”!  “WTF”!  I quickly open and close the freezer and my worst fears are confirmed.  Everything is defrosted, still a little chilled but definitely the frozen fruit is soup.  I call my friend Jane who owns a hotel in town and ask her if the power went out in town and she says no, not that I’m aware of.  I cross the street to speak to my neighbor and ask if he has power? Yes he does. BUT then goes on to explain that severe thunder and lightning storms along with 5 1/2 ” of rain fell on Monday and Tuesday AND the house 2 doors down from mine got hit with lightning.  Mmmmm – Peter goes to the basement, flips all the circuit breakers and nothing happens. I am so panicked about all the food in the freezer, we contemplate packing up a bag and taking it to the hotel but then we realize our neighbor’s house is empty because work is being done so we scoot over there to see if her refrigerator is on and empty.  We relay pass the food from our house to the neighbors over the fence.  I am stacking my soggy food in layers in her freezer with some freezer packs.

We call Jersey CL&P and tell them it’s an emergency, and we wait, and we wait.  Finally, a burly man with a big truck shows up.  Five minutes later he leaves…after he flips the MASTER CIRCUIT BREAKER switch.  REALLY??!! Really? In all fairness (and this part is hard), that switch stops halfway and in order to reset it, you have to push it past that point and pull it back.

Okay we have power, the food I think may be salvageable is next door and we still have to eat.  I start dinner and turn on the TV which for some reason I can’t seem to sync with the cable box.  Peter tries and he can’t do it either.  I think I’ll call Verizon but the phones are dead – I assume they are recharging – NEVER ASSUME.  And there’s no internet access.  So I call Verizon on my cell phone and for the next 30 minutes the technician tries to talk Peter through many steps to reboot everything only to discover ultimately that the big main box that was behind the wine rack, behind the cookbooks and behind the cake tin housing lots of tools is dead.  And that was only found out after trying to follow a cord out that box which ran behind the bookcase that held a ton of videos and its top shelf had several framed photos that kept falling as we tried to move the bookcase and then follow the cord behind the radiator which does not move!

Finally the techie and Peter realize making a service appointment is our only option. It’s now after 9:00 pm on Thursday night and the first appointment we can have is between 8am-noon on Saturday – WTF!  We have a house guest arriving tomorrow, we have no phone, no internet, no cable TV.

Fast forward to Saturday morning. We are up and ready by 8am eagerly awaiting the arrival of the Verizon repair man. At 8:15 am my cell phone rings and a cheery voice greets me with the news that although our appointment was to be between 8am-12pm, he wouldn’t be able to get there until between 1pm-2pm.  I tell him that is totally unacceptable and rattle off the reasons why and tell him to call his dispatcher and call me back.  He doesn’t so I call Verizon and the poor customer service who picked up the phone got an earful from me.  He kept repeating how they were over-booked and I kept repeating my litany of how long I have been a Verizon customer, how this house has been without all Verizon services for almost a week. Ok he’ll call the dispatcher and call me back.  He calls back and gives me this song and dance about how he spoke to the dispatcher but there are 5 jobs to be done blah blah blah.  My response is that I don’t care that there are 5 jobs just me in a time slot that is before noon.  I remind him that I have a text confirming that appointment.  He tells me that we don’t know how long the appointments will take to which I say that’s not true since every appointment was made for a specific task.  Finally after about 10 minutes, I ask him to connect me to a supervisor because I don’t need to yell at him and I realize there’s nothing he can do. OK he’ll get a supervisor.  At this point I hand the phone to Peter because if you can catch more bees with honey rather than vinegar it’s time to give the phone to Peter since I’m really worked up.

Twenty minutes later, Peter is trying his best to convince the supervisor who is handing him the standard party line which we are not buying.  I motion to Peter NOT to give in because at this point, it’s like a game as to who will say “uncle” first.  We’re holding firm!  Finally Verizon says he’ll call one of the service men and see if he re-route him. 

Now it’s time for breakfast al fresco!  We eat and wait.

Yay he’s here!  He actually showed up at 10 minutes to 11am.  He said he had been instructed to come to us after he completed the job he had been on.  In less than 10 minutes he replaced the battery pack and we were back in business.  Before he left we checked all three components of service and all are working. 

The moral of the story is if you make enough noise, if you hold firm, you will be a loud wall BUT you just might get what you need!  So now that I have computer access, I’ve been typing for about an hour relating this tale of electronic deprivation and now maybe I’ll be able to finish my ice cream week.  And for the record I had the best dish of sea salt caramel vanilla ice cream tonight!!!