Overtaken by ennui

My middle sister and I were chatting on the phone last night. She is not working outside the home right now (because she is taking care of a two-year-old and two other children as well) and said she is bored. I know the feeling. Busy - oh so busy - but somehow bored at the same time. Is winter over yet? I'm over winter, I can tell you that. Yet another day of school was canceled this week because of the extreme sub-zero temperatures. At this rate, my kid will be in class until the 4th of July.

Updates on a couple of things:

I haven't mentioned Time Warner Cable in at least a week so I know you were probably getting worried. The good news is that Time Warner Cable found my payment and credited it properly. They also waived the late fee they'd slapped on my account. I thought it was safe to send my January payment electronically via Chase.  Would you believe Time Warner Cable rejected the payment?  I called Time Warner and a customer service person told me that TWC's mailing address had changed in December and that she'd heard from many people whose payments were rejected.  This must be why my December payment got lost (you'd think that the ten million people I talked to at TWC could have mentioned that). I don't fully understand how a changed mailing address affects an electronic payment but what do I know.  I logged into my Chase account to update the address, but Chase doesn't recognize TWC's new address.  It has pre-set addresses for each payee. I tried overriding it and manually entering the new address, but Chase basically said, "We don't recognize this address and therefore cannot send an electronic payment. We will mail a check on your behalf, which will take 5 business days."

So now the problem was with Chase. I decided to send an email to their support people from within my account.  They are usually pretty prompt to respond. My basic question was this: "Is it possible that you have not yet updated your database to reflect the new address for Time Warner Cable?"

Everything went downhill from there.  They did indeed respond promptly, but apparently did so without actually reading what I had written.  I tried again; they responded with instructions on how to change the payee's address.  I tried again and even gave the address for TWC.  They responded to say, "Sorry, but we can't change it for you."  I gave it one more shot and explained that I was not asking anyone to do anything for me except to confirm that the correct address is not in their database. Basically, I was trying to figure out if Chase had plans to fix the issue or if I should just go old school and plan to mail checks for the rest of my life. The final response: they suggested that I spend a bunch of money to send an overnight check. I responded and said, "Never mind. I give up."  You see, Chase was still holding the rejected payment from TWC. I was not about to send TWC another $200 when Chase was holding that amount. When Chase finally gave me my money back, I called TWC and made a payment over the phone using my debit card. A day later, TWC left another one of those "pay up or we'll break your kneecaps" messages.

You'll be happy to know that I am mailing a check next month and, in theory, this should be my last rant about Time Warner.  Well, until the next time they raise their rates, I guess.

Update on Kaiser: he seems to be doing well in his new home. I haven't heard of any issues, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed that all is well.  I worry that he thinks I abandoned him, but at the same time I am just so happy for him.

As soon as Kaiser got adopted, the rescue was asked to take in two dogs sitting at a stray facility. Their time was up so they needed to be moved ASAP.  I had hoped to have at least a few days with my own dogs before I had to take in a new dog, but such is the way of the rescue world. The dogs were one and four so I said I would take the four-year-old.  I figured maybe he would be slightly less crazy than the younger one. Ha ha!  He arrived at my house Tuesday evening in a blaze of slobber and testosterone. I had him neutered immediately. I'm glad the vet had a surgical opening the next day because otherwise I was thinking of doing it myself. After all, I've watched every episode of The Incredible Dr. Pol (did you see the episode last week where he castrated some miniature horses and then tossed their testicles into the grass? It was very . . . tragi-comic, I guess?) and have a rough idea of how such things are done.

Anyway, here is a picture of my adorable new foster dog. I named him Mr. Bates after my favorite character on Downton Abbey. The canine version is nothing like the butler to Lord Grantham, I can tell you that. The TV version doesn't try to hump other dogs while they are pooping, for example. (Gideon is still pretty mad about being violated that way).

I'm off to a pet expo now. Catch ya later.


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