Jul 10, 2009 | Captain OCD
Captain OCD does a lot of the cooking around here, but by no means all. When we first started going out, we decided that a pork-roast dinner with mashed potatoes and all that goes along with it sounded good. At the grocery store, after we’d chosen a roast, he was wandering the aisles. I asked what he was looking for: potato buds. Because that’s what his mom used, and those were the “good” ones. If he’d said he was looking for severed puppy heads I would have been only equally as horrified. My mom didn’t do mixes of any kind (I still don’t), and she made cake or cookies several times a week (I don’t), so instant mashed potatoes was a crime against nature that I could not fathom. Although, my whole life I wanted nothing more than a bakery cake for my birthday. But, no, cake from scratch was all we ever got. It was a hard life.
Why, then, when the kids have questions about cooking, do the phone calls go like this?
Hi, is Daddy home?
No, why?
I need to know how to make mashed potatoes.
I’m the one who taught Captain OCD how to make mashed potatoes. True, he usually makes the mashed potatoes now, and he’s perfected the art to such a degree that when we’re at someone else’s house for dinner, and the cook is looking for help, we all volunteer him to mash the potatoes, but I was making real mashed potatoes while he was pouring freeze-dried crap out of a box.
Jun 29, 2009 | Captain OCD
Honey? Honey? Do we still have AAA?
Hmmm? What? Yes. Why?
Captain OCD has just woken me up to ask if we have AAA. We always have AAA. What time is it? It feels like I’ve been sleeping for only a couple of hours and in my sleep-deprived, newly woken haze I try to figure out what’s going on without committing to opening my eyes. He must have left for work, the truck broke down, and then he walked back home to call AAA. Wait a minute: This isn’t 1978. He has a cell phone and an AAA card in his wallet and so has no need to walk home to make a phone call. Given his propensity to wake me up to share his excitement about weather conditions in areas I’ve never heard of, though, that’s not too far outside the realm of possibility.
What happened?
The truck is in the pond.
Of course it is.
This is grounds for the opening of the eyes and a glance at the clock. It’s 6:15. I feel like I’ve been sleeping for only a couple of hours because I have been sleeping for only a couple of hours. It sort of occurs to me that the only way to get to the pond is through the pasture, which is, as pastures often are, surrounded by a fence. Which means the truck had to go through two fences and possibly a couple of llamas to reach the pond. I was still too groggy to articulate my thoughts, but he answered them anyway:
I have the llamas locked in the stall. I have a lot of fence to fix.
When he got out his AAA card, he noticed that it said it expired at the end of May, which is when he woke me up to ask if we still had AAA. That’s reasonable enough. We get so much promotional material from AAA that I throw it away at the post office without opening the envelopes, which is probably what I did with the renewal notice because I swear I just renewed it a couple of months ago. FYI: There is someone available at the AAA 800-number at 6:30 AM who will be happy to renew your membership.
I get up and look out the window:
What happened?
The truck was warming up, I came back in to take my vitamins and grab my coffee, and I heard chains rattling. I looked out the window to see the truck heading into the pasture.
What happened?
The vibrations and the weight of the Bobcat must have pushed the trailer over the wheel chock, the one I drive over every time I park the truck.
You’re able to drive over the wheel chock, and yet you expected it hold the truck in place?
It always does. Except, as we now know, when the truck is pointed the other way with the Bobcat on the trailer and hooked up to the truck. I probably shouldn’t do that again.
I renew the membership and head back to bed. He starts to call AAA to ask for a tow:
Do not tell them it’s in a pond. They don’t do offroad. [Don’t ask me how I know this.]
I won’t: It’s off the edge of the driveway.
Which was true.
We have a fan going in the bedroom all year long for white noise and I can’t sleep without it. So, what I didn’t know until later in the afternoon, because Captain OCD failed to mention this part of the story, is that the whole commotion was very loud, his sister and brother-in-law from next door got out of bed to come over to see what was going on, Captain OCD unhooked the trailer, unloaded the Bobcat, chained it up to the truck, and brother-in-law got in the truck to try to drive it out while Captain OCD pulled with the Bobcat. I’m guessing that was all quite noisy, but I heard none of it. His sister said she looked out their bedroom window to see the truck heading across the pasture, Captain OCD running fast out of the house, two llamas looking in all directions at once, and the dog trying to herd the whole mess into some semblance of order. Not until then did he come back in the house to wake me up about his AAA card.
While you can renew your AAA membership at 6:30 AM, a tow truck might not be dispatched until 8:00 AM. Which gives one an opportunity to mend fences in the interim.
Jun 20, 2009 | General
I just sent a “reply all” in response to a message about food arrangements for a family picnic. Hotmail is missing out on a marketing opportunity. Here’s their 550 error response:
Requested action not taken: mailbox unavailable.
Here’s AOL’s:
We would love to have gotten this email to [address]. But, your recipient never logged onto their free AIM Mail account. Please contact them and let them know that they’re missing out on all the super features offered by AIM Mail. And by the way, they’re also missing out on your email. Thanks.
I like that AOL has taken the opportunity to change a standard error message into a pleasant few sentences. They are clearly putting a positive spin on this, because the most likely reason someone has never logged onto their free AIM Mail account is because they want to avoid like the plague all the super features offered by AIM Mail and they can’t figure out how to get the super software off the computer that came with it pre-installed. Nonetheless, I’m flattered that AOL thinks that missing out on my “I’ll bring macaroni salad” message is cause for concern.
AOL is also clearly taking a stand on the singular “they.”
Jun 13, 2009 | Captain OCD
At about 2:30 I answer the phone:
Hi! I’m on my way home.
Okay, see you in a bit.
Okay, I’m just going to do this and that and that and then I’ll be home.
Good, but how come so early?
Oh, there was a little incident earlier.
I’ve learned that we have different definitions of both little and incident.
What kind of incident?
Oh, I rolled the Bobcat today.
And you’re okay? It’s okay?
Oh, yeah. No big deal. It was slow enough that I had time to turn it off before I landed at the bottom.
At the bottom of what? Did you hit anything on the way down?
No.
And you’re not hurt?
Oh, no. Not like I’ve never done this before. I’m fine.
The Bobcat is a tool, and he operates it with a finesse that is beautiful to watch. Like all of his tools, however, he expects it to work as hard as he does. Sometimes, though, the laws of physics and geology have had enough and find it necessary to toss him around to remind him who’s boss.
Tonight I talked to C1, who called to see if Captain OCD had gotten the Bobcat started again. Apparently, they talked a number of times today. Here’s the first of their conversations:
What kind of hydraulic fluid does the Bobcat take?
Use 10-30 if you can’t get the Bobcat stuff.
Okay then. I’ll go get some.
Why do you need hydraulic fluid?
Oh, there was a bit of a mishap earlier.
What kind of mishap?
Just a small one. I rolled the Bobcat.
Did you get hurt?
Nah, just hit my head and I’m going to be sore. You know, the usual when you roll a machine and you’re still in it.
If I’d rolled a machine while operating it, it would have been a significant part of my day.
Jun 12, 2009 | Whinging
Our banking needs are simple, so I haven’t paid too much attention to the switch from Washington Mutual to Chase. My biggest concern was that C2 not be locked out of using her debit card while she was in Chile last year because that’s what she lived on, and she wasn’t, and we haven’t encountered more than a momentary glitch, so I haven’t spent any time worrying about it. But the other day while pretending to be responsible I tried to find a table comparing our old Washington Mutual accounts to what they’d become as Chase accounts. Not available, on the Chase site (which was quite a surprise to the support guy for Chase.com) or in a branch.
I asked someone at the bank to go over things with me. She told me all the WaMu accounts were grandfathered.
For six to eight months.
Six or eight? And do you know from when?
Oh, I don’t know. March, May, whenever they made the switch. Just plan on the end of the year. [And then she winked at me. Bank employees should not wink.]
My reason for asking is that, if I’m going to be charged new fees, I want to move accounts before then. She told me that if I’m charged, she’d reverse them. Then she called, on the phone, the guy twenty feet across the room, who told her the old accounts are grandfathered forever. That’s something, but so far two people have given two different answers to the same question, so I’m not too comforted by that. So I asked for a comparison of the accounts and she found a booklet targeted to people opening new accounts. I don’t know all the features of our old accounts or even what they’re called because they seemed to change names all the time, and they aren’t listed in the booklet, so I looked at the page with a sort-of comparison. I wanted to be reassured that I wouldn’t have to pay for things that used to be free so that I wouldn’t have to look for a new bank.
No, they’re grandfathered. And forever!
So, nothing will change?
No, nothing. Grandfathered.
No fees? No minimums? No transaction limits? Free bill pay? Chase won’t charge me to use non-Chase ATMs? Free checks?
No. Everything is exactly the same. Nothing has changed. Grandfathered.
I then notice a line item on the page that mentions Chase charges $2.00 to use a non-Chase ATM. WaMu did not. Now I’m looking at the bottom of the page, where there’s a note saying that debit rewards has been discontinued.
So, nothing at all will change, except this will change?
She’s getting a little annoyed with me, and it’s not her fault that the damn bank hasn’t created a document that would answer what are surely common questions. I can only imagine the frustrated customers they’ve had to deal with, made all the more frustrating because they haven’t been given enough information to pass on to their customers. She starts to tell me, again, that everything is exactly the same, grandfathered and all that, when I show her the parts of the page that suggest changes. She puts on her reading glasses.
Yes, nothing will change. Except that.
Jun 9, 2009 | Captain OCD
When people ask if we still have the llamas, I always say no, we don’t, but Captain OCD does. He feeds and waters them, I ignore them. Until I wake up in the morning, take a look outside, and look again because do I see a llama in the back, a considerable distance away from their fenced pasture? Which I now notice has a gate gently swinging in the breeze. Seeing one llama in the wild is a problem because there are two of them. They always stay together, though, so I was reasonably sure the other was close by, and he was. But because I’ve just woken up, I don’t know how long they’ve been free or if they’ve caused any damage.
They are big animals and they eat just about anything that is or was green. Which comes in handy because any weeds I might pull or blackberries I remove get tossed into the pasture, and they think it’s dessert time. Not so handy if the neighbors have any green material they’re fond of. Captain OCD once gave them a bag of freshly cut grass and now, whenever they see the lawnmower, they stand by the fence like they’re waiting for Santa Claus to come over and empty his bag of treats.
They don’t actively try to escape but they’ve gotten out of the pasture a few times when Captain OCD forgets to bungee-cord the gate closed in addition to latching it. Because that happens right before he leaves for work, he’s never had to try to capture them and get them out of potential harm’s way. Because of that, he’s experienced my extreme displeasure only after the fact. Big animals like that on the road could make quite a mess of both them and any vehicle they get in the way of.
Our dog goes nuts when the llamas do anything she thinks is inappropriate, like rolling in the big dust hole they’ve developed over the years. She barks like a madman and, if she’s not contained, runs out to the pasture and barks and pesters them until they humor her and stand up and behave the way she thinks proper livestock should behave. But a couple of llamas outside the fence, munching on the neighbors’ lawn (lucky for us, the deer dispatched their rose garden years ago)? Apparantly not a problem for her. Not until I attempt to herd them back where they belong, because if there’s any herding to be done, she thinks she’s the dog for job.
