Bad Customer Service Rep

Did you ever want to reach through the phone and strangle the customer service rep on the other end. That is how I feel right now.

Normally I lead my life according to random events,rock paper scissors and coin flipping. I used to make all my major life decisions with a Mark Messier collector coin that one of my best buds gave me. I have to say Messier served me well. I used that coin for about 6 years and then the change purse that I kept it in was either lost or stolen and I never say Mark again. At that point I was faced with a major decision (that I had a difficult time making without my coin). Do I start making my own decisions? Or do I get a new "special" coin?

See, one of the major advantages to letting a coin decide your fate is that you can't take credit for the results - good or bad. And if your believe that every thing you do is ultimately a result of fate then you really are happier because the world is just unfolding as it should. Sigh, I miss Mark Messier.

I never did get another coin and I have been struggling with decisions ever since. I am a horrible decisions maker. I over analyze and make lists of pros and cons etc. And then when I finally do decide, I rarely feel like I made the right choice.

For example, the decision to buy this particular house. I was searching and researching buying a home for about a year before I did. But this house was kind of an impulse purchase. My girlfriend at the time was living in a place where she wasn't happy, which made my life difficult. And I had some sort of emotional reaction when I walked through the door. I am still not sure what that meant but at the time I felt it had to mean something. And the house does have excellent potential. And one of my good friends is about a block and half away. All of these factors made me feel that somehow this home was divined to be mine.

OK, enough of my dysfunctional decision making process. My point was about customer service people on the end of the phone line. Part of my desire to sell this house is my budget problems. I have a good job but my car loan is $800 a month. (I know, what the hell was I thinking?!) In addition because of some bad decisions when I started living with the girlfriend, I have a line of credit with an obscenely high interest rate that I can't get rid of because I fall back on it when I get behind in other stuff. And winter is when I get behind because the 5 months of winter that are really cold average $450 a month. I know, I asked the woman I bought the home from how much Hydro was in the winter and she told me about $200. Either she was never at home in the evening when it is colder or she lied. I am going with the latter since she lied about a lot of other things.

Back to my original story - sort of. So normally I avoid small problems until they are huge and unmanageable and I have decided that really is not working for me. Instead I am trying to be an adult and head problems face on or cut them off at the pass if I can. My last two mortgage payments were returned because I used that money to pay my Hydro bill instead. (Remember the $450 a month bill, well I only have $200 a month budgeted for Hydro). I had my Hydro cut off last summer because I just didn't read the bill. I even had the money but I avoided what I knew would be a problem and ended up having to borrow money to pay the WHOLE bill and a reconnection fee. Even worse was the embarrassment of my neighbours seeing me pleading with the Hydro guy on my front lawn. So at the point where my bill hit $1000, instead of them cutting me off - in the winter. I sent an email with a payment plan. It hurt my pride a bit but not nearly as much as trying to heat the house with candles and having to move my two cats to a warmer home. Crisis avoided. I know I am getting an extra cheque at the end of April so I just had to hold it together until then.

On the 19th, I sent an email to my bank acknowledging that I am behind and to start taking payments out again on my next payday and that I would catch up at the end of the month. I got a response that they couldn't do it and I would have to phone a number to set up this arrangement. It slipped my mind because to me I had already tried to set up an arrangement. Problem solved right. Apparently not. I phoned tonight and got some snotty girl from my banks collections department. I wasn't defensive or rude, in fact I felt pretty sheepish. She kept cutting me off and not letting me explain. Her tone was immediately short and edgy. I assumed that because of her department, she is used to people with sob stories (true and otherwise) or angry. This was not me at all. I just wanted to let them know I was aware, I intended to pay and when exactly that would happen. Trying to be proactive is good right?

At one point I raised my voice and said, "You keep interrupting me, just listen to me!" Obviously she didn't get any nicer after that but I was frustrated and just wanted to end this conversation. So the arrangement is made. I thought I would feel good about this. It is another step in my personal development. However, I don't feel good. I feel ashamed and embarrassed and angry. All I have to say is I have a 5 year plan and in that plan, I am debt free by December of 2010. If I sell the house, I am debt free by July of this year. Either way I have a plan for success. I don't need to be crazy rich and will still have to work probably until I am 50 but I will be comfortable and I WILL build the house of my dreams. And if I was that person that anonymous woman on the end of the line would not have treated me that way.

Oh, and I did have my fries and gravy. I cooked them in the oven. They weren't as good. And I have decided I can't tell my mom about the fire. She would never sleep again worrying about me.

Fur balls and fire fighting

So another important lesson learned, type your blog into another program and not directly into the web page. When Firefox crashes, it doesn’t save anything.

Here we go again. This morning or rather afternoon I woke up to a pile of fur ball filled cat puke on the kitchen floor. I was very grateful for this because usually it is at the foot of my bed on my carpeted floor. and I usually find it when I stumble blindly towards the bathroom in the dark and feel the cold slimy wetness under my feet. Yech! I was feeling pretty good, I scored with puke on linolemum instead of carpet and I was about to have fries and gravy for lunch. It is there that everything went sideways.

I just about burnt the darn house down. All because of a container of Chicken Delight gravy.

This is how it started. I normally don't fry anything in oil unless it is just sauteing onions or garlic in a bit of olive oil. But I was at my buddy's place the other night watching survivor (damn those recap shows) and she had a hankering for chicken so chicken was ordered. By the by, I must complain about KFC and their central phone / delivery system. The store about 30 blocks away is the store that delivers to her home and it was closing in 15 minutes - therefore no chicken from them. The store about 5 blocks away that was still open COULD not deliver because my friend's home wasn't in their delivery area. WTF!

If we had any inclination to pick up the chicken at the closer store – no problem but with all the snow, that wasn’t going to happen. So Chicken Delight was plan B. And my buddy had a coupon so it all worked out in the end.

I don’t believe I had ever had Chicken Delight before but Wednesday night i discovered they make fantastic gravy. I really appreciate a tasty gravy. I am a decent cook but gravy is one of those things I just can’t make. Correction, I can make it but it usually isn’t edible. So it turns out that I am a little impatient. Microwaves and TV dinners have ruined me. I wanted deep fried fries because, well they taste better and they are faster. So I put the oil in the pan, put a cover on and stupidly put it on high. Luckily my stupidity isn’t total. I didn’t leave the kitchen, I just turned around to wash the dishes.

First I heard a noise, it was a sound like WHUUUMP! I vaguely recognized it as the sound of fire igniting. While my mind was searching to remember what the sound was, out of the corner of my eye I saw a bright flash. All at once my brain recognized the sound instantly. Luckily I am not the type of person to panic. I turned and the pan was on fire and the flames were about two feet high.

My first thought was turn off the heat source which would have worked well except that would have meant reaching through the two foot high flame. My second thought was BAKING SODA. I have a lot of it because I use it for everything so I dive under the sink to grab my big container and run to pour it on the fire. They don’t tell you that when you do that the fire gets a lot bigger initially. I was immediately dismayed by the bigger flash of flame and stopped pouring and jumped back. I put down the soda and went to reach for the extinguisher. (When I first moved in, my mom kept bugging me to get an extinguisher and I wanted to but never did so she got me on for Christmas last year). Anyways I go to reach for the extinguisher and realize the fire is only about half as big. The lazy part of my brain realizes that the extinguisher goop is probably harder to clean than baking soda so I decide to go with the soda again. And the second dump works. Success, fire out!

Now the aftermath, my stove and floor is covered in soda. My pan and lid are burnt beyond recognition. The smoke is so thick I can barely breathe and all I can smell is burnt plastic. Don't get me wrong, I am not complaining - it could have been much worse. I am just evaluating my surroundings so I can decide what to do next. It is -17 C outside but I have no choice, I need to start opening windows. Off goes the furnace and I open all the windows on the main floor. I discover that the mudroom door won’t open. I guess it is frozen shut. Just one more thing to add to my list of things to do.

Anyhow, when the temp got down to 13 C from the normal 20 C that I keep it at, I realize although I enjoy the brisk freshness, I can't feel my hands anymore. That was as low as I could go and the smoke was cleared so I close up the windows and put the furnace back on. I put out vinegar to get rid of the smell. Hopefully when I wake up tomorrow the smell will be gone.

I still want fries and gravy. Do I risk home and pan for another go at deep frying or do I just put them in the oven. The crappy part about this is, if I had put some in the oven after the fire, they would be done by now.

Here we go!

I have a few goals for this blog. I want to talk about my dilemma with my housing situation. I want to talk about my quest to live a simple frugal life and a bit about my adventures at work. And mixed in there will be general ramblings and funny and perhaps not so funny events in my life. So my plan is to chronicle my journey from home owner to adult child moving back in with mommy and then to home builder. I intend to chronicle the ups and downs of all things related to this. My motivation for this is twofold. There is always someone else going through something similar so those of you having this dilemma can hopefully draw from my failures and save yourself some heartache. Also there is the added bonus hopefully of this focusing me to get my sorry butt in gear. Here we go.