Terrible day for phones

An absolutely appalling day on the phone today. I'm terribly behind in my utility bills, partly because I have no money right now and partly because I have trouble paying anything I can't pay online.

When you're so ill you have to work from your bed and lie down part of the day, when you're so ill you had to give your acting and your acting paychecks but still pay your union dues and you just have no energy and you still throw up out of the blue paying online can be quite the blessing.

I've been trying to sort out my electric and phone bills. Of course I error out when I try and pay online for some unknown reason. Then I get locked out and give up and resort to the telephone and have to call and call and call and call because I keep getting disconnected or I'll be transferred to a busy line.

I got a call today from the phone company telling me to call them, a curiously inefficient way of doing things and when I did I got this woman who sounded like she was so bored she could barely be bothered to keep her heart beating.

She said my phone had been sent to be shut off and I had to pay nearly 400 dollars to get it turned back on. That it would go off at any second and there was nobody who could help me anywhere. She kept asking what I wanted to do and I kept saying I wanted to know what I could do and I finally asked her if she could at least pretend she was interested in the conversation or my predicament to which she said she couldn't respond to that and I hung up rather than yell at her.

Then I called the regular line and spoke to robot woman who said she thought I would like to make payment arrangements, was that correct, and then said I could pay 175 today and 56 at the end of the month. Then I asked robot woman to please transfer me to a person, which she did.

The new person said I didn't owe the nearly 400 at all, that is what I will owe come October 15th and that the arrangements I made with robot woman were splendid and not to worry.

Isn't that crazy?

Later in the day this woman called up to see if I would donate to breast cancer research. She sounded terribly concerned about this horrible disease and when I told her I was donating through pogo.com and the Baltimore race for the cure she was quite disappointed and hung up in my ear.

Speaking of pogo I was playing hearts over the weekend and I shot the sun. I wasn't even sure that you could really do that and I am now utterly pleased and I don't care if I play another hand of Hearts as long as I live.