New Phone!!
So much better than the old phone! Isn't it gorgeous? and not only is it pretty it is also <i>smart</i> and has a great personality. If it were a person it would have to pay it to be around me. Oh, I <i>do</i> have to pay it to be around me.
Which leads me to : Changes had to be made. First off, change the dial up plan to something cheaper. Check. Saved myself $17 a month - clearly should have done this a long time ago. Next? cancel the long distance ( I hardly use it any way and it will save an additional $14 a month) and cut the extras from the land line. Oddly, AT&T does not make this easy. I'm jumping through a lot of hoops to cut about $7 a month but every penny counts. Ideally, I would cut the land line all together but I need it for the dial up and my alarm system. I am however planning to find out if the alarm system <i>really</i> needs it and as far as the dial up, well, its days are numbered. I could save an additional $40 a month without it.
I'm hopeing my early next year to switch to wireless service, not cheaper but it might be worth it, although it would mean losing an email addy I've had since 1999! Shut up, its important to me.
<i>Any way</i> my morning trauma.
At 1am I was awoken by a keening from the basement. My first thought was <i>That damn sump pump battery! !@#$% I am so tired of this!</i> I went groped around for my glasses and went half asleep to the basement to re-set the button and hopefully go back to sleep. This was to dream.
I plodded down to the basement and saw water. A lot of water. The entire basement floor was submerged under what looked like several inches of water and clearly it had been in that condition for more than a while. Now I'm awake. I remembered that I was down there over the weekend and everything was fine, so it must have happened during the heavy rains on Tuesday. It was now <i>Thursday</i>.
I reached over the stair railing and plugged in sump pump #1. It roared to life and the tide began to go out. This took an hour. While this was happening I grabbed a broom and barefooted - ew! dead cockroach bodies float! I tried to hurry the process by sweeping the ankle deep water out of the corners and towards the pump. I also picked up several now ruined but thankfully empty cardboard boxes and watched Tex's old little box float merrily around the floor. Fortunately, before I left for vacation I had cleared everything that could have been damaged by flood to higher ground, so the damage was hugely minimized. The actual real life hurricane did not cause the basement to flood. The ragged edge of the vestiges of a tropical storm flooded the basement. It pays to be prepared.
Still no fun though and even less so at that hour of the morning - but better to discover it at 1am than as I was walking out the door to work or go yet another day without discovering it. After the floor was just puddly and the worst was down the drain I clicked on the dehumidifier and unplugged the pump and went to bed. It was 2:15am. Three hours later I was up and dressed and walking Dogger. Two McDonald's mocha frappuccinos kept me alert if not awake at my desk all day.
My plan for lunch was to run no errands and eat a quite meal at my favorite Chinese restaurant, as one of my co-workers gave me cash for my birthday ( not sure of if I am comfortable with that) and I was going to treat myself . Instead I rushed home to continue to take care of now merely damp basement.
Why was there a keening in the basement? It wasn't the pump battery whining about being stupid. It was a worn out smoke detector I didn't even know was there, telling me its battery needed to be replaced. I marched myself upstairs and did as it asked. I got lucky, even with nothing to get damaged by the water, it would not have been good to let it sit there any longer than it did.
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