Do Over!

I demand a Do-Over on today.

Woke up.  (OK, slept in.  That part was OK.)  Showered, did some online stuff, decided to drive to the mall, get my nails done, see a movie, and stop off at the store on the way home.

Problem:  A neighbor had parked in such a way as to prevent me from getting out of my spot.  (This happened before.  I tried to get around them and misjudged the distance.  Ended up smacking my car into a post.  $1000 damage.  I was so not going to try this again with my new car.)  Left a nasty note on their windshield.

Tried knocking on doors in the building, but nobody would admit to this being their car.

Walked to the stupid mall.  Knew I could not stay for a movie because it would get out too late to walk home.  (Too dark and way too cold.)

Got my stupid nails stupid done.  The lady giving me a pedicure was very nice and thorough; the lady giving me a manicure -- not so much.  She was totally superficial with it, and ended up flinging polish so that it spotted all down my finger (which she didn't clean off).  I called her back over and made her re-do one of my fingers 'cause she did such a lousy job.

Walked home.  Freezing.

Stupid car still stupid blocking my stupid spot.

Called another neighbor and asked for a lift to the grocery store.  Bought some stuff, but some other stuff I wanted was no longer on the shelves.

Came home.  Stupid car still blocking stupid spot.

Paid bills.  Noticed my cable bill was charging me for two things I do not use (Latino programming and Sports programming).  Called to get rid of those services.  Service representative explained that I had those services because they were all in a promotion I'd been getting, but the promotion had expired so they were just billing me for everything.  She said she had another package she could give me -- the other package charged me for an extra cable box (which I don't have) but would give me everything I want and save me $20.  "OK," I said, "You do that."

She did that.  While she was doing that, she had to turn off my cable box to reprogram it.  I'd been planning to watch "Crossing Jordan" so I'd had it on "pause" (I got one of them DVR things on my cable box) from the beginning of the episode -- it was now 15 minutes in.  And completely lost when she turned off the cable box.  Oh well, I figure, I'll just watch the last 45 minutes.

Except the cable box didn't go back on.  The service rep gets back on the phone to cheerfully inform me the system froze.  While they were updating my box.  Oh no!  No TV!  (I suddenly have flashbacks to "Max Headroom."  Do you remember that?  Not the talk show, but the drama that ran on ABC.  Took place in some post-apocalyptic future where people wandered around the devasted landscape and clustered around TVs.  Gotta have my viddy.)

Yeah, so, 15 minutes later, she comes back on -- apologizes, and says everything is fine now.  Except the package will cost a little more than she'd said.

How much more?  Twenty dollars more.

"OK, wait," I says.  "That's more than what I'm paying now for all these services I don't want.  The idea here is for me to get rid of those services and pay less."  I mean, hell, might as well just keep things as they are if it's going to cost me the same.

She explains that what happened was that I was still on a partial promotion, but I shouldn't have been, and when she called up my bill on her system, it corrected and then started charging me the full rate.  So I can't even leave things how they are.  Things how they are cost more now.  "In other words," I ask, "Because I called you to take unwanted stuff off my bill, now I'm going to have to pay more money?"

She (bless her heart) realizes that there is something a little unfair about this, so comes up with, "You know what, ma'am?  I'm going to just leave everything how it is right now and have someone from Sales call you tomorrow and find you a package that suits your needs."  Yeah, good idea.  Let's do that.  Hang up with her just in time to watch Jordan finish up solving the case.

I'd tell you what I did next, but you don't want to hear it.  I'll give you a hint -- it has to do with taxes.