pregnant hummingbird bests seagull in WiFi root canal move
“… not as anxiously as Melika,” I observed. “When you were 9 months pregnant, Nazy, you were ready to deliver.”
“I thought I’d be pregnant forever, Dan.”
“Melika is ready…”
“ … but the baby isn’t.”
“Yet.” I concluded. “We’ve been moving as long as Melika’s been pregnant,” I thought.
Tiger and Arrow
Playing with the iPad
We are still moving in: even though we sleep and (usually) eat in the new place, we’re moving — in the sense of being ambulatory. Regular readers know that moving house is not my favorite thing. Think Zurich:
Flashback
Zürich, Switzerland
“The movers that Compaq arranged are finally unloading our stuff from New Hampshire and you want to go to the dentist instead?” Nazy asked, somewhat accusingly.
“My dental appointment has been postponed several times,” I replied.
“You missed the dentist last time because ‘the tram was late’.” Nazy observed, accurately.
“It was a bad omen.”
“So, you’d rather get a root canal than help me with the movers?”.
“Yes,” I thought. “I’m simply thinking about my oral health,” I said.
“At least I’m not dealing with moving woes,” I thought, while (analgesia-shunning) Dr. Payne used a hot rasp to file away nerves in my lower right molar.
Meanwhile, back at the house, Nazy overheard the mover’s supervisor:
“I feel sorry for those Compaq people. They got moved to Zurich just before HP bought Compaq. Now I’ve heard HP is going to sack them all.”
Note: They did not sack them all.
End Flashback
In point of fact, THE MOVE is complete. We’re now in the sorting, arranging, decorating and organizing phase of family relocation. Luckily, Nazy knows what she’s doing: contents of boxes labeled ‘miscellaneous’, ‘sundry’, ‘various’ and ‘disparate’ have been sorted and distributed into drawers, cabinets, closets and …
“… piles?” I asked. Stupidly.
Nazy glared. “Can you just get the WiFi to work?” She asked.
“Of course,” I replied. “I have a Ph.D. in Computer Science.”
“Didn’t you get that before they invented WiFi and the Internet?” Nazy muttered.
Ignoring skepticism, I opened the box containing the new (‘improved&rsquo
modem. Eschewing my normal procedure, I actually read the simple set of instructions. I connected the device to a cable in my study. I turned on my patience gene when I perused the next step.
2. Wait for the ‘on-line’ light to stop blinking. (This may take up to 10 minutes.)
I waited four hours before moving the device to an alternative location in the house. This time I waited overnight.
When this didn’t work either, I arranged on on-site visit from one of the COX (our provider) technicians. Naturally, he did not arrive at the time booked. I had to take Tiger to swim class, so I wrote out specific notes so that Nazy could handle the situation when the technical ‘support’ finally arrived.
The internet (and cable TV) are both working now. The technician told Nazy that..
“… the only two connections that weren’t working were the ones your husband tried to use.”
“How did he figure that out?” I asked.
“He chopped back some foliage and went into the attic.”
“There’s an attic in this house?”
“And, Dan.”
“Yes?”
“He didn’t like the last thing on your list.”
“The last thing?”
“Yes. The line where you said: Ask him why the hell he didn’t arrive on time as promised.”
“The list was for you.”
“I just gave it to him to read.”
While Nazy was convincing the Cox repairman that I was a jerk, I attempted to use my Bank of America debit card to buy a coke zero. It turns out that even chip-enabled cards don’t work when the magnetic strip is, eh, stripped.
And, finally, the mailbox at the new residence…
“The mailbox that the seagulls believe to be an outhouse?” Nazy interjects.
“Seagulls? I thought they were crows.” I replied.
“The gulls threw rocks at the crows,” Nazy remarked.
To scare both avian species away, we got a hefty mailbox in a hummingbird motif.
For last week's letter, please click here
Monster, the cat, learning to paint
