Thoughts from Memphis, Day 2

Paul and I made it back to Memphis Sunday night. Anticipation of being home pushed me to drive a little faster than normal and I beat my original ETA by about an hour. It's funny how we've been gone a little less than four months, but I came home expecting to see an entirely new city. It was strange, driving past places and thinking, wow, that store is still open! It's like I expected the whole world to change because my whole world had changed.

Some things here are different, though. Paul and I are staying at our old house, but it looks nothing like it did when we left in August. Mom and Dad have decided to sell their Cordova house and move back here, so they're completely renovating this house. Some upstairs rooms are completely empty; others have stuff (mostly my childhood things) piled in the middle so the painters could get to the walls. Mom and Dad bought a new bed for one of the guest rooms, and that's where Paul and I are sleeping while we're here.

Not counting the periods I lived elsewhere during college and early marriage, this house was my home for 14 years. Suddenly it looks so new and modern. Sensible, attractive sandy beige paint has replaced pink teddy bear wallpaper in the room where I grew up. It's not my home anymore. It makes me a little bit sad, but it also forces me to move on. I'm not living in a museum to my childhood anymore.

The only furniture in any of the downstairs rooms is my piano. Man, I've missed her. The echo of the empty rooms isn't bad enough to stop me from playing. As soon as Paul and I get a house, the piano's moving in with me.

Paul and I have knocked out some things we needed to do while we were in Memphis -- close out a local bank account, pay a couple of bills, etc. -- and now that we've done all that, there's plenty of time to spend with our family and friends. Our Rock Band band has reformed, for all intents and purposes, with old instruments but a new setlist. It's fun to have the group back together.

It's great to be back for a visit. I've missed seeing everyone so much. :-)

Gives new meaning to "Green Living"

Your eyes do not deceive you. That is, indeed, an Astroturf-covered stretch limousine.

My very thoughtful blogging personality

A little blog analysis from Typealyzer:

The analysis indicates that the author of http://www.katesink.com/blog is of the type:

ISTP - The Mechanics

The independent and problem-solving type. They are especially attuned to the demands of the moment are masters of responding to challenges that arise spontaneously. They generally prefer to think things out for themselves and often avoid inter-personal conflicts.

The Mechanics enjoy working together with other independent and highly skilled people and often like seek fun and action both in their work and personal life. They enjoy adventure and risk such as in driving race cars or working as policemen and firefighters.

Analysis

This show what parts of the brain that were dominant during writing.

Thanks to Doc for the link. He and I appear to both be "Mechanic" ISTP bloggers.

As you can see, I'm off the chart when it comes to thinking. :D

Actually, I don't buy too much into this. I'm an INFJ through and through and this shows I'm not very feeling at all! Whatever! Just because I've been whiny in my last five posts, or whatever, doesn't make me an unfeeling jerky-jerk! ... Nor do I ever care to drive a race car.

I have taken the liberty of running a few of you through the Typealyzer. Found three other ISTPs ("Mechanics"), an ESTP ("Doer"), five ESFPs ("Performers") and an ISTJ ("Duty Fulfiller"). Then I gave up because I was sick of looking. Figure it out for yourself.

On writing (and a hundred bucks)

Today's entry in the list of things I miss since we've moved: my job. I adored my job -- the editing, the research, the playing with numbers and turning them into pretty graphs. It was left-brained and right-brained, and that made me very, very happy.

I miss it, and I'm not just saying that because I haven't found a job here yet. Living on one income has been rough, though not so bad that I've given up hope of finding something in research or editing or writing or all three. I'm just not quite ready to settle for a retail job when I'm sure something perfect is going to grab me soon -- hopefully by the beginning of the year.

I'm not going to lie: Having some time off work has been a nice break. But something's missing, and I think it's the itty-bitty creative spark that I don't bring out of the closet very often. I haven't had occasion -- or supplies -- to make much jewelry since I left Memphis. I never write poetry anymore. I don't even get to take pictures for Mr. E, who fell off the face of the Earth before I left Memphis. I still want some resolution there! (As an aside, I also never got my five pineapples, which was one of my original stipulations in the Mr. E deal.)

A friend of mine told me she thinks there's a book in me somewhere. Though she speaks with some authority on the subject, I'm having trouble believing her. But I do want to write again. I'm starting to flesh out ideas for something fantastic, and, in the meantime, plan to wake up my creative side by writing an entry for an upcoming fiction contest.

This might be of interest to other local writers out there, so listen up.

Piccolo Spoleto, which is part of the ginormous Spoleto arts festival in Charleston every May and June, is holding its ninth annual Piccolo Fiction Open. Entries have a 1,300-word limit and must be postmarked by Jan. 9.

The topic? "One Hundred Dollars." Intriguing, no? It might be just the thing to get my brain in gear.

... And I'm serious about those pineapples, E. Don't let me down.

Speaking of cable ...

Saw this on the Fail Blog:



I can't complain about my DirecTV cable being cut, considering the damage could've been much worse.

Wow.

The cut cable

I mentioned in a Tweet the other day that our DirecTV cable was cut. I delayed blogging about it because I was hoping to get a good picture of the cable when Paul got home from Vermont. But, alas, we turned the cable over to the apartment manager before I had a chance to take a better pic than the one I snapped with my cameraphone.

The still-short-but-not-as-short-as-Twitter version is this: Our DirecTV went out mid-afternoon on Saturday, our fourth outage since mid-September. I called our DTV provider and they scheduled me for a Tuesday service appointment. Fabulous. Four days with no TV, and three of those days with no Paul to keep me amused. That's where Get Smart came in. So far, I've watched 60 of the 138 episodes. I'm so hooked. I could totally be on Jeopardy! if they limited their topics to Get Smart, They Might Be Giants, tea, and the chemistry of drinking water (hey, I did read Paul's dissertation). I might be able to pull off answering clues about old NES games, too, but that's iffy.

I got a call Monday from one of our DTV provider's techs. "Hey, it's Chad." Chad was the tech that came after our third outage. "Look, I'm on my way to your apartment now. I'll be there in 15 minutes."

Normally this would've been fantastic news, but I'd stayed up practically all night watching Season 1, slept in late, and still looked like hell. "You're coming today?" I said, groaning. He laughed and said, "What, did you think I was coming tomorrow?" Gaaaah. "Well, yeah, I actually did," I told him. Then I convinced him to make me the second stop of the afternoon so I could shower and change clothes.

He and his trainee showed up a little while later, checked our receiver and poked around some outside. Then he walked in and handed me a thingamajig with a cut wire on the end. I know he told me what it was, but I was too busy fuming to pay attention. He said sometimes the cable TV guys cut it in hopes of frustrating people until they go back to cable. But if the cable guy cut the wire, that would have meant he was digging in our box at 4 p.m. Saturday afternoon. That seemed unlikely to me.

At this point I'll mention how much I hate Charleston Comcast. I have a number of reasons, with the top two being that the channel selection is crummy and the staff members we've dealt with have been fairly incompetent. Case in point: We turned in our cable box mid-September after our DTV was activated. With that, Paul and I washed our hands of Comcast ... but Comcast didn't. In fact, they never shut off our cable and billed us for October and November. Paul called them last week to hash out why the cable hadn't been shut off. He was told they would have to come to our apartment to physically turn off the service.

That conversation popped into my mind yesterday. I put two and two together, called Comcast and told them I needed to check whether they'd finished the deactivation. The customer service rep pulled up my account and said the deactivation listed two dates: Nov. 4 and Nov. 8.

Nov. 4 was when Paul called to complain. Nov. 8 was the day they came here to turn off the service. And that was Saturday, the same day our DTV went out.

I've talked to the apartment manager twice -- via e-mail and in person -- about the whole situation, and I've been careful not to condemn the cable guy outright. Maybe it wasn't intentional, you know? But would it have been so hard to stop by and let us know he'd screwed up? Or even stop by to let us know he'd turned off our Comcast service?

The whole thing gives me a headache. But I'm grateful and thankful it's over now. (Link goes to funny pic on Doc's blog.)

Okay, time to quit yappin'. The Cit's homecoming bonfire is tonight. The women's club is having a potluck in conjunction with that, so I've got to run to the grocery store and buy stuff to bake into a beautiful, tasty creation.

... But one more Get Smart episode first. Priorities, you know.

Darn kids, get off my lawn!

I was talking to a friend today about age and how easy it is to get hung up on those big, round numbers. Like 30. Thirty is the next big one for me (albeit not for another couple of years). At least Paul and I are the same age -- I'm a mere four days older than him -- and when I hit 30, he's not far behind.

I make myself feel better by saying he and I haven't changed a lot since college. I mean, he's much more responsible now and I'm much more laid back. We go to bed earlier. We're both more cognizant of how we allocate our money and our time. But a lot of things haven't changed. We still play video games, though our consoles of choice are quite a bit newer. We listen to the same music (thank you, iPod). And we still have the same stupid, slightly juvenile sense of humor.

So, for the most part, I don't feel old. There are exceptions. Paul is teaching students this semester who were born in 1990. Nineteen-frickin'-ninety! They don't remember life before the Internet or cell phones.

That age gap was driven home to me Friday. I had a mystery shop on a college campus and was doing my best to blend in. I put on some jeans and a hoodie (which, you know, is how I dress most of the time anyway), tossed my stuff in a messenger bag and made my way to campus. I got there just as classes were letting out and found myself in a throng of young collegians.

Now, I'm not going to go into some "woe is me, I'm old" rant here. Because I'm not. Or maybe I am and I'm really, really in denial. But being there, surrounded by the fresh faces of carefree 18- to 22-year-olds, really put me in my place.

You know what made me feel old? Surprisingly, it wasn't catching a glimpse of my not-18- to 22-year-old face in the rear view mirror (though that certainly didn't help). Instead, it was realizing that I was the only one walking down the street who wasn't furiously typing text messages on my phone. I was actually looking where I was going instead of tripping over my own feet or bowling down other people.

Is paying attention something that comes with age? And were we that oblivious when we were young?

Morning already?

Had to take Paul to the airport this morning. Conference in Vermont. This commercial sums up how I felt about getting out of bed.



"You can sleep when you are dead!"

Well, it's not like we had better plans ...

After a couple of years living like a normal consumer, I've started mystery shopping again.

It's good in that it forces me to get out of the house instead of pouting about the crappy job market. And it doesn't hurt that I get a lot of free stuff. (Two free meals yesterday. Not shabby.) I love getting to act like a spy -- sometimes I even get a fake name! The downsides are that there's a lot of paperwork and the shop fees drill down to minimum wage or less for the time involved.

All that is preface for the story I'm about to tell you, which starts with a hotel mystery shop Paul and I did on Halloween. (Free $200 hotel room! See what I mean?) We were within walking distance of a restaurant we like, but the three-quarter-mile walk is reminiscent of Paperboy on the NES. You guys remember that game? Ride a bike, dodge idiotic stuff such as tornadoes and the Grim Reaper. Except on this walk we were dodging things such as horse-drawn carriages, a huge crowd waiting to eat at Hyman's and -- the Grim Reaper of our walk -- people luring suckers into half-lit buildings with promises of free stuff for listening to a time-share presentation.

You know, Charleston has pretty much zero crime -- at least compared to Memphis -- so the time-share people are the closest we've gotten to panhandlers. Except I'm not offering my leftover hush puppies to somebody trying to sell me a condo in Rio.

Anyway, we made it to the restaurant and sat at a table near the bar. The waitress asked what we wanted to drink, so I asked what the house mixed drink was. The bartender shrugged and said he'd whip up something. Okay, now I need to make two points: One, Paul and I almost never drink, and two, this was perhaps the strongest mixed drink I've ever had at a restaurant. We ate, we paid, we left. Both of us were woozy after just one drink. Good thing we were walking.

But walking also meant we had to navigate the Paperboy route. Past the carriages -- check. Past the Hyman's crowd -- check. Past the time-share dudes -- well, crap. We were approached by a guy who (a.) swore he wasn't selling time-shares, (b.) wasn't a panhandler, and (c.) didn't want my leftover hush puppies. So in our not-quite-lucid state, we agreed to come back the next day for a sales presentation about a wholesale travel company. Our rewards: a $25 gift certificate to Hyman's, a three-night hotel stay and a $200 gas voucher. And all we had to do was give him $20 so we didn't bail on the presentation.

So that's how we found ourselves among five couples watching PowerPoint slides about how we could get in on the wholesale travel market for the low, low price of $7,500. And I'm not accidentally adding an extra zero to that. We were most definitely the least wealthy couple in the room: a new professor and an editor who proofreads this-and-that while she looks for a 9-to-5. After the presentation was over, a sales associate came to our table. She knew we weren't interested, probably because we'd spent the last hour writing notes to each other (we're third graders at heart). "You're not going to buy this, are you?" she asked sourly. "Nope," we said in unison. And in less than three minutes, we had our free gifts and were out the door.

We walked to Hyman's and bought a nice, $32 lunch. Then we looked at the vouchers for the hotel stay and gas card. We'd pretty much figured out beforehand that they weren't going to actually give us a free hotel stay and gas card ... and we were right. From the hotel voucher:

This certificate is valid for a reservation form offering 2 adults 21 years of age and older 4 days, 3 nights of hotel accommodations in the city of their choice of available cities. The cost to redeem this certificate to receive the reservation registration activation form is just a one-time $40.00 redemption fee. Your only cost upon confirmation is just a tax deposit of $75 per couple. If the taxes are less than the $75, the difference will be refunded upon confirmation of reservations.

And on and on it goes -- caveats, hidden fees and all. The process to get the gas voucher is even more convoluted. Really. You can read it for yourself here. To answer your question, no, we didn't send off for a reservation registration activation form.

But, you know, I can't complain. We did get a free hotel stay, just not from the "we swear we're not time-share people" people. And we got to eat at Hyman's. Oh, and we got our $20 back.

Maybe there is such a thing as a free lunch. Or a mostly free lunch. And I didn't even have to fill out paperwork for this one.

Freedom isn't free, but lots of other stuff is

Did you guys vote today? Well, did you??

Paul and I went to our precinct about 10:30 this morning. It was (in)conveniently located in the lobby of a nursing home, which wouldn't have been too bad except it was a high-traffic zone for little old ladies with walkers and kind old men with canes and oxygen tanks. They were all very nice as they darted back and forth through the line of voters.

Actually, there were two lines for voters, one for people with last names starting with A through K and another for L through Z. (No, that's not an even division of the alphabet.) Paul was in the L-Z line and I, with my unwieldy and totally-too-long hyphenated surname, was in the A-K line. And while his line snaked around the lobby and out the door, mine was practically non-existent. I was in and out in less than 40 minutes. He took more than twice that long.

Then, proudly wearing our "I Voted" Palmetto Project stickers, we were off to Starbucks, which was giving away free cups of coffee to voters. While we were driving, Paul mentioned a rumor had been going around the L-Z line that Chick-Fil-A was giving away free chicken sandwiches to voters. So I turned to the Internet and -- lo and behold! -- found out lots of businesses were offering bountiful blessings to voters.

WSJ has a little feature about some of the Election Day-only deals available for voters. (If for no other reason, check out the link to watch the embedded Starbucks commercial. I really dig it.) Charleston didn't have anything as cool as free tattoo removal (Dallas) or free flu shots for voters (lots of cities, including Memphis).

We did, however, got our free scoop of ice cream at Ben & Jerry's tonight, followed by a chicken strips dinner at Shane's Rib Shack. Of course, we didn't go to the polls with the intention of getting lots of free stuff, but I'm not complaining about free coffee, dinner and dessert.

And now, we're going to play some Rock Band until the West Coast polls close. I guess we'll watch the returns on CNN to see how those futuristic Star Wars-esque holographic interviews work out.