Unpowered
The weather has been weird again. It was seasonal for much of last week, if humid, then on Friday it was barely in the 70s. It popped right back up to seasonal plus pea soup humidity; dewpoints were in the 70s today, and the air temperature 20 degrees above that. The air conditioners were cranking. When we talked with grandma today, she mentioned that it was warm in her condo, and when she got off the phone with us, she was going to turn on her air because it definitely was above 80F in there. Mom, fearing she'd forget, made grandma put down the phone, walk over, and turn it on. I was glad she'd done that--grandma likely would have forgotten and gone to take a nap or something. But she was excited; when last we'd spoken, she had no TV service, and now it's back. The whole situation was confusing to her, and therefore more confusing to us, but apparently she had a device from Dish, her building's former provider, and when that was fully cut off, that meant no more TV. She thought she had service from some other place but called and called and could never get through. She'd just turned off her internet, as she barely used it, and that was through AT&T. Since she was talking about cutting lines, I suggested potentially contacting *them* in case somehow that affected the cable. Somehow I doubted it, but it couldn't hurt. Ultimately, she ended up getting cable *through* them, and she called Discover to have them stop the payments to the other company (again, it was neither Dish nor AT&T). As I would have expected, they said she'd have to discontinue payments through the company, not through them. When she told Discover she couldn't get in touch with the other company, they said the only other option was to cancel that card and get a new number. This made mom concerned, wondering what other automatic payments she had on the card, but grandma insisted it was just that cable company so it should be fine. ...Okay. Guess we'll find out in a month or so.
Once off the phone, mom was watching TV upstairs, dad was sleeping with the TV in the background downstairs, and I was online. ...And then I wasn't. This was shortly before 4 o'clock and the power went out. Great. Just what we want on a day when the heat index is over 100F. And the day after I made a ton of tomato sauce which is now taking up a third of the freezer. What's funny is that mom went out with the Red Hats and they went to a pizza place, so mom picked us up one for dinner. This meant no cooking, which worked out well, because nobody would have wanted to cook in this weather anyway, and without power, we were still able to eat. I haven't practiced in a couple weeks and have a parade next week, so I decided to get that out of the way. I also have no specific music to practice at this time, so I pulled out this music I acquired over a year and a half ago and never touched, so I was glad to finally play on some of that. Long story short, someone I'm acquainted with was working on an estate sale and had all this music, and had I just taken one or two pieces I probably could've had it for free, but I ended up with an armful and gave him $20 for it. Definitely worth it, but only if I play it! Some of this music is, no lie, over 100 years old. It's in pretty good condition, though, but I didn't touch the oldest stuff. I remember some of it wasn't even bound together in a book any longer, but it seemed worthwhile so that's why I grabbed it. I did my hour's worth of practicing and went downstairs, where the power was restored just minutes later. It was off for over an hour--from just before 4 until just after 5. Dad was attempting to reset one of the clocks when he managed to make our cable go out, but he got it fixed by the weather segment of the news, so at least we know some of what's going on.
Something from yesterday: I went to the bank on the way to go grocery shopping. Dad always drives, and when he got to the shopping plaza, he saw that the entrance led to a parking lot undergoing repaving. He hates driving on those shaved-down roadways, so he decided to go in the other entrance...which was also shaved down. At that point, he had no other choice and had to pull in. We weren't able to go all the way up to my bank because their parking lot was completely torn up and had construction horses and things blocking it off. Great. It required some maneuvering to get inside, but all was well. The bank is basically this island in a sea of no asphalt. Also, once inside and talking to the teller, he realized, oh, I don't have your license on file. I probably should have asked why, but I didn't. I chalked it up to being a banking thing. He also said he didn't have my occupation on file, either. He then said, well, maybe they didn't ask about those when you opened this account. I said, yeah, it was 1995; my occupation at the time was "recent high school graduate." He laughed at that. Possibly because he was barely alive at that point. He reminds me of my youngest cousin, both in looks and age. That cousin was born at the tail end of '94, just days from '95, so it's a possibility.
Once off the phone, mom was watching TV upstairs, dad was sleeping with the TV in the background downstairs, and I was online. ...And then I wasn't. This was shortly before 4 o'clock and the power went out. Great. Just what we want on a day when the heat index is over 100F. And the day after I made a ton of tomato sauce which is now taking up a third of the freezer. What's funny is that mom went out with the Red Hats and they went to a pizza place, so mom picked us up one for dinner. This meant no cooking, which worked out well, because nobody would have wanted to cook in this weather anyway, and without power, we were still able to eat. I haven't practiced in a couple weeks and have a parade next week, so I decided to get that out of the way. I also have no specific music to practice at this time, so I pulled out this music I acquired over a year and a half ago and never touched, so I was glad to finally play on some of that. Long story short, someone I'm acquainted with was working on an estate sale and had all this music, and had I just taken one or two pieces I probably could've had it for free, but I ended up with an armful and gave him $20 for it. Definitely worth it, but only if I play it! Some of this music is, no lie, over 100 years old. It's in pretty good condition, though, but I didn't touch the oldest stuff. I remember some of it wasn't even bound together in a book any longer, but it seemed worthwhile so that's why I grabbed it. I did my hour's worth of practicing and went downstairs, where the power was restored just minutes later. It was off for over an hour--from just before 4 until just after 5. Dad was attempting to reset one of the clocks when he managed to make our cable go out, but he got it fixed by the weather segment of the news, so at least we know some of what's going on.
Something from yesterday: I went to the bank on the way to go grocery shopping. Dad always drives, and when he got to the shopping plaza, he saw that the entrance led to a parking lot undergoing repaving. He hates driving on those shaved-down roadways, so he decided to go in the other entrance...which was also shaved down. At that point, he had no other choice and had to pull in. We weren't able to go all the way up to my bank because their parking lot was completely torn up and had construction horses and things blocking it off. Great. It required some maneuvering to get inside, but all was well. The bank is basically this island in a sea of no asphalt. Also, once inside and talking to the teller, he realized, oh, I don't have your license on file. I probably should have asked why, but I didn't. I chalked it up to being a banking thing. He also said he didn't have my occupation on file, either. He then said, well, maybe they didn't ask about those when you opened this account. I said, yeah, it was 1995; my occupation at the time was "recent high school graduate." He laughed at that. Possibly because he was barely alive at that point. He reminds me of my youngest cousin, both in looks and age. That cousin was born at the tail end of '94, just days from '95, so it's a possibility.