Late in January I left Felix for the first time since I got him at the Atlanta Airport last May and early the morning of the 28^th Josh took me to the airport for a long flight to California.  Leaving wasn’t easy.  8 months of Felix and my being inseparable was very hard to break.  I got a little teary that early morning when I had to leave. . .I suspect he sensed that something was wrong.

We had done a dinner about 3 weeks in advance of my departure so Layla, who hadn’t seen Felix since he was only a few months old and a lot closer in size to her than he is now, could get used to being around him.  She is 8+ years old and is a mature female who knows how things are supposed to be in her world so dealing with a very large 10-month-old puppy who wants to play all the time and now dwarfs her was a bit unnerving.  The night of the dinner she pretty much hid under furniture the whole time.

When Josh and Alanna showed up at my house the night before I left we had something of a repeat performance.  She really didn’t know what to do about him other than to try to avoid him and Felix doesn’t really recognize that as an option.

Anyway, on that Wednesday morning I flew to Sacramento via Chicago and Denver on United and I have to say that other than a small luggage snafu the trip was not nearly as bad as I have come to expect.  Over the years I have become one of those people who fundamentally loathes air travel so when things are truly horrific it comes as a surprise.

I arrived in Sacramento at 5:00 in very balmy weather and with both of my suitcases present and accounted for.  Robyn picked me up, as she usually does on these trips, only this time we headed out to Carmichael to John’s new place on the bluffs of the American River.  John bought a house last fall with a detached guesthouse on 2.5 acres of land on a steep cliff above the river.  The house was very modern when it was originally built in 1962, designed by a then young architect named Carter Sparks.  Roughly 15 years later Carter would take me to lunch and do his best to convince me that I should go out on my own to practice architecture rather than endure another unsatisfying employment experience.

The house was remodeled in 2005 but in a somewhat ham-fisted manner so a lot of the modifications John is hoping to accomplish involve removing elements of that redo.  Because he doesn’t want to move in until the work is finished, I found myself at his guesthouse in what I can only describe as splendid isolation. 

Each morning I would get up, make myself coffee and walk out to the deck that overhangs the bluff and gaze at the fog hovering low over the river and the parkland across the water from John’s house.  As the sun would come up over the Sierras the ducks, geese, egrets and great blue herons that habituated the shallows on the bank opposite the house became very active and raucous in an oddly pleasing morning cacophony.  It seems odd but the noise was soothing.

I spent a little time each day just enjoying the surroundings as well as attending to a few tasks I had locally.  In the days in Sacramento I saw comparatively few of my old friends.  Part of the reason for this trip was to scope out the property to see if it would work as a base of operations for what I hope will be a 4-month visit to California this summer.  It has been more than 10 years since I moved away and if there is one thing that has become very clear it is that there is simply no way to keep up with all the people I still consider friends if my trips are limited to 10-14 days as they generally have been.  I think by spending an entire season there I will feel like I can see everyone I want to see and do a lot without it feeling hurried or forced.

I was concerned about whether I would be able to stay at John’s place safely with Felix but am pretty sure it won’t be a problem.  The property is fenced on three sides and the bluff on the river side is so steep and high that I cannot imagine the big boy would try to escape via that route.  The biggest risk would be if someone arrived while he was roaming the yard and he were to get out the gate while it is open.

After my stay in Sacramento, I borrowed one of John’s cars and headed to the Bay Area for a quick lunch with Ingrid, which was, as usual, delightful.  After all these years she and I still never run out of topics of conversation.

Then I drove down to Aptos to spend a few days with my friends Faye and Jay.  In a fit of nostalgia the three of us drove down to Big Sur one day for a fashionably late lunch at Nepenthe.  I had not been there since I used to go with my old and dear friend Bernice Slater back in the late 80s and early 90s.  Bernice died in 1994 and had sold her place in Carmel well before that so I believe this visit was probably 23 years or so after the previous one.  Not much has changed.

We had drinks while waiting for a table and had a great time talking about and trying different whiskeys with the terrific bartender who was working that day.  Lunch was pretty much as I remembered it.  They do make a really great burger and the room is almost all glass.  You are perched on a hilltop high above the Pacific Ocean and on a day like the one we chose, with a fog bank hanging just a short distance out from the cliffs on which the restaurant is built, you are treated to some of the most ethereal views that stretch of the California coast offers.

After lunch we walked down to the somewhat hippy-dippy gift shop that is down at the level of the parking lot, shopped around for about 20 minutes and then headed back to the car.  As we approached it a man dressed mostly in black and his rather stunning young blonde companion were getting out of their serious looking black BMW next to Jay’s car and walked past us on their way to the gift shop.  Faye, who it turns out, is something of a celebrity junkie immediately became very agitated and said to Jay and me “Ooh that’s that famous movie star”.  Her delivery wasn’t exactly quiet so when Jay and I turned to see to whom she was referring the man in question turned to look at us.  He smiled and then headed into the store.

Faye was beside herself with excitement but couldn’t remember who he was.  Almost immediately she decided that she had to return to the store in pursuit of her quarry.  Jay and I shrugged and hung out by the cars for a couple minutes and soon Faye returned all aflutter.  The story was that she walked up to him, told him how much she loved his performances and how thrilled she was to meet him to which he replied “You don’t know who I am do you?”  Sheepishly she admitted that she couldn’t remember his name and asked it.  Clearly this guy was having fun and told her he wouldn’t tell her who he was but he asked her to come over to him and give him a hug.  According to Faye she was rewarded with a major bear hug from the unnamed movie star and realized it was time to retreat.

10 minutes later as we were driving up the Pacific Coast Highway back toward Aptos Jay and I were interrogated the still very excited Faye to see if we could figure out who the hell this guy was.  Once she settled down a bit she told me that he was “with Johnny Depp”.  I am pretty sure Johnny Depp is not gay so I questioned this and she said, “No he acts with Johnny Depp”.  “What films were they in” I inquired and after a moment of frustration she said “Pirates of Penzance”.  I pointed out that Johnny Depp was probably pre-adolescent when that movie came out but because I am experienced in conversations with Faye, I realized that she meant Pirates of the Caribbean and said “Orlando Bloom”?  “Yes!” she exploded from the back seat.  “Orlando Bloom hugged me”.  There was a very brief discussion about turning around and heading back but we all decided that would be a tad stalker-ish so instead Faye spent the rest of the drive either calling friends who would be equally agog over this encounter or texting the ones she couldn’t raise on her phone.  It was all pretty funny.

That Friday Faye and Jay had to drive to Los Angeles for a visit with Jay’s almost 102-year-old mother and I was headed up to El Portal and Yosemite for a weekend visit with Rob and Carolyn.  The weather service had forecast a storm the likes of which California hadn’t seen in more than a century but luckily for me (not so lucky for the drought stricken State) it didn’t materialize so I had a very pleasant uneventful drive up into the Sierras.

Rob and Carolyn are now working for a company called Nature Bridge for whom they are environmental educators.  They and their colleagues teach wilderness educational programs in Yosemite to groups of school kids from all over California.  Rob had been working that afternoon but was off and back at the house where he and Carolyn are living in El Portal by 4:00 in the afternoon so once he was cleaned up and changed I drove over to their place for our reunion and dinner.  It was great, as always, to see them.  Both seem happy and fulfilled with this work and they are living in true splendor and are surrounded by a bunch of like minded nice young people.

We chatted for most of the evening and when I left the plan was for me to return at 9:00 in the morning for coffee and to determine what we could do on Saturday.  Since the storm was still being predicted we made no real plans.  Carolyn had been hit with a virus a week before and while she was feeling better she had decided to lay low for most of the weekend and leave Rob and me to entertain ourselves. 

Saturday morning I got up and the weather was actually pretty nice.  It was very mild and while it clearly had rained a little overnight there were just a few patchy clouds and a bit of overcast in the morning, so I headed to their house and had coffee and a little breakfast with Rob and Carolyn.  We then set out to take advantage of the weather break and get in a hike.

I have spent many wonderful days in Yosemite over the years.  I suspect I averaged one visit per year in the 33 years I spent in California but Rob suggested trying a hike that I had never heard of and that he hadn’t done.  There is an abandoned and partially destroyed old road called Old Big Oak Flat Road that used to be the route out of the Yosemite Valley to the town of Big Oak Flat.  Several decades ago a new road was put in. . . California Hwy 120, so the old road was abandoned.  Parts of it are still sort of intact and the grading done makes it pretty easy to walk, but over the years there have been rockslides that have taken out sections of it.  We mostly did easy hiking although there were a couple spots where it was necessary to scramble over boulders.  I was glad I had brought my hiking boots.

Once we reached the point where traversing a large slide might have been a bit more challenging we stopped.  The reward was the single most spectacular view of Bridal Veil Falls I have ever seen, as well as a pretty great view of El Cap and Half Dome beyond.  Suffice it to say, pictures were taken.

We then retreated back to the car and headed to the Ahwahnee for a late lunch.  Rob had never been in the dining room and we lucked out getting one of the three window tables in the “apse” at the very end of the dining room.  Lunch was great.  After that we wandered around various locations in the Valley.  Rob showed me a few points of interest I had not seen before and in the late afternoon we headed back to the house.

Apparently Saturday night is poker night at their house.  Rob and Carolyn are the only ones living in the house but occupants of two rooms in an adjacent structure share the kitchen and living room so they suggested that dinner out might be a good idea for that night.

We drove down to Mariposa about a half hour away and went to Happy Burger for a fun and funky dinner.  When Rob suggested it I thought it might be a peculiar choice but the food was good (I had chili and the salad bar which seemed appropriate for a drizzly mountain night) and the people who run the place could not have been nicer.  This meal was followed by a quick stop at the local beer pub and then we drove back up the hill to El Portal.  After briefly checking in with the assembled poker players I called it a night and headed back to the hotel.

Amazingly enough, Sunday was almost as good a day as Saturday had been.  Rob and I managed a hike along the Valley Loop Trail for a bit until we reached a point that would have required walking through flowing water.  At that point we headed overland and walked up to the base of Bridal Veil for a quick look and then continued on a bit until the rain began in earnest.

At that point it was time for lunch anyway so we walked back to the car and got more than a tad wet in the process.  I stripped of the outer layer of my gear and drove into Yosemite Village where we had a deli lunch, sat around and talked a bit, and then called it a day.

Rob and Carolyn made a nice farewell dinner and I hit the road back to Sacramento by about 6:30, getting back to Carmichael and the guesthouse by 10:00.  All in all it was a very civilized and delightful 5 days of gallivanting around with Ingrid, Faye, Jay, Rob, Carolyn, and of course, Orlando.

I had one more day in Sacramento to do laundry, tie up some loose ends with my friend Mark who is doing the work on John’s house, and have one last dinner at John’s current digs before an early night and the long flight home the following day.

All in all, a great trip.  It was made easier by occasional Facebook posts from Josh and Lanny with pictures of Felix apparently having a good time, including one I will post of him curled up on his bed with Layla.  She apparently got over her aversion to puppy behavior.

On the flight from Chicago to Asheville a couple of old friends from way back in the 70s were present.  Ken and Dede, whom I probably hadn’t seen in 15-20 years, were on their way to visit their son Nathan and his wife Julia.  Three weeks before their first child was born and Ken and Dede were understandably eager to meet their granddaughter.  They were here for 6 days and it was really great.  Each morning we had coffee together before they headed over to Nathan and Julia’s house.  Each evening around 9:00 they returned and we sat around for a couple of hours having a drink or two and catching up on what had happened to us all in the last 2 decades.  It was, as it turns out, a great way to catch up without overwhelming each other.  I think they will be frequent visitors as long as Nathan and Julia and baby Juniper are living here.

I continue to try to solve the persistent problems with neck pain with physical therapy but I am starting to think something might be going on that remains undiagnosed.  When I returned to PT a year ago I was hopeful that whatever the source of my pain was could be resolved in a reasonably short period of time but it is starting to seem chronic.  When I had an MRI a bit more than a year ago nothing showed up to explain it so my guess is that after the spinal fusion, I am carrying myself in a different posture than I used to and somehow that is resulting in this persistent neck pain.  Too bad North Carolina doesn’t have legal medical marijuana.

Felix will be a year old on March 11^th.  I had planned to have a birthday cake made for him at Three Dog Bakery as I always did for Abner on his birthday, but Felix is going to be neutered two days before so I am thinking that he might not be ready to fully enjoy the day.  He is turning into a big love and is slowly outgrowing his puppy behaviors.  He finally will take the stairs up and down in the house and has consequently discovered the pleasures of downstairs as Abner did before him.  They both love it on the lower level due to relatively sparse furnishings (room to run indoors) and cooler temperatures.  He also hasn’t eaten any woodwork in more than a month so I am cautiously optimistic that we have finally passed that phase.

All in all, things are fine around here.  I am really looking forward to my planned summer in California.  8 months here and 4 there may turn out to be the perfect balance for us.  But of course, all of you who read this will know one way or the other.

I hope you are all well.  More later.

 These pictures were taken early in the morning at John's new place on the bluffs of the American River.

 The main house is perched at the edge of the cliff with great views as seen above.  The guest house where I stayed is snuggled back in a more secluded part of the property, below.

 Above is a shot I took on the drive down to Big Sur and our fun lunch at Nepenthe.  Below is a somewhat posed (ya think?) shot of me with Bridal Veil Falls on my Saturday hike with Rob.

 Above is a great view of El Capitan from the Old Big Oak Flat Road trail. . .with Rob serving as a scale figure.  The shot below is from the balcony of my room at the Yosemite View Lodge.  The hotel has serious maintenance issues but the Merced river flows right behind it and it is only about 2 miles from the entrance to the park.

 I am starting to realize that this blog has a lot of pictures of me wearing that same North Face Parka. . .usually with something scenic in the background.  Below is a "selfie" (a term I hate) at the dining room at the Ahwahnee Hotel.  Pretty good lunch actually. . .

This was a postcard shot of Rob with El Capitan in the background when we were walking the Valley Loop Trail.  It was just too perfect a spot to not take a picture.

 Josh and Lanny and Layla stayed with Felix.  I think he had a great time.  The shots above were, I suspect, a tad posed at my house.  Below is a photo of Felix with some new friend from his outing to Rumbling Bald, and the bottom shot indicates to me that Layla decided he wasn't so bad after all.

I hate Sears



For those of you who have been following this blog for a long time, I have a post script for you on the astounding story of Sears colossal screw-up regarding the stove I bought from them when I moved into my house in August of 2009.

Without reliving the details, what you may remember was that the problems began with my ordering 5 tiny replacement parts that would change the flow of gas to the burners on the range.  I was converting from propane to natural gas and needed these tiny brass parts in order for the new fuel to work.  searspartsdirect.com and their phone-in service started by charging me a small fortune for the parts, and then, it turned out, sent me one that wouldn't work and refused to replace it with one that would.  It took something like 6 months to resolve and the resolution Sears came up with was to buy me a new $4,000 range rather than replace the part that they had incorrectly supplied.  I was, at the time, so frustrated with their deceit and ineptitude that I promised myself to never shop at Sears again.

Unfortunately the meat probe that came with the range needed to be replaced and the only source for this part is searspartsdirect.com.  With considerable trepidation I contacted them by phone on January 3rd and ordered the replacement part from a very nice man who answered the call and who had access to the list of appliances I have purchased from Sears since they started keeping records.  He informed me that I would have the part by January 10th at the latest and took all the information as well as giving me a quote for the part.

He also promised me an order confirmation that would be emailed to me, which never came.  This didn't come as a huge surprise and fortunately I had started a note on my computer with all the information he gave me including the model number of my range and the order number for the part.

You can imagine my surprise when I got home this afternoon to find that the part had been delivered.  What you cannot imagine is how livid I was when I opened the package to find that not only was the part they sent me completely different from the meat probe that works in my range but there was a note saying that in order to use the device they sent me I would have to remove the wires and connect other wires with a ceramic nut.

I called customer service to express my extreme displeasure to the poor woman who answered my call.  After about 6 or 7 minutes on the phone we determined that they hadn't even sent a meat probe at all. . .it was an oven temperature sensor.  I now have ordered yet another part, that is considerably more than twice as expensive, have to return the incorrect one, and will have to wait until they receive and "process" the return before they will credit the price back to my account.  I did ask Angie, the operator who was helping me, to be sure to send me a confirmation via email.   Needless to say it never arrived.

From time to time I read about the financial distress in which Sears continues to find itself.  Surely they cannot be surprised.  4 years after the previous disaster with them they still cannot get a simple replacement part order right.  I have no idea how long this particular battle will go on, but I caution all who read this to never venture into a Sears store, never deal with them online, and in fact, try not to live in a city or county where they exist.  They have an aura of poison about them that infects everything they do.

 Fall has been, as is usually the case, very pretty in and near Asheville.

 Someone tries to look innocent even when lying next to a toy he has eviscerated and on top of a bed he started to eat but then decided to save for later.

Asheville has arrived at that strange time of year when it seems the climate cannot decide what season it actually is.  Some days it is warm enough to hike in shorts and a t-shirt or long sleeve shirt at most and other days I have to bundle up in so many layers of insulation that I start to look like I am on a Polar Expedition.

Fall arrived in Asheville pretty much on schedule and while it was mild and beautiful through most of October it did, suddenly, get very cold just as Felix and I were heading north for some family visits.

I am hoping to be able to travel extensively with Felix as I was able to do with Abner so when he arrived at the ripe old age of 7 months I decided the time had come to try a road trip.  Going to Fort Wayne to see my parents is a bit of a long drive for Felix’s very first road trip so I decided to drive to the Cincinnati suburbs where one of my sisters lives with her husband and Labrador Retriever.  This is about a 6 hour drive with a natural stopping point in Berea Kentucky at roughly the half-way point.  In Berea right off the freeway is a visitor’s center that I found on another trip where we stopped to eat and pee (both of us) prior to driving the last couple hours to our hotel in Northern Kentucky.

As is almost always the case when I am doing this drive there was a traffic delay that added a bit more than an hour while we crawled along through 6 miles of stop and go backup.  I don’t know what it is about this section of I -75 but every time I have driven it there is some kind of traffic issue between the Tennessee border and Berea.  Nonetheless we made it to Florence KY where I had booked a room at the somewhat dismal LaQuinta Hotel.  This is a chain that, as far as I can tell, is pet tolerant in all their locations.  They aren’t fancy but never seem to have a pet fee nor do they have severe restrictions on size or what rooms are available to travelers with pets.  My sense now is that this was an unfortunate decision for Felix’s first experience of sleeping in a hotel since there was very little space for his bed.  The hotel also had terrible sound transmission issues so there were many disturbances during the night that concerned him and made sleep somewhat challenging for us both.

We had scheduled a meeting with Jan and a stockbroker with whom we both have dealings at a Starbucks in Fort Thomas which Felix and I made just in time.  The afternoon and evening were pleasant and uneventful.  Jan had arranged for a sitter to come to her house to stay with both dogs while we went to dinner.  Felix did fine and apparently enjoyed being around Jan’s Lab.  I am not sure how the Lab felt. . .puppies can be a bit much for adult dogs.

On Friday we got started early but still at a civilized hour and got across the Ohio River and on I-75 North with no delays.  I have found that in many cities, if you are willing to wait until about 9:30 in the morning most of the commuter traffic is gone and you can sail through what would otherwise be traffic-clogged freeways.  Cincinnati seems to have had the freeways under construction for the whole 10 years I have been driving through there to get to Fort Wayne and there was no sign of progress this time.  You have to bounce over uneven pavement, lane changes, deal with huge concrete barriers that barely allow the behemoth trucks that ply this route to get past without sideswiping vehicles on both sides.  I think Cairo is probably the only city I have ever been in that had worse infrastructure but probably some day Cincinnati will finish its endless project.

Dayton is little better.  The only difference is that the roadwork you have to get past to get through Dayton doesn’t cover as large an area, although it seems like it has been there just as long.  Now that I think about it, Jacksonville, FL suffers from this same problem. . .perpetual freeway construction.  I wonder what this is about.

We made it to Fort Wayne in good time and checked into our hotel there, which was a huge improvement over the LaQuinta from the night before.  We stayed at the Homewood Suites Hotel at  I-69 and West Jefferson Blvd.  This, as it turned out, was perfect.  The hotel was much nicer.  To begin with the staff offered to walk Felix to keep him busy while I moved all our crap to the room.  This was a huge help since otherwise he would have either had to wait in the car or the room, and in either case would have been confused and frustrated.

The Homewood Suites room was in fact a suite.  We had a small living room, nice well-equipped kitchen, and a large bedroom and bath.  There was plenty of room for my stuff and Felix’s.  He had a nice spot for his bed in the living room so we were both comfy and I didn’t have to worry about tripping over him if I had to get up in the middle of the night.

It was pretty cold in Fort Wayne while we were there but I had come with appropriate clothes and Felix has a permanent fur coat that keeps him comfortable.  We did a little walking in my old neighborhood and generally had an uneventful visit with my parents.  The couple times we dined out I had another sitter for Felix which worked out well again.  This is the biggest issue with traveling with a young dog.  You really can’t leave them alone.  As long as he has company he doesn’t seem to get into trouble.  He doesn’t bark or whine and isn’t busy devouring furniture or parts of the building in which he is left. 

After three nights I had one more broker meeting on Monday morning in Fort Wayne and then headed to Indianapolis to spend a half day and an evening with my sister Lisa and her husband.  The final drive home on Tuesday turned out to be easier and quicker than I had thought.  Again, part of the trick is avoiding commuter traffic in all cities through which one must pass.  We got around Indianapolis on 465 (which is often no mean feat) and made it onto the surprisingly lightly traveled I-74 heading Southeast toward Cincinnati.  There are two routes from Indianapolis to Asheville that are almost identical in length and over the years I have always gone the way Google maps told me to.  This route has you taking I-65 to Louisville where you then head East to Lexington and then pickup I-75 toward Knoxville.  This time I used my GPS which preferred the route that takes you around Cincinnati and then onto 75 once you have crossed over into Kentucky.  As it turned out, I think this is a better route.  The Louisville route has you crossing the Ohio River on an old bridge that deposits you right in the middle of downtown Louisville.  In my experience, no matter what time you do this you will have traffic issues.  Again there are a lot of trucks to deal with and the infrastructure is old and just not sized for the load currently on it.  Going around (and not through) Cincinnati avoided almost all the urban traffic there and put us on the familiar road South very quickly without delays. 

What was even more significant about this drive was that this time there were no catastrophes to deal with between Berea and the Tennessee border.  I swear this is the first time I have ever done this drive without a single delay.  It was election day and I guess everyone stayed home.

We are now settled into our Fall/Winter existence in Asheville.  Most days the weather is good enough that Felix and I spend a few hours hiking.  On the weekends we try to connect with Matt and his and Amy’s two new dogs Chachi and Joanie.  Those of you who are old enough will know where those names came from.  Felix and I also try to get Bruce and Nora out most weekends with Beckley who is tolerating Felix’s exuberance quite well.  He also calms down more quickly now after the unavoidable explosive first encounter each time we get together.  I live for the day that he doesn’t get excited when he sees people or dogs he wants to see.

Ben Fowler and Ben Zonnevylle will both be in town in the next two weeks and that will be nice.  It will be particularly amusing for Ben F to see Felix.  He was with me on May 23^rd the morning I picked Felix up at the Atlanta airport and hasn’t seen him since.  I suspect he will be a little surprised at the size of the puppy now.

So, at this point, I have no travel plans set for this winter and no guests planned after the two Bens.  Could be a quiet season. . .lots of opportunity for work on our obedience training.

November 23rd marked 5 months with Felix and I can say without equivocation that I am glad he is here.  Puppy frustrations notwithstanding, I have to say that the amount of joy I get from having this big sweet affectionate pup around balances out the damage he does to my house and me.  The truth is that I had forgotten some of the details of the difficulties of raising a puppy.  People have always said that the only reason women ever have a second child is that they forget the pain of childbirth.  I think puppyhood is similar.  You have this vague recollection that it is difficult and trying but you tend to forget the details.  We will both get past this period.  Fortunately he is lovable enough that I will, once again, end up forgetting all that he put me through.

Occasionally I feel the need to rant about some perceived injustice or failure that is inflicted on me in daily life and this morning I had another humdinger.  I think it is typical of the reason people hate their cable companies and the reason I hate the very oddly named Charter Communications.  The reason I think the name is odd is that the one thing they consistently fail to be able to do is communicate.

This morning I logged into my account online to pay my monthly bill as I always do but the system wouldn't allow me to get to the online bill pay page.  Each time I tried the link to that page I was returned to the log in page again and again.

Initially I tried to resolve this with an online chat agent who, after 20 minutes had not grasped what the problem was at which time as she was asking me for my service address, the chat session froze and would take no more input.

Then I called customer service.  This is something I have learned to dread because it is so consistently awful but I could see no other choice unless I was willing to drive to their office and stand in line with a bunch of people who were there to argue about why their service was cut off when they hadn't paid their bills in months.  I think they should have a special line for people who aren't deadbeats.

The shockingly condescending Customer Service Agent took quite awhile but eventually said that the system was being "upgraded" and that some things weren't working at this time.  No shit!  Since my bill is due tomorrow and they would charge me a late fee if I didn't pay by then I asked her what she suggested.  She offered that I could go to the office and pay there, pay with their automated system for free, or pay and extra $5 to talk to an operator.  I opted for the free automated system with some dread.

Charter's voice recognition system is one of the worst in the industry from my experience and it took endless repetitions of information and answers to finally get through the process but eventually the credit card I offered was accepted.  Once a confirmation number was given the automated voice asked if there was anything else I needed.  I said no and was transferred to a customer satisfaction survey consisting of 5 questions.

This was my favorite part.  Here I was almost an hour into trying to pay my bill and the first question asked was about the degree of competence and professionalism of the agent.  You are given the choice of 1-5 with 5 excellent and 1 awful.  I chose 1 and the system immediately want to the old rapid busy signal.  "Perfect", I thought.

My friends Ann and Bowers were here for a brief but very busy and fun visit a week or so ago.  On their last full day we did a little excursion up to Craggy Pinnacle and did the short hike to the top (elevation 6,100 feet) since at that altitude the weather is much milder than it is in town.  This was one of the pictures I took of them with Felix, who is a growing boy.  People keep asking me about why I don't have more pictures of him but it is because 5 month old puppies rarely stay in one position long enough to get a picture and it is particularly challenging if the person taking the shot is also trying to hold onto the puppy in question.

At his last weight he was up to 61 pounds. . .getting bigger almost while I look at him.  He is still a very sweet boy.  He likes just about everyone and has a good time no matter when we go or what we do.  Lucky me.

Rant:

I just turned off Frank Stasio’s interview with Sarah Creech, a young novelist, that he did on today’s episode of The State of Things and was, once again, horrified by the tendency of people who are otherwise seemingly intelligent, making themselves sound like idiots because of a speech pattern.

Ms Creech answered every single question posed to her by beginning her response with the word “so”.  I noticed the explosive growth of this speech pattern about 6 months ago and have found it very annoying.  These people sound like the Valley Girls of the 80s who were so successfully ridiculed by Moon Zappa in her song of the same name that some young women actually stopped talking like that.

Ms Creech exacerbated the impression that she is of this ilk by demonstrating her use of up-talking. . .the tendency to finish every sentence with an upward inflection as if she were asking a question.  The combination of these two traits is lethal, in my opinion.  Part way through the interview I found her so annoying that I turned the program off.  Since she was there to promote her book, it is unfortunate that she managed to lose at least one potential reader by sounding so infantile that I couldn’t imagine her writing is worthwhile.

To be clear, I am not picking on Ms Creech.  These two tendencies in speech are pervasive at this point although the dramatic nature of the “so”-speakers sudden appearance on the public airwaves has surprised me.  Up speech has been around for years, and while irritating, doesn’t, for some reason, make the speaker sound as ignorant as those who begin every answer with “so”.  I realize that English, like no doubt most languages, is fluid, but it doesn’t mean we have to accept each and every trend, regardless of how stupid it makes the speaker sound.

Rave:

Okay.  That is my rant.  I have always appreciated the sort of yin and yang in life and in keeping with that I think it is time to post a rave as well.  To my utter amazement this time the rave is for a large member of corporate America. 

I have had a Capital One credit card (with Abner’s picture on it) for many years.  It is one of those cash back cards I read about once when I was shopping for a credit card.  It has no annual fee and rewards are paid in cash without an annual limit and with no restrictions whatever regarding when you redeem your refund.  If you have $122.68 in the account you don’t have to wait until it is exactly $150 to redeem (like you do with Wells Fargo’s card) or other nonsense.  They also allow you simply to apply it as a credit toward your bill on any month that you want to.

Anyway, I have always appreciated the simplicity of this card and its use and generally, as soon as I get an e-bill from Capital One with the amount due and the due date I log into my online bill pay service and set up the payment for a date that will pay it very close to the due date without going past.  This way I don’t pay interest or late fees.

A month ago I got my bill and it said the due date which would have required payment to leave my account on July 27^th to post on time in my Capital One account.  Inadvertently though, I entered the payment to go out on August 27^th instead of July.  Two days after the due date I got an email from Capital One politely asking if I forgot to make a payment.  Horrified, I looked up the account in both the Capital One website and my online banking website and realized what I had done.

In the past, when dealing with other credit card companies, and in particular the odious Citi card system, I realized that if you are even one day late, they charge you a late fee as well as interest for the previous month and for the next month.  Then if you pay it off completely you get hit with yet another interest charge because the payment you sent in in month two didn’t include the interest they would charge for that month.  In the end, the only way you can stop this cycle once it has started is to get a quote from customer service as to the exact amount due on the day you talk to them, including interest to date, and pay it with a direct bank draft that day.  Then you put the card away for one complete billing cycle so nothing can be charged on it for which they can compute interest, even for a partial month.  That way you end up starting over as if it were a new account.

I called Capital One with every intention of following this plan but to my surprise the extremely pleasant young man who answered my call said that it wouldn’t’ be necessary.  He said he would be happy to waive the late fee and as long as I authorized him to debit the past due amount from my bank account, the only interest I would have to pay would be the interest due to that date.  That way I didn’t have to stop using the card.

At a certain point I thought I would have to go to the emergency room because  of the heart attack that would no doubt come from being treated well and generously from a large American bank without asking or demanding it.  I can’t remember any similar experience with the banking sector in the US.  As a rule you talk to people in call centers in India, Bangladesh, the Philippines or similar whom you can barely understand and who very obsequiously tell you there is nothing they can do to help you and that if you want to avoid interest charges you really have to cancel the account and start over.  This experience with Capital One came as such as surprise that I feel like I need to thank them publicly for such a small but generous and reasonable act.  Little things like this are the kinds of actions that breed brand loyalty.  If more American Corporations realized this and acted accordingly I suspect they would be in better shape and their customers would be far more content and loyal.