Tuesday

The Fire

      So here's the story. This happened Sunday morning.

     From my basement kitchen window I can see the apartment building across the grass, there's a sidewalk in the middle and it's really very close. Well, I made myself breakfast and was sitting at my kitchen table. I looked out the window and saw flames about a foot or so high in the kitchen of the basement apartment in the building across the way.

     Without having to think about it since the flames seem to originate from a high surface and not the floor, I knew it was a stove fire. However I did not see any movement in the apartment, so the tenants could have been sleeping, out of the room, or out of the apartment altogether.

     Now the rest of my family is just getting up so my husband and daughter are still groggy and my son is in the front room asleep still. I look out the window again and now the flames are much higher and the whole kitchen is glowing.

     I run to the bedroom and tell my husband " there's a fire" and I point out the window, he looks at me and says " What?" I say " There's a fire in the kitchen across the street" and I again point to his window, he still does not look out the window but gets up and follows me out of the room on his way to our kitchen.

     The phone is in the living room where my son is and I yell to him, " There's a fire in the next apartment building, give me the phone, hurry. My son gets up and instead of handing me the phone he starts running around in a circle looking for it. They usually leave the handset off the hook but it was on the hook this morning. He dials 911 and reports the fire.

     While he is on the phone my husband goes out the back door to the next building but stops short because by now the tenants were putting it out. Since he refused for some reason to look out the windows where I told him to, he never saw the flames. He comes back in and says there's no fire it's out.

     My son tell the dispatcher that the fire has been put out, not to come. The dispatcher keeps questioning him with, "why should we not come, you said flames were shooting out the window", he says it was a stove top fire and it's out, there is no fire, it was a mistake calling you". The dispatcher continues to badger him about why is he now saying there is no fire and not to come". He finally just hangs up, aggrevated.

     Within two minutes the police are at our door and when my husband opens it, they just walk right in. My son get up and tries to explain to them what happened. Now the fire truck and paramedics come and are directed by the first cop where the fire was.

     In the meantime my family is yelling at me for panicking and making them call 911 for no reason, and that I made the whole town respond to nothing. I tried to explain that's the reason I went to my husband first and pointed out the window so he could gauge the situation. He then says to me that I incorrectly told him it was the building across the street and it really was the building across the back grassy area. I yelled back that all he had to do was look out the freakin window I was pointing at. My son was livid that I made him call 911 for nothing. I told him all he had to do was hand me the phone like I first asked him to.

     I tried to tell them I was not panicking I was just trying to get them to look and cooperate which neither of them would do. Since neither of them saw the actual flames I must have seen a little bit of fire and panicked. I told them I saw fire, I saw no one putting it out so it was right to call 911. They say I panicked, exaggerated and was wrong. Was I wrong or right? Help please I need some backing here!

Thursday

More Fun With AT&T

Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting I got a call from AT&T asking about my recent experience with them. I explained what happened and the man on the phone kept saying  What! You're kidding" He then said that we should be compensated in some way and that he would forward what happened to us to some big wig. That was about three weeks ago and we've heard nothing.
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To make matters worse, last week our modem broke. I figured since we still had an order for AT&T's Uverse pending, we might as well have them install it. My son called and was told that we cancelled the order. What I actually said to them when we had no service on the net or phone, was that I would be happy just getting what we had back.

Then the women proceeds to tell my son that the Uverse is no faster but will seem like it's faster. What? Then she quotes a price that's three times what we dicussed when we made the original appointment, and tells us that the offer of one month free TV is no longer on the table.

My son then asks for a supervisor to speak to and this women first refuses to do so, then she puts him on hold and gets back and still refuses to do so.

Having no patience left, my son immediately called Comcast and made an appointment. They came Tuesday, and 20 minutes later we were back on line.

My Weekend With AT&T

Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting In the wee hours of last Friday I was working on my computer, when all of a sudden I was taken off line and could not get back on. When morning came my husband looked at it and said that they either shut us off, or we had an equipment problem. I hadn't gotten any shut of notices or calls so we just waited through the day Friday to see if the outage would correct itself. Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting When the service did not come back on by Friday evening, I figured maybe it was due to the payment being a little late, so Saturday morning we went to an agent and made a payment. We waited another five hours and I decided to call to see what the holdup was. Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting I discovered that not only the internet was still out, but now our phone was completely dead. I used a cell phone and called AT&T only to talk to a computer who jumbled up my phone number when I entered it. I was informed by the computer that most of their offices were closed until Monday and that they could not help me till I made a payment. I tried to call again later and now the computer told me that my account had not been suspended. Stupid computer right? We resigned ourselves to waiting until Monday morning to talk to a real person.

I called the collections department who told me that our account was closed due to a late payment.Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting They said I needed to be transferred to the business department. They told me I needed to open up a new account.Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting They transferred me to that department who said that our account was never turned off and that I would have to be tranferred to the repair department.Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting The repair department told me that we cancelled our account because we had another provider.Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting When I told them we did not cancel and all we wanted was service to be restored they agreed to send out a repair person on Tuesday.

Tuesday morning they called my housePhotobucket - Video and Image Hosting and said that they did some trouble shooting and that we should call the business office.Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting The business office told us our account was not suspended and they transferred me back to repair.Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting Repair told us to call their internet department and they transferred me there, where I was then transferred to the phone department.Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting Each of these transfers was accompanied by a five to ten minute wait. The phone department transferred me back to repair. I finally snapped and told them there had better be a repairman at the house that day and they can sit on the phone and talk to all their departments. Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting During that call my phone and internet service were back on and repair told me Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting That the problem was a missing set of numbers in their programming and they're very sorry.

The first thing I did was to check my e-mail and found a piece from my father saying that Saturday night he had to rush my mom to the ER because of her heart again and that he was not able to reach me.Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting I was livid. My mother could have died and I wouldn't have known till Tuesday? AT&T cannot be trusted and they certainly cannot resolve problems. I'm a freelance writer and work on-line so I also lost four days of work. My husbands boss attempted to contact him to work on Saturday but he lost that day because they couldn't get in touch with him. Thank you AT&T!

Saturday

Baby Time!

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October 1st my daughter had her baby. A perfect little baby boy 18 inches long and 5 lbs. 5 oz.

Her labor was fast we got to the hospital at 11:45 pm and she had the baby at 5:04 pm. How's that for a first timer?


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Tuesday

Post Flood

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They are here right now to lay my ceramic floor tiles in my kitchen. Finally! Then maybe we can finish arranging the apartment so we can live like human beings again. Even though we know the landlord bought the cheapest tiles the store had, they do look really nice, and they're a whole lot better than that dark, old, outdoor carpeting we've had since we moved in with the big round burn stain from the previous tenant.


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I'm not sure that I'm ready for the next big thing, which is the birth of my first grandson, due anyday now! Before I thought of it as something to happen in the future, but now it's starting to become real, and very scary at the same time!

Friday

What If Oprah Interviewed Paris Hilton On Slam 101

Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting Hello, In case you've lived in a cave for the past 24 years, I'm OPRAH!!! Everyone, look at me! I can walk on water! Yeah! On today's show I'll be talking to Paris Hilton.

"Paris, with the presidential election coming up in November, who will you be voting for?"
Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting "I'm for me,yeah me!!!"

Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting"This skinny white girls out of her mind. Paris, what do you think of this?"Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting
"I like your belt, and Get Me Out Of Here!"Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting
Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting"Why not, I'm OPRAH, I can do anything! Paris, how's that? Where are you now?"
Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting"Who cares, look at me!"
"Paris, back to the election, who do you like?"
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"I like my dog, see my purse dog? He's got a poop compartment with a zipper!"
Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting"This crackers got a one track mind!"
Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting"Are you still looking at me? Ain't I something? Doesn't everyone wish they were me?"Photobucket - Video and Image HostingPhotobucket - Video and Image HostingLook what I can do!"

Wednesday

Taking A Break

Photobucket - Video and Image HostingWe've got our carpeting down and are just waiting for the bathroom and kitchen tiles to be laid down. The apartment still needs some rearranging but we can't do anything till the floors are done. So right now we're taking a couple days to gather our strength back before the baby comes. He's due Oct.6. It's been a rough time for all of us but I suspect that it's only the beginning. I'm going to get back to my book while it's quiet and we're in between crisis. Thanks for stopping by!

Tuesday

What Happened After The Flood

Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting     We live in a "garden" apartment, that means basement. With the recent heavy rains our apartment flooded. It turns out that the sump pumps in the two buildings our landlord owns were not working. Before we knew it our apartment became a small pond. 

Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting     This is my 23 year old daughter who lives with us. She is expecting her first child in about 3 weeks and has spent the last six months gathering baby things and nesting, trying to make things as perfect as possible for the baby. 

     My 21 year old son lives with us also. He and his sister are very close though it wasn't always that way.


     The day after the flood we waited for the landlord to see what he would do to help us not only because it's his property but also because his lack of maintainence was directly responsible for the flooded apartments in both his buildings. What would have been a logical solution for him and us turned into major drama. Here's what happened...


     

Photobucket - Video and Image HostingMe, "Landlord, you have an empty apartment on the third floor, our apartment is ruined and you have to replace all the flooring, why don't we just move into that vacant unit as is and you only have to fix up this unit?"

Landlord,"No,no,no.Photobucket - Video and Image HostingYou tear out carpeting and I replace it, in meantime you stay here."

Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting Son, "It's not healthy to live here till then, you're responsible, let us move upstairs, it's filthy,wet, and it stinks already!"

Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting"Your sister can stay upstairs till new carpet comes, I have other tenants in other building with kids and nowhere for them to go, if you don't like it you can move out! Pull up carpet and it will dry faster!"

Daughter, "Do you know how upsetting this is? Photobucket - Video and Image HostingI could have this baby any day now! I can't bring the baby to this!"

Photobucket - Video and Image HostingLandlord," Sorry, you can stay upstairs till carpet comes, then you come back down here"

This gave my husband a bad headache.Photobucket - Video and Image HostingHe couldn't get a word in and wondered why "we" have to pull up this soaking wet carpeting for our landlord. The answer was of course the sooner it's pulled up, the sooner it dries and the sooner new carpet can be laid. The other choice was to stay here on the soaking wet carpet for three more days till the carpet men came. He said nothing because we had no other choice and no where else to go.

Son, "We can report you and take legal action. You are responsible and this is not liveable conditions"Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting

Landlord, "You and your sister not on lease, you threaten me with legal action, you can get out!"Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting

Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting"You can't do this to us, I can't have a baby here like this, I don't believe you're doing this! What are we supposed to do?"

Photobucket - Video and Image HostingMe, "Everyone just stop, we have no choice, stop yelling!"

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That was yesterday. We've spent the last two days ripping up carpeting, moving furniture, and bleaching the cracked concrete floor we now live on. Daughter has moved all the baby's things upstairs so it doesn't start to stink too. We're still not done and my son is breaking his back doing most of the heavy work with my husbands help. Daughter is still crying. Me? I'm just going to dive into this piece of chocolate cake and temporarily forget it all.Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting

My neighbors are in a hotel and are filing suit against him.

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