Radio Free Fayetteville
The Devil you know is better than the one you don’t. - Intelligence Gathering Proverb
One of the factors that one must consider when returning from a considerable amount of time away from their abode is the amount of time and money that it is going to take to get re-adjusted to living in the manner that one’s become accustomed too… even if changing said accustomized living was one of the factors for escape in the first place. I’ve devised a little formula for just this note, and for general purpose, I will share it with you. Take the number of full weeks that you are gone and multiply that by 1.3; that’s the number of days you’ll need to get things in order. Then take that number and multiply it by the amount of money you thought you had saved while you where gone; that’s how much getting back into the swing of things is going to run you. Sixty-five percent of the time, this formula works every time.
I guess what I’m saying is that even with a psuedo-roommate, this house is kicking my ass. Of course, I temper my impatiences with home-spun advice from Drrty’s Mother and Diamond Dallas: “we bought our house before you were born, and we are still not finished working on it.” Somehow, this does not raise my spirits. Nonetheless, I soldier forth, and continue to walk through the problems of being a new home owner in what feels like a very piece-meal fashion. There are the various additional comfort and vanity items that I would like to get out of the way (hall rugs, a desk for the foyer, a TV, etc) as well as the necessary cosmetics of the place (replacing that popcorn ceiling crap with wood, redoing the walls in the study, new bathroom tile). But I’m working other things right now. Namely, a wine hutch that I’m staining, a massive back deck that needs water proofing, and a swimming pool that requires shocking. But we aren’t even there yet, because I’m still not unpacked.
One question you may be asking yourself is, GS, why are you typing this nonsense when you could be putting the screws to one of those projects? Good question. Can’t do the deck or pool cause its raining, the wine hutch is drying, and I’m doing laundry. So chill and don’t gimmee your boogie-woogie.
Such answers deal with the matter of time. But about the money. I dropped three-hundred smackers the day I got back. I handed the man at Lowes’ a bill for five gallons of paint, a forty-spot for a nice dinner (this was very warrented), another forty on grocceries, and I rounded that out with some books and movies that had come in at Barnes&Nobles. That, along with some cash from the ATM for the sake of having, drops me down a mite. But last night was the shocker - time to pay the bills.
Ladies, we know there is a time of the month that you are not so friendly with, so trust me when I give you this; paying bills especially if its a few days before we get paided again, is the male version of PMS. And I had a few such irritants to deal with - water, electric, cable, various military dues, and of course, the cell phone bill. For what it’s worth, my contract with Sprint is up in three months, and come the first of May, I can get a new phone with all the trimmings if I sign up for another year or so. Now, I’ve been with Sprint since the conception of my wireless lifestyle, through thick and thin, the good-times and the poor-times, and I see no reason to give them up. Not because of their superior service, because lets face it; none of these phone companies deserve to be cannonized, but because it has become something of a blood feud, which I gladly march to the beat of the fife and drum every month, and for the last seven months, have returned home laided out upon a stretcher.
I would like you to note the openning quotation. The fact remains that I know Sprint. I know how they work, how they recruit, and how they try to screw you; and not unlike a drunk girl at a mid-semester frat party, at this point I’m pretty good at saying, no thanks, I’ve been screwed here before, and I didn’t like it. Cingular, T-Mobile, Verizon, to Hell with all those guys! None of them are white knights coming forth with some sort of wireless holy grail for my mobile kingdom. They are snakes in the grass, all of them; switching would just be a giant headache of paying a huge bill and looking for how I got earholed; paying a huge bill and looking for how I got earholed; paying a huge bill and… you get the idea. But with Sprint, I know how I’m getting earholed. My problem is that I keep giving them a new ear each month.
For example. Last summer when I moved back east of the Mississippi, I had them stop sending my bills to my house, because naturally I would not be there to receive them. Appearently, I forgot to tell them where I was going, so three bills hit at once. That took some sorting out. Then I had them turn my service down to the lowest amount, that is, take all the bells and whistles off-line so that I can just pay the minimum while I was out in the field last fall. Since Christmas, I have been trying to figure out which bells and whistles went where and did what! Every bill is like, what the fuck?! I should have more minutes than that… oh, I forget to tell them to put my nights and Memorial Day’s back on. Basically, I’m trying to remember, though trial and error, what I had learned at college through trial and error . This month was the capper. I pay for a thousand text messages a month as part of my plan, and for those of you who are perhaps into the texting aspect of life, you know this a descent plan. Past that amount, text messages are ten cents a text, whether you recieve or send. Also to note, I have managed, though a military discount, to have this great plan for a mere sixty-dollars a month, should I happen not to break my limits on minutes or texts or internet time. To my dismay, it was not to be this month as I apparently sent and recieved in excess of eighteen-hundred text messages.
Yeah, my bill was a hundred and forty-six bucks. I knew I was texting a lot, I have a new group of friends that text a considerable amount, but its not any one of their faults. I guess I’m just beginning to felt like Sprints’ bitch.
But there is next month, and next month is going to be a sixty dollar payment. I can feel it! Irony is that I’m considering going to switch my internet provider to Sprint because it is theoretically cheaper… wonder if therein there be monsters….
