We drove down to Houston yesterday for an Astros game.  Surprisingly, Kaelin did really well during the 4-hour car ride each way, thanks to a Veggie Tales Scribbler pad, a DVD or two, and 5,000 raisins.

We got to see one of the final games in Craig Biggio’s career, and it was fun to see him so celebrated by the fans.  Kaelin did really well during the game, which shocked me since she had only napped about 30 minutes that day and it went past her bedtime.  She enjoyed the crowd and kept commenting about about the “looooooouuuuuuuud noises!” and “look at all the people!”  She charmed the people behind us with her dimples and outgoing personality.  A good thing, since she needed to earn some points after sticking her fingers in their drinks.

She clapped and danced with the music, shouted* “Lets go Astros!” and -thanks to Aunt Iris – even learned The Wave:

And just so you know, she’s really into the DiGiorno Pizza they serve at the stadium.

*When you tell Kaelin to yell something, she takes that to mean she should use her VERY. DEEPEST. VOICE and her VERY. BIGGEST. EYES.

If you’re using Internet Explorer and you’re finding that the top of this blog appears to be “cut off,” you need to upgrade to IE 7.0.Â

I know I haven’t been around much lately, and I’m sorry.   I haven’t been responding to comments and I’ve hardly been leaving comments and I feel like that friend who never returns calls.

I’m just feeling a little…disconnected from the internet world right now.

I hope to be back soon with more scintillating adventures … or at least a new blog template.   Rest assured that things around here are ok.   We’re really enjoying the new house and I’m looking at options as far as employment.

Dude.   I got laid off.

I got laid off today.Â

Notice anything different around here?  No, I didn’t get a haircut.  I’ve been meaning to get around to changing the look of this site for a while now… the “cartoon” motif had overstayed its welcome.Â

Low and behold, we now have internet and phone.   It took Time Warner 3 days, 6,531 phone calls and a supervisor visit to figure it out.   And they were only able to get the wireless internet working because J went up there and figured it out for them.

And in other technically frustrating moments, this is an excerpt from the “Help” section of this new web-based email program I’m trying to configure:

• To reply to the sender of the message, click ‘Reply’.
• To reply to the sender of the message and to all other recipients of this message, click ‘Reply All’.
• To forward the message to another email address, click ‘Forward’.
• To add the sender to your address book, click ‘add to contacts’.

The entire help section consists of those kind of statements.   Truthfully, the person who actually finds that HELPFUL should probably not be operating email.

There is, naturally, nothing in the “help” section that moves beyond the level of “Ridiculously Intuitive.”   For instance, WHY does the “Check Mail” button disappear if there are no previously downloaded messages sitting in my Inbox?   Of course, nothing in the “help” section even comes close to dealing with that issue.

But GUESS WHAT??   There’s even an FAQ section, full of SIX questions that can be answered by LOOKING AT THE SCREEN.

Can I send HTML formatted email messages?
YES!   Check the box that says “Use HTML formatting editor!”

Can I add a signature to my email?
YES!   See the BIG BUTTON AT THE TOP OF THE PAGE THAT SAYS “ADD SIGNATURE?”

How do I add someone to my address book?
This one’s a little tricky, you might want to write this down:   You click ADDRESS BOOK.   And then?   You click “ADD SOMEONE.”

I have serious doubts that these questions are asked frequently for 2 reasons:

1. People who ask these questions are not people who can figure out how to submit a Contact Us form.
2. There is no Contact Us form and no way to communicate with anyone for assistance, and therefore no way for ANYONE to ask questions.

Thanks, guys.

J stayed home from work today* to wait for the Time Warner Technician, who was scheduled to arrive between 8am and 11am.

At 11:45 no one had shown up, so he called Time Warner’s Customer Service. He was told that the appointment had been rescheduled to this evening after 5pm.

J: “Rescheduled? Were you planning to tell us about this?”

CS: “We called you last night and left a message .”

J: “I didn’t get a message. My wife didn’t get a message. What number did you call and leave a message on?”

CS: (reads him the number)

J: (Blink. Blink.)

They left a message on the phone line that we’ve spent two days trying to get them to set up. The phone line that doesn’t work and apparently has voicemail that they haven’t given us access to.

I am speechless right now.   And for your sake, I’m trying to finish this blog entry before I find the words.

*Which may sound odd, since he typically works from home, but since we have neither phone nor working internet from home (even the plug-into-the-box internet doesn’t work on his machine), he has to go elsewhere these days to get any work done.

Wow, it’s been a while since I’ve made any updates here.  Mostly due to the fact that we’ve been without internet access (oh, sweet internet access, why have you forsaken me?) for a month.  There’s a lot that’s happened, so queue bullet points:

• We didn’t close the day we were supposed to because of the last minute change to the selling price (due to aforementioned appraisal).  Closing was rescheduled for the following week.
• On the day we were supposed to close, Wells Fargo’s entire computer system crashed, leaving us un-funded and unable to close.  Again.  Closing was rescheduled for the Next Business Day In Which Huge National Bank Can Function Without Wigging Out (or as it’s more commonly known, NBDIWHNBCFWWO).
• But the moving company had already shown up and packed up all our stuff.  So they trucked all our stuff to their warehouse and unloaded it there.
• NBDIWHNBCFWWO happened to be “Training Day” at the title company.  We were running dangerously close to the time we had to be out of our old house.  There was only one person there available to do closings.  We got bumped into the late afternoon and started to really bite our nails, but we made it through and finally closed on the house.
• We’re finally moved in (though there’s still stuff everywhere) and we’re loving the new house.  It’s ridiculously wonderful.  We don’t deserve this house and it’s more than we need, and yet we’re in it.  It’s ours.  It’s lovely.  And we’re so happy with it.
• Well, except for the peach and mustard paint all over the walls.  Something will have to be done about that.
• And the light switch covers.  And outlet covers, which are ornate flowery brassy gold and ugly as sin.  And the chandeliers.  We’ve replaced two so far.  And I’m halfway through replacing the cabinet handles – again with the shiny brassy gold thing.  Ick.
• But the house itself is perfect.  Kaelin adores her playroom and I adore having a place to put all the toys where it doesn’t matter if she leaves them all over the floor.
• Jens is in the process of perfecting his media room.  I have a few days left before I become a TV Widow.
• Kaelin has slept in her “big bed” for 3 nights now and seems to be enjoying the adjustment.  My little girl is turning into a big girl.
• I use the phrase “in her bed” loosely.  This morning Jens went in to wake her up and found two little feet sticking out from under the bed.  He had to pull her out and I’m not sure she even knows how she got down there.  She seemed puzzled, but woke up happy.  At breakfast she marveled, “I wote up under da big bed!”
• I’m trying to teach her that “downstairs” and “upstairs” are more of a concept than an actual location.  We’ll be downstairs in the bedroom and she’ll as to go downstairs.  She just looks at me when I tell her that we ARE downstairs, “downstairs” to her seems to mean the living room.
• She’s starting to get the concept of Thank You God for this and that, and she likes to say that “Chesus put da moon in da sty.”
• We’re working on teaching her that Jesus can do more than one thing at a time.  For instance, he can put the moon in the sky AND make the fish in the water.  When Ana (Jens’ Mom, Ana = Eskimo for “Grandma”) told her that Jesus made the frog, Kaelin said, “Ana, Chesus made da moon.”  Because as everyone knows, frogs and moons are mutually exclusive and Ana had simply gotten it wrong.
• She’s finally singing.  It’s really more of a chant, but we call it singing.  She can sing all the way through The Itsy Bitsy Spider and Twinkle Twinkle Little Star and Ring Around the Rosy, and she can sing various parts of the Alphabet Song.
• She’s still the Singing Police though, and if I try to get away with anything other than a nursery song she says “Mama, no singing” with the same maternal tone as if she were reminding me to correct my posture.
• She turns two next month and I can’t believe it.
• So what do you think, is this post long enough?
• Should I add a few more bullet points just for good measure?
• I need to add some pictures, don’t I.  That’s what you all really come here for, isn’t it.

You can’t fool me.

Ooh, the internet… I can finally get my fix. The withdrawal symptoms were killing me.

I hate Time Warner. There internal communication structure must be akin to sending messenger rats.   Because nobody is on the same page as anybody else, and nobody seems to know what’s going on, though they’ll all swear up and down that they know. Unfortunately (unlike the last city we lived in), we don’t have any other options.

Even though we technically have internet now, I can only use it if I’m sitting on the floor in the media room because my computer has to be directly plugged into the box.

The technician came out here today to install the wireless internet and – get this – didn’t have any wireless internet equipment. So he has to come back tomorrow to finish the job. WTH???

I HAVE BEEN WITHOUT PHONE OR INTERNET FOR A MONTH BUT APPARENTLY YOU NEED LONGER THAN THAT TO FIGURE OUT HOW TO PUT A BOX OF EQUIPMENT IN YOUR TRUCK????

Ahem. Sorry. Withdrawal symptoms coming out again.

He was also supposed to install our phone line while he was here and left without doing that either. According to him, he couldn’t get it done today because there was something Customer Service was supposed to do that hadn’t been done (he wouldn’t tell me what “it” was) so I had to call customer service because they needed to talk to me before they would do “it.”

Customer Service had no idea what I was talking about. But rather than wait for me to call them, Technician Guy just left – so he wasn’t there to explain it to them.

They finally determined that the problem was due to the fact that the line wasn’t scheduled to be activated until 2:04 pm, and once 2:04 pm got here everything would be fine.

So let me get this straight… They scheduled a technician to set up our phone line at 9am, but then scheduled the phone line activation for after 2pm, knowing that the line activation was necessary for the tech to finish his job. Again, WTH???

I tried to tell them that no, that couldn’t have been what the technician was talking about because he said there was something he was unable to do, so he would have to come back out here before the phone would work. But they assured me that wasn’t the case. I asked them to call Technician Guy to figure out what he meant, but they pretty much ignored that idea.

Well guess what. 2:04pm came and went and still no phone service.

On my second call to customer service (which was actually my 5th call, but we won’t go there) the Customer Service Rep determined that the technician was waiting for them to send a signal to the modem or something. Which they did in like half a second. I pleaded with her to just CALL THE TECHNICIAN to figure out if that was in fact all he was talking about. She said she knew he meant and left it at that.

Time Warner employees must grow warts if they actually make an effort to communicate with the technicians. That’s all I can figure with the way they avoid it.

Assuming Customer Service Rep #2 was correct, I’m incredulous that the technician decided to LEAVE without finishing the job, as opposed to wait for 5 seconds to have this done. So now we’re another day without a phone.

Did I mention that this is the only house I have ever been in where my cell phone doesn’t get a decent signal?

Figures.