I had ordered a few items from Amazon before Ian and of course they were delayed due to "weather issues." To be fair, there were still a lot of areas around town hit harder than me with some trees down, light poles messed up and being worked on (causing more intermittent power and internet brown-outs for me still) and some street flooding.
But one item on my order, a freakin' LED lightbulb to replace the constantly burning out incandescent one under the stovetop exhaust hood, was slated as "could be lost" so I went to Walmart and bought a set of four of these bulbs for a better price.
The Amazon bulb finally showed up. Will I return it? Amazon now makes you drop the return item to a UPS Store instead of being able to just print a label like you used to. Nearest UPS Store? Lake Wales. 35 miles away. Screw that.
Monday morning around 10am I'm diligently working playing Civ when I hear a gentle knock on my door. Some older lady leaning on a walker is there. She gets around to asking me, using five hundred words when just a few would suffice, if I could drive her handicapped fat ass to Aldi's so she can get grub for her soon-to-be-arriving lunch guests. WTF?
Being the nice guy I am, I do it. She's got a massive swollen leg due to some major health condition, one of the many she was rattling off to me as she non-stop talked my head off, so I have to help her in the passenger seat. Now I'm a caregiver again.
She offers compensation in the way of her using her EBT card to get me a snack at the store. "You look like you would like a bit of something chocolate." she says slyly to me as if to acknowledge her "fatdar" was pinging. "Really, bitch?" I thought to myself, "Are YOU trolling me?" I politely declined her offer, she went in sans walker (you know Hulk had no room for that) used a store-provided motorized hover-round, and returned with her groceries (unbagged, of course, it being Aldi) which I helped pack in the car, squeezed her back in, continued my way back to our street, all the while rubbing my right hand against her bulbous thigh (stick shift in a tiny car syndrome) and deposited her to her trailer (5 or so houses away from me...why didn't she hit up a closer neighbor?...no one else home?...or has she exhausted her favor supply from them already?). Her guests greet her and I politely. Of course they did. They were Mormon missionaries.
Literally a couple hours later, what do I get in the way of compensatory karma for my good neighbor deed of the day? Poof, with a puff of smelly smoke, my AC goes out. The fan was running in the outside unit but no air was pumping up from the vents in the floor. I turned it off and on, hoping it's just iced up or something. Nothing.
I scanned Google Maps for a repair guy and read all the reviews. The best seemed to be some outfit across the lake but they were too busy for new customers so they referred me to a company not even on Google maps or reviews. I called, they asked if I could hold out to tomorrow morning. It was actually mild-ish weather so I could. Well, did I really have a choice?
It was a bit uncomfortable through the day as it reached up to the mid eighties outside and the upper eighties inside. The irony that I lucked out during and after the hurricane when so many other Floridians had to endure what I was experiencing now.
Victor, a short Hispanic guy showed up on-time and ready to go the next morning. Blower motor blew out. Replacement with labor: $450. Ok. Whew, actually, I was fearing the ol' "Mister, you need a new unit..." thing. That would have been thousands.
The County put out notices to my paused-status creditors that are suing me that they have a month or so to proceed with their case or it'll be thrown out. I was hoping all three of the ones of concern would neglect to respond. Unfortunately, one did respond...with their 45-page motion for Summary Judgment. Yet another fucker about to be gnawing at me.
Feelin' the heat, so to speak, I thought I might give the Assurance client another go. If I got back in, I'd have about a week or so of really lucrative opportunity with a high starting tier. Liveops being who they are though fucked me over by saying I hadn't filled out this new application in time so, nope, they say...move on. Maybe just as well.
Oh and then, like the proverbial cherry on the top, this is this:
