I'm going slightly mad

Friday it was a novelty. Snow. It happens every year here in Merryland, although you wouldn’t be able to tell that by the way that people drive. The moment someone mentions snow on the radio, or someone sees a flake... people immediately aim their cars for ditches, road signs, each other, and chaos ensues.

Luckily I don’t work on Fridays, so I was able to keep up with the shoveling throughout the day after a harrowing trip to the supermarket... where everyone was cramming their carts with supplies for the storm of the century of the millennium and the superbowl.

The problem was going to sleep. Yeah, probably should have stayed up all night shoveling because by the time we woke up, SNOWMAGEDDON!!!! About 2 feet of snow. LOTS of snow, and it was still freakin snowing. It snowed so hard throughout the night that we had thundersnow. That’s nutty.

So, half of Saturday and then most of Sunday hubby and I spent shoveling 2 freakin feet of snow. I even had to go shovel my neighbor’s front door because they were snowed in and couldn’t get out. You would think they would have sent over the hired snow blower they had come around later in the day, but NOOOOOO. See if I ever dig them out.

We managed to free the trucks and drive to... of course, Starbucks, but it was a carnival ride getting there. One lane (if that) on major streets, and one lane (if lucky) on major interstates, and the exits were a nightmare, but we made it... we have priorities.

I made it into work on Monday, although I don’t know why, nobody was there, nothing worked and the only road to work hadn’t seen a plow for 3 years and was a luge ride. I left after half a day and started doing online training stuff.

Tuesday was a no go because the next round of the storm of the century of the millennium or the universe started up and this one is OH SO MUCH MORE FUN! Its officially a “blizzard” thanks to the dumping snow and the pesky 50mph winds. Oh yeah, we’re having a ball. On Wednesday morning I started going out every hour to shovel the drive, and curse the random plow that would come by and block us back in... damn you! Around 3pm I gave up entirely... just forget it, I don’t have enough motrin to keep up all that shoveling.

The whole state is under snow lock-down... no driving or you get arrested. I guess this is to keep people who feel compelled to looky-loo or go to the store for something stupid at a minimum. I have to admit, we’re running low on milk so the latte outlook is bleak... I should have bought a whole gallon, but who would have thought the whole freakin state would be under 4 feet of snow this week.

I shouldn’t complain. We have power (knock on wood), everyone is home and warm, and its pretty... until I have to shovel it again. I have a feeling we aren’t getting out of here until friday.

Could someone in Pennsylvania find that groundhog and strangle him?

Verizon/MCI hate mail

Apparently calling and yelling TWICE about something isn’t sufficient enough. Note to Verizon customer service people: never give me your company e-mail address, I shall use it:

Actual e-mail:

You may recall that on 19 January 2010 I called and practically yelled at you about issues with my FIOS services and billing. The reason for the yelling is that it was the SECOND time I had to call for the same three issues.

During that call I outlined 3 issues:

1.) Although we had contracted to have FIOS internet, phone, and long distance installed, we were still being billed by MCI and had no FIOS long distance - You bundled my services and transferred me to the Verizon switch-over verification to confirm I wished our business long distance be switched to Verizon from MCI, which I did.

I have just received a "welcome to MCI long distance" package from MCI. I want to confirm that I do indeed have Verizon FIOS long distance so that I can call and yell at MCI again.

2.) I am not receiving any bills. I want to receive paper bills... in the mail... to my business address... I have not received any bills... make this happen.

3.) I cannot access my account online. Despite confirming my login and password, changing my password, performing voodoo rituals and sacrificing chocolate bunnies to the gods, I always get that Verizon is "unable to process my request at this time, please try again later". I'm pretty sure that trying every day for the past two weeks constitutes "trying again" sufficient enough to declare that my account is still irreparably hosed.

So, in a nutshell:
I can't check my account to see who my long distance carrier is.
I can't check my account to see how much I owe your fine company
I can't check my bill to see any of these things because you aren't sending them to me.

I've called about these issues THREE TIMES and still nothing has been done.

Please have someone with some clout in your company explain to me why I should remain a customer of yours, and to assure me that these issues are taken care of.