A year or so ago, we switched our home phone service from Verizon to Vonage. We hardly ever call out from our home phone because we have so many rollover minutes on our cell phones that we’re trying to use up, so when we moved into this house, we got the cheapest Verizon package available and added caller ID to it.
Caller ID, incidentally, has become my new favorite thing that I can’t live without (TiVo being the last such favorite thing). We don’t get many calls, and we don’t like to get many calls, but we get even fewer once we stopped answering all the “Unknown” and “Private” calls that inevitably involve lengthy sales pitches and repeated requests for “Mrs. Robert.” I can’t imagine living without it, and that’s why I was willing to pay the additional $7 a month or so that would let us bring this exciting technology into our home.
But our Verizon phone service was still costing us about $20 a month with all the taxes and surcharges, so finally we took the plunge and subscribed to Vonage.
With Vonage, we pay $16 a month which includes 500 minutes of outgoing calls to the U.S. and Canada each month, three-way calling, caller ID, voicemail, call waiting, call forwarding, and probably even more features that I don’t know how to use. We have never exceeded the 500 minutes and because the monthly fee is so cheap, I’ve been willing to put up with a few phone quirks.
For one thing, Vonage’s voicemail is stored online. We have our own answering machine, so we figured we wouldn’t have to ever worry about the online voicemail. It turns out that when the phone line is busy and a second call comes in, the second call goes to the Vonage voicemail if no one picks up. We discovered this only after my parents kept insisting they had left a message for us, and I found nothing on our answering machine. I had already started dropping hints about their old age and how they’d probably left their message on a complete stranger’s machine when Chris eventually discovered their voicemail message on our Vonage account online.
We turned off the online voicemail by forwarding all calls after a certain time period of ringing to Chris’s cellphone, which also came in handy when we found that our phone had a habit of going out occasionally when we had issues with our cable modem or with a power outage. But all in all, the minor inconveniences were nothing compared to the cheaper rate we were getting.
Today I tried to call home from work to check our messages. I had some difficulty getting a line from work as the phone didn’t seem to be working correctly, and after I dialed my home number, I heard a strange double ring.
The phone rang again, and a man answered the phone.
“Hello?” he said.
I was so startled by his voice that I nearly hung up right away. My immediate thought was that I had disturbed an intruder in our home. Cleverly, I decided I should disguise my knowledge from him.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I must have dialed the wrong number.” Good lord, had he killed my dogs?!?
The man paused oddly. “Okay,” he said finally, and hung up.
I wondered why he’d paused. Most people think nothing of wrong numbers who call their house. As a matter of fact, just last week I’d told a caller to my dad’s house that my name was Jane and my mother was in Taiwan, only to find out that he was no one I knew and a wrong number. (In my defense, the caller had asked for my name and how my mother was doing, and since he was acting like he knew me, I figured he must be a friend of my parents.)
Because of the pause on the phone, now I knew I was right and that someone was in our house. After all, what were the chances that I’d misdialed my own home number, a number that I called so frequently when I was away that Chris spent more time talking to me than when I was home with him?
It was a time of crisis, and so it was time to email Chris.
“i just tried to call our home to check messages,” I typed to him, “and some guy answered. Could you try?”
I didn’t have time to go into my home intruder theory, but felt that information was self-evident from my email.
Chris wrote back almost immediately.
“That was me on my cellphone!!!!” he wrote, punctuated by many “HA HA HA HA”s. “You didn’t recognize me.”
Apparently our phone was out again. I felt foolish momentarily, but rallied quickly.
“Well, did you recognize me? You didn’t say anything!” I wrote.
He replied, “I guess I didn’t recognize you either. But you barely said anything, just ‘wrong number’ and hung up on me! Didn’t give me a second to think about it…”
So the lesson of the day is that when home intruders answer your telephone, you should give them a few seconds to respond appropriately. And maybe if you wait long enough, you’ll be able to recognize your spouse’s voice.
by Carolyn Haywood
ONE LINE SUMMARY: Betsy and her friends plan a greeting for Mr. Kilpatrick’s 6 nieces and nephews who will be visiting from Ireland.
I used to love these Betsy books when I was much younger, and although they don’t hold up as well upon being read by an adult, they are still great books for kids.
by Mary Nash
ONE LINE SUMMARY: When Miss Eva comes to stay with the children, the Toad hatches a magical plan to ensure that their Christmas stays Eva-free.
Sequel to While Mrs. Coverlet Was Away, and just as good.
by Mary Nash
ONE LINE SUMMARY: The Toad sells his cat and invents new cat food that the townspeople go crazy for.
This is an amusing book with great pictures, and after many readings, I still love it.
…returning kelp powder, steamed bonemeal, cod liver oil, vitamin E, and brewer’s yeast to two different stores, being asked by two different salespeople the reason for your return, and having to admit that thinking about making homemade food for your dogs is entirely different from actually doing it.
by Beth Lisick
ONE LINE SUMMARY: This is a collection of funny, short essays on the author’s childhood and adult life.
The first half of this book was hysterically funny. Oddly, once the author started getting into her adult years, I found the essays less humorous and more scattered. I think I would have preferred an entire book of essays on her childhood, and then an entire book of essays on her adult life so that she had more time to go into more detail.
For instance, there is no mention anywhere of her wedding or how she decided to marry whom she did. And after reading the essays leading up to her marriage, and the ones after her marriage, the lack of an essay covering some aspect of marriage itself is glaring. I feel like we almost know who the author is, but she is just stepping back a bit before we can see who she is.
That being said, I still recommend this.
by Michael Stadther
ONE LINE SUMMARY: Michael Stadther hid clues for finding tokens corresponding to real jewels in the pictures (and possibly text) of his book.
My enthusiasm for this project is beginning to wane, perhaps because reading books like these makes me feel like they’re hardly worth the effort of entering into my system.
The story is pretty badly written, but the pictures are very nice. This is one of the few books that I feel could have used fewer words and more pictures.
Also, given that all of the original tokens and jewels have been found, the thrill of solving the puzzles is pretty much gone for me, not that I enjoyed solving puzzles all that much.
Yesterday I ordered a drum unit for our fax machine at work, which was flashing a dreaded “CHANGE DRUM SOON!” message. I wasn’t sure if it would escalate into a “CHANGE DRUM IN ONE DAY!” and then a “CHANGE DRUM NOW!” message, so I ordered the drum unit to have handy in case it needed to be changed at an unforeseen and inconvenient moment.
The drum unit was approximately $200, but I had already waited as long as I dared before ordering it.
We order from WB Mason, which is pretty easy. I type up an order, fax it over, and the next day the items get delivered straight to our office.
Lately, though, I’ve had some problems with ordering. One day I got everything I had requested except the 3 boxes of copy paper. I got everything I’d typed on the order form above the copy paper, and everything typed below the copy paper, but no copy paper.
When I called the customer service rep, she told me that sometimes the faxes come through with lines through them, so they miss some of the items. Apparently they don’t bother to call you to ask about “that wavy line in the middle of the order form that might or might not be something you want.”
At any rate, my drum unit arrived today in a large cardboard box. I thought it was weird that they had packed it in a big box, but then, I’ve gotten a small pack of pens in a giant envelope from them before, so I figured this was just another example of Corporate Packaging.
I signed for the delivery, and looked at the packing slip. ONE DRUM UNIT, it said.
I went into the supply room where the WB Mason man had left the box. I opened it up.
Inside the big cardboard box was a single, lonely, black binder.
My first thought, I’m sorry to say, was to blame the delivery man. I immediately assumed he had given me an order meant for another customer on his route. And somewhere on his truck, waiting to arrive into a stranger’s hands, was my drum unit.
I was all set to run outside and stop the delivery man, perhaps with some kind of large gesture involving throwing my body in front of his vehicle, but I glanced out the window of the supply room just in time to see the WB Mason truck pulling away.
“Great,” I muttered to myself, and stomped away.
As I’m often talking to myself or making strange faces as I think about what I need to do, no one at work paid any attention to this behavior. Then again, I also work at a place where one of the lawyers sometimes stops walking on the way to the water cooler to practice imaginary golf swings in the middle of the reception area.
I looked at the box more carefully. The sticker on the side had our company name on it, and also had “ONE DRUM UNIT” listed as its contents.
For whatever reason, whoever had packed our order had decided that “ONE DRUM UNIT” corresponded to a black binder.
I called WB Mason, who told me they would send out a drum unit later that day and pick up the binder.
“But will we get billed for it twice?” I asked. “I mean, according to the packing slip, I already got one drum unit.”
“No,” the customer rep said reassuringly. “We already billed you for that one, and now we’ll credit you. And then we’ll bill you for this new drum unit.”
So WB Mason ordered a drum unit for us and charged us for a drum unit, but gave us a black binder. Only in corporate America can you pay $200 for a single black binder.