The Internet's back

But things have still been a little too interesting in the Chinese proverb sense. On Wednesday night, John called me while I was teaching my last videoconference class of the semester. He was trying to back out of a parking spot, and the car, which had just been in the shop Monday, wouldn't go. We thought it was the transmission; instead it was a busted axle - and it may turn out to be the fault of the garage where it was on Monday - they either missed something, or forgot to put something back together. So we may get paid back. And thank fuck it didn't happen when John was going 85 on the highway - I think the reason why our regular garage was so quick to offer to reimburse.

There's a lot of rumbling and grousing at work - the faculty doesn't like the continuing ed. dept., nor the distance program that I coordinate. Plus there is fear that the University will dissolve our department because UW-Milwaukee offers the same program, and is cranking out more M.A.s in library science, AND now also has a doctoral program - that used be our claim to fame; now all we have is the pleasant location in Madison.

By the time I was walking home yesterday - after teaching my last face-to-face class - I was sure I'm going to lose my job any second now.

And John's bike, that his Dad shipped to him FedEx was not here yet, only the hang tag that says they tried to deliver - they want someone home - With UPS I can go online and tell them when to come, FedEx I think I have to call the 800 number and spend the rest of my life on hold ...

And, along with the bike non-delivery hangtag, also in the mail was the aftershock of our other fucked up piece of work, the tree pruning, that we were assured would be done gratis* - another bill for $443, plus a $6.95 finance charge - and I can't call them back to bitch until Monday.

*we scheduled the work in November; they didn't get to it until spring; they claimed to have done it March 17 - their arborist lied to me, then came back and wacked off two branches, and the tree was still hitting the house; the head of the company came and took a look, I expect the arborist got a firm talking to, or possibly canned, and they finally did the job right, and another guy from the company assured me it would be gratis - naturally, I have since deleted the voicemails and the photographs I took of the un-trimmed tree ....

So I made chicken curry for dinner, the way we like it, using the shrimp curry recipe from Ruth Reichl's Comfort Me With Apples [it's comfort food in that book too] but with chicken, and grilled the Naan that I had frozen, and we ate it with extra long grain Basmati rice, peas, and the full-fat Fage Greek yogurt I got at Trader Joe's. It's funny because the Naan recipe is from an NYT article that's a paen to Greek yogurt; myself being un-indoctrinated to its charms as recently as last week, I just used Nancy's whole milk - the yogurt all us old Deadheads buy.