Very upset at the Twitter folks this morning. I've spent the last month building up Lucy_Cat's Twitter profile only to awaken this morning to find all but one of my followers deleted. Not to mention the links to everyone I was following are gone as well. Some sort of system meltdown which I understand is not uncommon in the Twitter world.
Bad Twitter! You don't deserve tweets!
I miss the days of paying bills by dropping a check in the mail. This morning I received two e-mails from an Internet account provider. The first said the annual payment for my account was due (true) and my account would be charged $1890.00.
Umm... hello what? The message went on to say that the expiration date on my supplied credit card was incorrect and the transaction couldn't go through. Thank God.
The next message said the annual payment on my account was due and I'd be charged $75--the correct amount. Same message about incorrect expiration date. That's odd, because this company has had the same card of mine on file for years.
I e-mailed the service and heard back almost immediately that a batch of incorrect e-mails had been released, and to ignore them. They asked that I update my credit card info and pay online. (This isn't spam, if that's what you're thinking. I went through the site, not the e-mails, to handle all this.)
I updated my credit card, changing the expiration date to the correct month, and hit "Pay Invoice." I recieved an error message that my expiration date was incorrect. I corrected it AGAIN and AGAIN hit "Pay Invoice." Same error message appeared.
Okey-dokey... now I'm ticked. Is my account being charged twice? Has it not been paid? Who the hell knows? All I know is I'm 20 minutes in at this point and longing for the days when I wrote checks by hand. It's like with our phones. Our cordless phones are gasping their last breaths and it's a 50-50 shot if they'll allow us to actually answer a call. Add that in with a cell phone service that covers our house only sporadically and it's practically like living in prarie times around here.
Upshot... we bought new cordless phones and they're charging. The service verified my account has been paid and charged only once. LIfe goes on.
I just wish it would sometimes go on with a bit less technology...
What's the point in having a blog if one can't vent? It's almost 10:30 on Monday morning, and I'm sitting in Caribou Coffee all set to get to work on a book proposal that needs done, like, yesterday. I've got two and a half hours until my Masterminds Marketing meeting but just realized (drumroll, please)... I left at home the entire folder I need for the meeting which includes all the handouts and info for my portion of a presentation on author videos.
This means I get to hurry my ass home, grab the materials, and drive back into Greensboro. Truly, I love wasting $30 worth of gas and an hour and a half drive time on a stupid mistake. No writing time now--and I had a "come to Jesus" talk with myself this weekend about getting my act together and getting some real work done.
I'm upset, but looking for that blue sky. As in, at least I realized I'd left the materials at home in time to go fetch them. That's something, right? Right? I'm also ticked because I pride myself on being organized. I don't know if it's perimenopause, laziness, or the gods are conspiring against me, but my focus, energy, and organization has been for crap for several months now.
So... I just choked down a multigrain bagel (blue sky again: I wanted a doughnut!) and getting ready to pull the plug and head home.
I read a quote this morning: "It's not the world's fault you wanted to be an artist. Now get to work."
Lazing around the house this morning, overcast sky, Blair and I decided to drive into town (C'mon Ma--round up the young'uns. We'e a headin' to the big city!) and see Hancock.
Having decided this, Blair hopped online and called out the five theatres where the movie was playing, along with times. He also read some posted reviews out loud to me.
"What did we do before the Internet?" I asked. It seems so long ago when one had to--gasp!-call the theatre to hear the movies and their times. And you would sit on the phone for five minutes while happy pre-recorded movie man listed the times for every other movie on the planet. That's if you were lucky enough to get through. Often you were put on hold because everyone else was also calling in to see what movies were playing.
As far as early reviews, your only options were the critics (and you can't believe a word they say), or friends who had already seen the movie.
The matinee price today was $6.25. I'm going to age myself but I can remember being young and my cousin and I freaking out because movie prices had finally hit a dollar. That's back in the day when I'd go to see a movie I liked several times. I saw the original Star Wars seven times in the theatre in 1977, which was nothing compared to my cousin Andy who I think saw it something like 18 times in two weeks. These days it would be cheaper to fly the producer in for a private in-home screening versus paying to see it 18 times in the theatre.
That's supposing a movie is ever made I'd care to see 18 times. I'm tired of my summer movie options being limited by the viewing demographics of 13-year-old boys who apparently grow bored if a car or building isn't blown up every five seconds.
Crotchety? You betcha. Cause in MY day, young 'uns, they knew how to make a movie...
Author. Humorist. Fitness fanatic. Control freak (working on it). Mentor. Klutz. All-around decent human being.
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