Ring-a-ding

Ups and downs this weekend...

The major down, for us at least, was discovering that our phone service has gone wonky -- we can make calls out, but anyone trying to call in just gets a couple of bursts of static and then silence, and the phone doesn't ring at all on our end. That wouldn't be too big of a deal -- we hardly ever actually use the house line, and if that was all there was to it, we might consider just dropping it entirely -- but whatever is wrong with the phone also seems to be affecting our DSL line, and making it dump us offline every fifteen or twenty minutes, which is really quite frustrating when we live online as much as we do.

So Matt called the phone company, and they have just about the worst customer service evar. The first time he called, he did it from the house line, and they told him they couldn't run remote tests if we were actually on the phone, which... I guess makes sense, but the person he was talking to (after ten minutes of navigating the horrible automated menus) couldn't give him a direct-line callback number. So he had to hang up and get on my cell phone (his is pay-by-the-minute, whereas I'm on a plan and never use all my minutes) and then navigate the horrible automation again. This time it walked him through some diagnostics via automation, and eventually told him to hang up, unplug all the phones in the house, and then try plugging them back in one at a time.

Well, we still have the problem even with no phones plugged in, so he called back a third time and told the automation to go eff itself until it offered to send out a service person. "The earliest available appointment is on... December... ... ... 15th, between 8 A.M. and... ... ... 6 P.M."

Oy. So I'll be working from home on Wednesday so that someone can be there to let the phone guy in. And in the meantime, our internet is a bit spotty.

But on the bright side! We had the first of the moon cookie parties! Braz and Adin and all four of their kids came, and everyone over age 5 was allowed to make 3 cookies each (well, Emma, at 9, was allowed to make 4 and she got to handle her own knife to trim the dough) and then Braz and Adin and I used up the rest of the dough.

(I didn't get pics of the kids making cookies, alas, because pretty much the whole time the kids were working, I was being asked to finish off Penny's cookies for her. Maybe I'll get some pictures next weekend.)

Adin was quite enthusiastic about the cookies, too. Another moon cookie fan, yay!

In case you're wondering, while we were making cookies, Matt was keeping the kids entertained.

We went out to dinner afterward, of course. And then Sunday, when I mentioned to Adin that the kids had left some stuff behind, she suggested we all meet up for dinner that evening, so that's what we did, and that was nice.

And we came home and got the kids in bed, and then Matt and I watched the new Leverage episode, which was completely awesome.

So it was, all in all, a pretty nice weekend! Phone/internet issues notwithstanding.

This week promises to be busy. I've got a software delivery to organize for work, and as mentioned, I'm working from home Wednesday. Thursday I'm going out to lunch with "the girls" at work, and that evening is the 2nd grade holiday concert. Friday is my office's holiday luncheon (they decided at the very last minute that there would be one, after all. I'm glad I didn't get tagged to organize it!). And then Sunday is the second moon cookie party -- which will be more party-like, because we'll have the Hickseses and Leslie and Jeff and Elizabeth and Lorenz all along for the fun. (And since Leslie and Lorenz are our only moon cookie newbies, I expect we'll blow through all the dough very quickly. Though with that many people, we might need to make 2 batches to make sure everyone gets enough cookies...)