No joy in Mudville

Er, St. Louis that is.

Even though the Cards handily defeated the Reds 7-2 last night, the victory came at a high cost. It looks as if Albert Pujols is seriously injured. I winced in pain just watching Albert's reaction after falling to the ground. The lay consensus is that he aggravated the calf injury he's been nursing of late. I don't know how significant a calf injury is, but he didn't look like he'd be playing baseball again anytime soon. Sigh.

On a brighter note, ... Well I don't really have a brighter note right now.

TV at last!

I know it is fashionable to claim that one does not watch much TV, but in the words of Dr. Greg House -- everyone lies! I LOVE TV! Never more so than when I don't have it. Finally, though, television service has been restored at my house. It wasn't easy.

I won't ramble on as I did in my last post about my lovely cable company, but let me just say they're still not making my Christmas card list this year. I told you that I was promised a guy on Friday, with a distinct possibility of a Thursday repair, seeing as how they'd royally screwed up my repair job. Well I didn't get the guy on Thursday or Friday! Finally, though, a guy did show up on Saturday. That guy, though, thought he was just coming out to check for a problem with my cable box. He was quite surprised when I told him I had no service at all. After getting over his surprise (and I suspect displeasure at having to do an outside repair in 95-degree June heat), he did manage to restore service for me and I was most appreciative. I'm much happier now and I think my stats students might send him a bonus for making me less grumpy.

Okay other than TV, what's been going on? Well I'm teaching stats right now. I've never taught that in the summer and I'm finding it difficult. Stats is built on students doing homework, but we cover so much material each class that it seems homework is due almost every class. The students don't like that and I sure don't like having to deal with homework that frequently. I may have to try to come up with a compromise solution.

Anything else? I'm only teaching one course right now, so of course I'm reading a lot. I finally made it through a Richard Powers book and I was underwhelmed. It was an okay book, but I was expecting more. I mean the guy won one of those $1 million "genius grants" and the book was a National Book Award winner, so I think I was expecting a little more. My overall judgement ... Not a bad book and I'd read something else by him, but it wasn't anything spectacular. Now I'm actually reading some non-fiction: Justinian's Flea. It's the story of the (sort of) end of the Roman Empire and the role that the bubonic plague had in the empire's fall. It's a novel concept and I'm enjoying the history, but the author has way too much love for Justinian. He's obviously biased when it comes to reporting any sort of criticism of the emperor and that makes me a little suspect. Still, it's a much more gripping read than you'd expect from a combination of Roman history and flea life cycles.

Oh, and I have seen a few movies of late. I don't remember if I wrote about it, but I went to see Iron Man and I thought it was very good -- one of the best of the genre. I also saw the new Indiana Jones and I wasn't disappointed. It wasn't as good as the original (obviously), but it wasn't bad. I know a lot of people have trashed it, but reading between the lines I suspect many of those folks had made their minds up to hate it before they ever went to the theater. I also saw a couple of quirky flicks on the small screen -- Martian Child and Lars and the Real Girl. The first was a warm, fuzzy film with just enough oddness to make it interesting. I like John Cusack in just about anything, but I was disappointed that Amanda Peet didn't have a meatier role. She was very cardboardish in the film. Lars and the Real Girl, on the other hand, was excellent. It reminded me a lot of another favorite film, The Station Agent. If you liked Station Agent, I guarantee you'll like Lars. If you haven't seen either, go watch them.

Okay, I guess I really didn't have much to say. I just wanted to update things and let y'all know I hadn't fallen prey to any more disasters -- so far!

Update

Well the tree made it until it could be cut down. I really hated to do that. I love the old trees in my neighborhood, but that tree really needed to come down and I figured having it taken down professionally was better than the gradual, piece-by-piece, way the tree had been falling on its own. Still, I'm going to miss that old hackberry. By the way, tree removal is not cheap, but I wouldn't want to do it for a living.

So now I'm about 4 grand poorer (tree and electrical repairs), but life has returned to normal -- almost. I'm still waiting on the cable guys. Once I got power back I called about the cable. The nice guy I talked to said they already knew of the downed lines and they had a guy scheduled to come out and put my line back up on Monday (the 2nd). Come Monday (hey, that's a Buffett song) I got a call from the cable guy. He had reconnected the line to my house and the new power pole, but he said there was some problem with the quantum inversion filter (okay that wasn't the actual problem, but I don't speak "cable") and he couldn't repair that. Another guy would come back Tuesday to do that.

Well Tuesday was my tree removal day, so I wasn't really surprised that the cable guy didn't make repairs that day. [I wouldn't have wanted to be up on the utility pole while the tree guys were working.] I was, though, a little surprised that no one called to explain why they weren't fixing my cable. Regardless, I figured they'd be out Wednesday. Nope. So late Wednesday afternoon I called the cable company again. This time I got an idiot on the other end. It took her three tries before she could get my phone number right an access my account. Once she did that and I told her my story, she essentially called me a liar. She insisted that her report showed the technician completed his job on the 2nd. I agreed with her about that, but I repeated the part of the story where he called to say there was an additional problem. Her reply to that: Well what was the additional problem? I seemed to fall even lower in her estimation after admitting I didn't know what the problem was. She also didn't seem to appreciate my belief that THEY would be better equipped to answer that question than I was. Anyway, after much repeating she agreed to schedule another guy to come look at my supposed cable problem. [I got the strong sense she believed I really did have cable service the whole time.] At least I thought she was going to schedule someone.

She put me on hold to go check one more thing. When she came back she said it looked like there might be a general outage somewhere in my area so it wasn't just me that didn't have cable. I tried to explain to her that even if there was a general outage, that wasn't the problem with my cable. Mine was out due to damage from the tree falling. "I know," she said. "Several people may be out right now." I tried AGAIN to explain my problem was unrelated to the potential general outage, but she would have none of it. "Your cable should be back up in just a couple of hours," she assured me. Seeing as how I was getting nowhere, I bid her good day and resigned myself to calling back Thursday.

Thursday morning I got a much more reasonable guy who listened to and believed my story. He scheduled a guy and even put a "rush flag" on it. Given that I'd called early, he supposed someone would get to me that day. Nope. As of noon on Friday I'm still waiting. If it weren't for the baseball package, I'd just tell them not to even bother fixing it at this point. As it is, though, they kind of have me over a barrel. Hence, I'm venting to y'all.

Oh well, at least I have power again and the tree is gone. I'm trying to look on the bright side.

Worst week ever!

I know I've been away for a while, but cut me some slack. First, I took some time off before the start of summer school. Then, though, the world began to conspire against me.

Last Monday I went to TN to visit the parents. On my way home I evidently ran over something because I had a "flat to the ground" tire the next morning. As I suspected, it could not be repaired and I had to buy a new tire. Then, on Tuesday night, part of a giant tree behind my house fell and took out a utility pole and power lines for my whole block. The force ripped electrical connections from my house and required repair by an electrician. Not only that, the electrician told me that because the utility company pulled the meter, there would have to be an official inspection of my electrical system before the city would sign off on repairs. Of course my house is quite old, so that required a whole new breaker box and much new wiring. Finally on Saturday I got all that done and power was restored. All is good, right?

Almost.

I mentioned that PART of a giant tree fell. Well the rest is still standing -- I hope. I had someone come over to give me an estimate for taking the tree down and they expressed much concern about the condition of the remaining tree. They didn't come out and say it, but I got the impression they were concerned whether it would continue to stand until they could get to it. I talked to the utility company, but they said it was my tree so it was my problem. As of now I'm holding my breath and waiting. The tree folks said they'd try to get to me tomorrow (given the "emergency" situation), but we had some light storms last night and a few more showers forecast for today. Of course to me it looks as if the tree is leaning even more this morning, but I'm hoping that's just my overactive imagination. I'm just praying it'll stand 24 more hours AND that the tree service can get to me tomorrow.

My coffee shop crowd has decided "Lucky" is not an appropriate nickname for me these days.

P.S. Oh and I forgot my bout of food poisoning from Friday night!!! Yes, I'm through whining now -- as long as the tree stands up long enough to be cut down.