It's Fair Time and a Venting

It's County Fair time. My parents spent all afternoon yesterday at the fair with my nephews watching the harness racing. When the last afternoon race was over, they went home. Even though I am hobbling around in a walking cast with a broken toe, I went to the fair last night. I had been planning on it since last year. My nephews enjoyed it so much last year and the only chance they would get to go and have fun with the rides and games was if I took them. My brother is planning on taking them Saturday for the tractor pulls, but they won't be doing any of the rides or games.

I left work at 4:30 so I would have time to get something to eat and get ready. My parents were going again for the night harness races. They picked me up a little after 6 o'clock. The boys and I had a lot of fun. When we first got there, all of us went through the exhibition hall to see all the prize winning things that were still on display. But their maternal grandmother's items were already put away.

After I bought a sheet of ride tickets, the boys decided they wanted to go through the little kid's fun house first. Avrey said he was 'freaked' out by the buzzer that kept sounding. They then did the super slide. Avrey didn't care for all the steps to get to the top. Course, he does have the balance problems due to having a brain tumor when he was 2-1/2 (he's turning 10 in October) and that's part of the reason for not liking all those steps, and he also said they were narrow. But Arley (turning 7 in September) loved it and did it several times later on. We started walking around and we did a few games. I wish they took the ride tickets also and didn't have to pay cash all the time. They both won lots of toys, good thing I brought along two tote bags to haul all that stuff around. When we got to the big rides, neither of them wanted to ride any of them. I was so shocked when both said they didn't want to ride the bumper cars especially that's all they wanted to do last year and according to the posted sign they weren't tall enough so they didn't get to, but found out later that kids smaller than them were able to ride them. I knew that I wasn't going to be able to ride them, but they could have. But they didn't want to.

We walked around some more and went to the petting zoo area to see the animals. Arley wanted a blue snow cone so we headed to the snow cone stand and got him one. I had to get a lemonade shake-up. I asked Avrey if he wanted anything and he said that he didn't. I should have gone to the pretzel stand but with everything I was carrying I wouldn't have had room for it also. We headed to the grandstand to join Grams & Papa. We got to watch the last two races for the night. When we left there, Arley wanted to ride the Merry-Go-Round. He rode it twice and then had to ride the 'emergency vehicle' ride, it's kinda like that octopus ride, but a lot milder for little kids. We then headed for home. I'm glad, my toe was really killing me and needed to be iced down.

Okay, now for the venting. When I got home, I turned on the tv after a bit and the cable was out. Great! I had taped a show at 8 o'clock and hoped that I got at least part of it, but nope, none of it. The cable went out sometime between 6:10 and 8 o'clock. Even though it was getting late, I called Comcast to report the outage. I was on hold for nearly 15 minutes and was so tired of hearing "Are you confused about the change over to digital tv coming up in February 2009?....." so I hung up and went to bed. I called this morning at 7 am and the earliest time they could schedule an appointment was for tomorrow (Thursday) sometime between 8 am and 8 pm. Great, Thursday is not a great day for me to leave work since my boss sent an email to all of us in the office several weeks ago saying that there would be no approved vacation time for the 24th and 25th and that everyone is needed in the office. When I got to work I emailed him and he replied "come see me...". UH OH, he's not happy. We got it worked out.

When I got home from work, I noticed something hanging from the doorknob and thought it was an advertisement for some business or church but noooooooooo, it was from a Comcast technician saying "Sorry I missed you." with the time listed as 3 pm. Blasted! I gave the woman my cell phone number for the technician to call me when he was going to be there. When I checked messages on the answering machine, there was a message from the tech at 2:54 pm saying that he was out front and no one was there and that if I was still having cable problems to call and reschedule. I immediately called Comcast complaining about this. I told the customer service lady that I was told the appointment was tomorrow and then to come home finding out that the appointment was actually today and that the technician called my home number instead of the number I gave them to call. She talked with her supervisor and they reschuled for tomorrow and gave the technician instructions to call me 30 minutes beforehand and to call my cell phone. I told her that I am in a walking cast and it takes me a bit longer to walk to the parking lot and then to change into another contraption for driving. The supervisor also authorized a $25 credit for the error. I sure hope I am the first repair call in the morning, but I probably won't be.