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Working for the guy who works for 7/11
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
- Hits: 2370
It's Sunday morning in the old house and I'm doing a few final things, outside for a break having a smoke when big talker walks by, back from his night shift at 7/11. He sees that I'm moving and stops to talk, somehow it comes up that I do computer stuff and he gets excited. He's been doing computer stuff forever, and is getting back into it, this 7/11 thing is just til he gets back on his feet, I should give him my number and he'll give me a ring when the projects come in....
That's me. Working for the guy who works at 7/11.
Telus - I need to speak with a human being
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Rants
- Hits: 2638
Telus. On the phone for 10 minutes, pressing buttons, listening to the automated system trying to route my call, I haven't time for this, I need to speak to a person. I need to speak to a person, and so when the music comes on yet again and the voicebot comes back with "OK. I Think I understood you say...say 'Yes' if that's correct" I lose it, but the voicebot, she doesn't understand you screaming "I NEED TO SPEAK WITH A FUCKING HUMAN BEING!".
This is Telus Customer Service. We'll do anything to make sure you don't have to speak to us.
Fall
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
- Hits: 2388
It's in the air already, up at 5:30, outside, cool, you can feel it as you sip your coffee and watch the sun rise.
The despairing change of season, Summer to Fall, and while I love Fall I mourn the passing of Summer.
Fall, an evocation, an invocation - a summoning of old spirits, but now it's too early, it feels like death, the air cold, a rabbit on the grass and I fancy I can see that it's fur is starting to change color.
And I unpack, slowly, box by box, this new place not entirely empty, the ghosts of the absent owner linger in cupboards and drawers and I try to sort what they will wish to keep, what they will need, from what I can give, throw away. I do the same with my own possessions, if in doubt I will keep them, dispose of them later, but at the moment many things are disappearing, but there are hundreds of boxes and it's slow.
Laundry, wash, dry, fold. Go through clothes, what to wear, what to keep. Appointments to make, in a few hours it will be back to work - work, the job, work. The job after the 3 weeks of stress, moving, non-vacation, the job that pays the rent and kills the soul, Wipe the patina of dust from furniture, polish brasses, wax furniture, open a box, move from room to room, picking up out of place objects, carry them onto the next room, remember to grab this and forget that.
Boxes for the recycle, boxes of garbage, boxes for the thrift store, boxes to sell because money will be tight, how tight? Very tight. And I'm tight about my plans, must sell this, sell that, reduce, diminish, rid myself of ridiculous attachments.
And I am slowly mudered by the thought of these ordinary days.
Neither Here nor There
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
- Hits: 2263
The last few days have been spent in moving limbo, neither here nor there.
Coffee - Here. Coffeepot - There. Computer - Here. Cables - there. And there's a whole list of stuff that could be here or there or who knows where, but is mainly lost in limbo, buried under countless boxes of other stuff, and so I'll be searching the next month for things that I packed and misplaced, this is how it will be.
So much rubbish.
***
I sold the antique haunted table, finally, the buyer an older South American woman who had lost her husband in the Chilean coup of '73, he became one of the "disappeared", she fled to Canada afterwords with her children, lived here ever since, she loved Antiques and waxed so poetical about the lost values of craftsmanship that I almost didn't want to sell it.
***
3 non-working accordions. 2 non functional trumpets. 100 litres of wine corks. 2 broken antique typewriters. 100 antique candlesticks. I'm a hoarder. There are issues, I know, I'm working on overcoming them. 4 moves in 2 years has done a lot to help me.
***
And for all the downsizing - and there's been a lot - there's still an awful lot of rubbish. An Awful lot. Miles of it, and I have to sort through 100 boxes, items I haven't seen in years yet somehow imagined I'll need....1 by 1, find the gems, save them, sever the attachments, sell it or give it away, open another box, do it again. There's easily a month's full time work in this. But I've begun...
***
Today, finish up the old house, return drawers (out of boxes, just packed the entire kitchen drawers) order skip for rubbish in backyard, take internet signal booster because I might need it, add it to the box of 200 stereo, vcr, coaxial cables that I've saved, I might need it. And there's a garage sale, local, 9:00, and I know better but I'm going to go anyways...
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