July 25, 2000.  Tuesday

 
Here's what I'm dealing with:

"We are experiencing a slight delay in customer service due to positive response to AT&T services."
 

    I've heard this so many times before, but today was the first time I really stopped to think about it. Who are they kidding? Short of Paul Reiser, who would actually call AT&T to thank them for all they've done for them?

    I'm on hold with AT&T right now. Here's what happened: I got a phone bill last week which was for about 210 bucks. Nothing unusual, what with several calls to Europe a month.
What was strange was that only 56 dollars was long distance. The rest was for local calls. For some reason in NY, you have to pay for local calling. It's absurd. So I pay 20 bucks a month for 75 hours of calls. Well, my bill told me that I had used an additional 4619 minutes, or one minute less than 77 hours. Which means, according to AT&T, my household spent 152 hours on the phone last month, not even including long distance calls. Granted, a large portion of this is my dial-up internet connection. But still, it's ridiculous. Anyway, I bitched to them on Monday, and it turns out that big part of the minutes was from call waiting. Apparently, if i'd get another call while on the phone, then hang up with one person, I was still being charged for double minutes while i was only on one call. So the guy i talked to told me he'd take like a hundred bucks off. So I called today just to check, and it turns out his change was blocked. I thought it seemed too easy.

    Well, that's taken care of. One less worry.

    So I spent the night at Rodzilla's East Village apartment last night. Hard to believe that after almost a year in New York, it was my first night not spent in my Brooklyn apartment. A number of unrelated events led to my staying there last night. First off, I wanted to stay there at some point anyway, and with all the rain, the temperature on the fifth floor where she lives was almost tolerable. Also, I seem to have acquired about 9 large bug bites of some sort. Something was really going to town on my flesh a few nights ago. So I thought a night away from my room wouldn't be too bad. Maybe whatever it was that was feasting on my skin would find, upon finding no more food, move on to Jed's room. And lastly, i was kind of railroaded into it. Rodzilla was over at my apartment, and around 11:15 decided to leave. I told her I'd walk her to the subway. I was a bit concerned about her getting back to her place though, especially since she'd never made the trip by herself at night. And the fact that she was just robbed. She kind of looks like a tourist with her big back pack, which makes her more succeptible to being robbed. Anyhow, I wasn't sure if I wanted to get on the train with her and walk her back to her apartment. Basically, Rodzilla was of the opinion that her personal safety didn't factor into my decision. No, to her it was basically a cost-benefit analysis of my personal discomfort and inconvenience of going all the way into the Village at midnight and sleeping in less than ideal conditions, versus my guilt should anything bad happen to Rodzilla if I wasn't there.
Well, Ok.  That might be part of it.  But me, selfish?  Hhhhhhhardly...  Anyhow, it was ok, except I find really big places creepy when they're virtually empty.  And when there's a storm outside.  And when it's dark.  But things are ok now.   My fear of bugs and their bites outweighs my fear of dark creepy places.  At least my fears are somewhat practical...
 

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