Telephone Traumas and other Tidbits

This has been the week of telephone trauma at our house.

Earlier this week, while inspecting our home phone bill, I noticed it was about $30 more than the previous month. I looked over the bill, but couldn't figure out why the charge had gone up, so I called CenturyLink. One of the operators told me that part of the charge was a one-time fee (we'd bundled our TV into our other package), and that another part of the fee was for an additional residential line--something we neither need nor requested. So I asked them to take the line off, and then they transferred me to the billing office to get a credit for the extra charge.

That was Tuesday.

On Wednesday, I realized we didn't have a dial tone. Our phone couldn't take or receive calls. (Unfortunately, I realized this pretty late in the day--it's not unusual to not get calls during the day on our home line). Thursday morning, I called CenturyLink. After talking to three different operators, each of whom offered to transfer me to a branch I'd already talked to, I finally spoke to someone who told me that instead of taking off the extra residential line, they'd cancelled our *entire* home phone package. She told me there was a backlog in their office, but they'd try to get us phone service as soon as they could.

On Friday, I sent them an email (my attempts on the phone hadn't gone over well; plus, I was reluctant to waste any more cell phone minutes on them). I got an email response again apologizing and promising to get our phone back within twenty-four hours. We still don't have phone service.

Also, apparently they changed our number when they reinstated it. If I want to change it back (!--of course we do, we've had this number for over four years), I have to call their office again on Monday during regular business hours . . .

Stay tuned for next week's exciting installment.

(Or not. That's okay, too.)

In other news, this week was the university Homecoming, which meant that yesterday we got to see both Dan and Poppy march in the parade with the college of science. The kids were signed up for an arts camp that started right after the parade, so we had to leave early (unfortunately)--but in the thirty-five minutes we watched the parade, both kids managed to fill an entire bag full of candy . . . Andrew's definitely a fan of this particular parade.

Dan wound up with a bunch of extra dry ice from the physical science float, so of course he had to make root beer with the kids.

Some Sunday pictures. I tried doing ringlets for the first time using my flat iron. I think it turned out okay, but Evelyn was pleased with it.

And then, of course, Andrew had to have his picture taken. He did his own hair.

 Oliver was more interested in crawling away from me than having his picture taken, but I managed a few anyway.

And last, a video of Oliver walking. My apologies for the sideways angle--I keep forgetting that videos (unlike pictures) can't be rotated once they're done.