Phone Service

The following is the summary of my call with Comcast earlier this week:

Me: How much do I pay for phone? For Internet? And everything together?

Comcast Guy: … and everything together with taxes comes to $140/mo.

Me: How much is just basic cable?

Comcast Guy: $32/mo.

Me: I’m just going to go ahead and cancel everything then. What items do I need to return, and do you pick them up or do I need to go to return them?

Comcast Guy: The only thing you have is the DVR… Is there anything we could do that could keep you?

Me: Yeah, make it cheaper.

Comcast Guy: Are you interested in having a phone line?

Me: Not particularly.

Comcast Guy: If you add a phone line and upgrade to the triple play it will save you about $12/mo. But if you want to actually use the phone you will need to rent a different modem which costs $7/mo. 

Me: In order to obtain these additional services that I don’t plan to use what kind of additional equipment would I need to obtain.

Comcast Guy: If you don’t plan to use it then we can provide the service with just your existing equipment.

Me: That’s interesting, but I’m just going to go ahead and cancel.

Comcast Guy: Well… let me look here. I can give you this which would bring you down to about $122/mo.

Me: No. I was hoping to get close to the $90/mo area.

Comcast Guy: Let me look here. I have this offer that would bring you down to $105 for 3 months and then rise to $115 for 3 months and you would keep all the services you currently have.

Me: Deal.

Giants Fan Forever

I saw this a couple days ago at the ballpark. I don't know anything about Tom Maurer, except the Giants won the World Series before he died.

Thought of the Week

Total abstinence is so excellent a thing that it cannot be carried to too great an extent. In my passion for it I even carry it so far as to totally abstain from total abstinence itself.
--Mark Twain

Leviticus

When This Was?

One of my students is from Africa. English is his first language, but he speaks with an accent and is sometimes hard to understand. Periodically I post their grades on the wall and he was curious when I had last updated the wall.

After school during tutoring he pointed to the grades and, complete with his accent, asked, "When this was?"

Another girl in the room started laughing and unabashedly added: He just said "when this was."

I refrained from reacting until he responded, "What? Why is that funny?"

Relativity

I saw this at a friend's house and wondered how long it had been sitting there.

Thought of the Week

If there is no struggle, there is no progress. --Frederick Douglas

Flames

She was on her way to my house for the evening. I lit the three candles on my bedside table to help create a romantic and pleasant atmosphere. We had been dating a while now so things were relaxed and pleasant.

The two of us made are way to the bed and things were progressing nicely. Neither of us were paying particularly close attention to the arrangement of the bed’s pillows. All the sudden in the dimly lit room there was instantly a significant increase of light to my immediate left.

I don’t know why but I noticed the light before I noticed the heat. As I looked over my left shoulder I saw my pillow had quickly gone up in flames. I don’t know how big the flame actually was, but it looked huge. I immediately jumped up and grabbed the flaming pillow and ran into the bathroom. I threw it into the tub and turned on the water.

That was a mood killer.

She follows me into the bathroom laughing all the way. I admittedly was upset about losing my favorite pillow (the expensive one with the hole in the middle I bought from my chiropractor) and my matching pillow case. I wasn’t laughing.

In the end there was a slight mark on my bedside table, a slight stain on the bathtub, the loss of my pillow and pillow case, but the damage was minimal.

We opened up the house to let out the smoke and smell of the fire, and I don’t recall any more romantic activity continuing that evening.

The next day I considered cutting off the burned pillow and trying to salvage it, but I dropped it in the trash and bought another.