The mundane details of a blessed life

Today was filled with the humdrum details of the chores that sustain life and culture.

Coffee

I went to coffee at two separate places today.

One of the guys where I attend church suggested I drop in on a coffee group in Charlotte, Michigan where a few business owners gather.  The picture in my head was five or six grumpy, old guys like my regular coffee group.  I walked into 35 people drinking coffee.  They ranged in age from twenty-three to pushing eighty.  I will write a little more about them tomorrow.

My regular coffee group was a bit light on attendance.  Tuesday, B mentioned that he was concerned about home invasions.  I remembered that I have a book that intelligently discussed the phenomena.  B was not at coffee today so I dropped it off at his home.  I will tease him a little bit tomorrow.  His wife is an absolute doll.

A one paragraph summation of Fer-FAL observations of home invasions is that people are most vulnerable when they come home from work.  They are tired.  They have a lot on their minds.  They succumb to tunnel vision.  All they can see is the point of that key spearing the lock or they are focused on driving the car into the garage.  Fer-FAL's advice is to drive around your block once before you pull into your driveway.  If you see anybody or anything out of place or who does not belong, activate your plan B.

Perhaps I am paranoid but I have driven past my driveway when it seemed like I was being followed home.  I fired three people in my professional career and "observed" several others being fired.  One of those people had "Killer" tattooed up one forearm and "Gypsy" down the other.  He claimed to have lived in 23 different states in his 28 years of existence. Another had to be removed from the facility by the police after I terminated them.  Things like that make you check your back-trail.

Phones

After coffee, Mrs ERJ insisted that I drive into Lansing and get my "new" cell phone activated.  She said that since we are trying to make one vehicle work between the two of us that we needed to be able to communicate and coordinate.  Unexpected things can happen when you have kids and she needed to be be able to reel me in from whatever Quixotic quest I am on when a kid needs help.

I had purchased two phones.  The first one I purchased did not activate.  I went to the Verizon website and the activation process stopped when Verizon informed me that it was mandatory that I bump up my data plan by an additional $20 per month.  I purchased a second, even stupider phone.  The same thing happened.

The lady at the Verizon store pushed a few buttons and activated my phone.  The additional $20/month was not mandatory as implied by the web process.  I am pissed.  It took an hour out of my day and I bought one more phone off of eBay than I needed to. 

Given that thousands, if not millions, of customers undoubtedly rolled over and  passively accepted the (erroneous) website dictate to fork over an additional $20/month....Verizon fraudulently generated millions of dollars of revenue.  Verizon's website implies that the contract "goes with" the device rather than the payer.  That is patently absurd because my cellphone does not pay the bill; I do.  Changing a like-device for another like-device should not trigger an mandatory plan up-fee.  It would give me great pleasure to have a sharp attorney (Aaron, this could be you!) or State Attorney General take Verizon to school on that topic.

Then I took the 2004 Malibu Classic into Eaton Farm Bureau and had a couple of new tires put on it.  This is the car that Belladonna is likely to take to Grand Valley State University in the fall.  GVSU is 12 miles from Lake Michigan and receives "lake effect" snow.  Good tires, tires with deep, open tread patterns, tires in their vigorous youth are not a luxury.  They are a necessity. 

I was lucky.  The "Classic" uses a common "commodity" tire size.  I had the snow tires that were on the front rotated to the rear where they will receive little wear.  I bought two 80,000 mile, all season radials  to put on the front.  The entire bill was $180.  In early December I will rotate the snow tires back to the front.

Then, tonight, we attended "Meet the Greyhounds".  Both Belladonna and Kubota are participating in a sport this spring.  Belladonna is throwing the shot and discuss in track.  Kubota is in golf, which some people believe is a sport.

My personal belief is that there are devices and propellants more suitable for sending small objects great distances than golf clubs.  But we live in a sissified time where those devices and propellants are not allowed at school sanctioned events.  So we make do with golf clubs.

Sigh.