As I have mentioned previously, Charlie and I have been busy for the past month or so. Bookkeeping business is booming, tax season is in full swing, we’ve been getting some medical issues resolved, and we’re potty training a Boston Terrier puppy. Other than that, we’ve been bored stiff.
Friday morning, at 4:30 a.m., Bear Creek lost all electric service due to some calamity in the underground utility vault across the street from our main gate. What was originally estimated to be a four-hour repair turned into a 13-hour nightmare, with electrical service restored at around 5:30 p.m.
Of course, Charlie Manning Bookkeeping was down for the count all day. My wife and I decided early in the morning that we would use the time to do some gardening tasks. So, we spent all day rejiggering our entryway (I hand-placed about 500 lbs of beach pebbles), harvesting succulents from Charlie’s backyard nursery for some friends, and potting some new plants that I bought at Lowe’s. What a physical day it was; I haven’t been this sore or tired in many years! We both felt like we’d been run over by a truck. And, we couldn’t even take a hot shower afterward, dammit.
That night, after power was restored, we discovered that our Frontier FIOS service (i.e. landline telephone and fax, Internet, and TV) was, somehow, not restored! This left us totally in the lurch, in terms of no TV entertainment and no ability to conduct Charlie’s business! I spent 1-1/2 hours on Friday night yelling at Frontier people, demanding that they get someone out to our home to fix their system. It was to no avail: they told us that they wouldn’t have a repair guy in our area until Wednesday the 15th, five days hence. We were screwed.
If you know my wife, Charlie, you can probably picture her mood at this catastrophe. Not good, to say the least. We are lucky that her ticker didn’t go south on her. (It’s Sunday, as I write this, and the jury’s still out on that.)
Of course, by this time, it was the weekend, and our usual go-to guys for computer tech stuff were unavailable for hands-on help. So, we had to jury-rig our business setup in order to keep things afloat. I restructured our office network to a WiFi system, bought some WiFi adapters for the two office desktops, and set up a bare bones contraption utilizing our portable WiFi hotspot that we use when we’re on the road in the RV. This has enabled us to continue our bookkeeping and tax work, albeit it a little clumsy and slow, although we have no fax and we’re having to use our travel printer (Epson) instead of our heavy duty Biz Hub commercial printer. It sucks.
All of this is a pain in the neck, but I worked on four of Charlie’s clients today (Sunday), while she was involved with four tax returns.
The biggest bummer is that we have no TV at night. We used to grumble about the lousy pickens from the 500 channels available (HaHa), but it’s really boring sitting in bed staring at magazines, reading books on the Kindle, or having to kill time by writing a stupid blog like this. We’re bored stiff!
The worst part will come tomorrow, when the normal business day resumes, and Charlie’s cell phone (not landline!) starts ringing with client brushfires, antsy tax clients, etc. We’ve got a bunch of appointments for stuff this week, plus I now have to hang around and make sure that the Frontier guys, when they do show up, don’t screw the pooch. Everything has to work 100 percent, perfect, before those bastards leave the property. I may pay our computer tech to be on-hand to supervise the Frontier fix-it crew. More $$$.
And, then, I’m going to write a nasty letter to Frontier and demand a one-week rebate on my bill, plus expenses, plus pain and suffering.
It’s going to be The Week from Hell.