Spring and Garage Door Openers

Normally, due to living in the South, we have a much shorter winter than much of the rest of the US, and indeed much of the world. This year has, to my mind, been unusually cool for our state, and it wasn't until this weekend that I finally felt the warmth of spring. So much of yesterday was spent working in the yard, raking up months old pine straw, cleaning out our garden, and a few other odds and ends. If that isn't exciting news, then I don't know what is.

At any rate, this was the first weekend in about a month when we didn't have somewhere to go early in the morning on Saturday, and even though my internal alarm clock seems to be set for sometime early in the morning now, missing the need to rush and get multiple people dressed, fed, bathed, etc., on a Saturday morning was nice. So after working in the yard, I played basketball with Dalton, badminton with Maggie, and drank a margarita with Mich. All in all, not a bad day.

The week itself had one incident which I will relay, out of sheer frustration. My garage door opener died late last year, and I finally went into Sears to purchase another. (I had thought about keeping the name private, but then figured they deserve to have the story told). I actually bought it last week but asked them to install it this Tuesday. Okay, so now our tale begins. I am thinking that surely they will call ahead of time to figure out when on Tuesday will be a good time for us. Instead, we get a call on Tuesday asking when on Wednesday will be good for us. Fortunately, we are able to manage this little mishap and arrange a time in the morning. Wednesday arrives and the driver doesn't show up as expected. We receive a call around two hours after his latest expected appearance time to inform is that he is on his way. We then get a call two hours later to tell us that he is sick and won't be able to make it that day, and can we reschedule for Thursday. As it turns out, Thursday wasn't really an option for us, so we chose a Friday time early in the morning.

While we did get the door opener installed on Friday, it was another two hour delay before the guy showed up, and the service reps at Sears are telling us that they sent him to another job because they couldn't reach us on the home phone (where we've been sitting, wasting time, waiting for the call). I am continually amazed at what passes for service in this world. I am convinced that in most service type industries that all you would have to do to be among the best would be to show up on time and simply do what you had committed to do. Such is the state of our times.

And that's all the news for now. Tune in next time for more wild and woolly adventures not involving garage door openers.