waiting at home

I really hope I didn't jinx myself praising the "professionalism" of the plumber. I had told them, "I can be home after 3 pm" and the guy I talked to said "Yeah, they will call between 3 and 5" and took ALL my phone numbers.

Well, while I was in faculty meeting (so: my cell phone was off), someone called wanting to know if he could come out. And he left his number, but the message cut out before he gave the last four digits.

I called the place back, as I was walking in to lab, and told the receptionist that I SAID I WOULD BE HOME AT 3 and she said she'd pass it on but I REALLY hope this does not mean I lost my slot for today. If no one has called by 4:40 or so I am calling them again. I hate to be that woman, but I also work full time at a job I generally cannot leave at random times to let a plumber in.

But yeah. This is ALWAYS frustrating. (I also tend to think that if they fouled up and had bad communication, they should be willing to send someone after hours to AT LEAST diagnose the problem, and only charge me the "regular" hours rate)

Honestly, I think a lot of people who do that kind of come-to-your-house-and-work-on-stuff thing seem to still exist in a 1950s mindset, where there's a wife who stays home and can let the guy in....I think very few people these days have that life. (And I doubt even a large proportion of people work at a job where taking a random day off, or running home when called, is easily possible).

I just want my hot water back. Tomorrow is out because of the title IX training. (If I have to wash my hair in cold water again BECAUSE some admin who is now retired broke a rule, and this is how the university gets disciplined.....well, I'm angry about that). Wednesday is probably lab (unless it's storming). Thursday is another lab, and Maundy Thursday services......so if the person doesn't come today I AM going to be washing my hair with stove-water (or just gutting out doing a cold shower) for the rest of the week and I am unhappy about that. First world problems, I know, but....honestly a person should be able to call a service provider and go "I will be home during these hours and want to schedule an appointment then" and have that WORK. It drives me nuts when stuff doesn't work easily when it SHOULD. 

I kind of have a headache, anyway: it was evaluate-the-scholarships day in my department and the online system the university insists on using is so stupid - for one thing, it "filters" badly, so it misses people who might be eligible for a scholarship, but also lists people who probably AREN'T. And it gives no real information, in some cases - no links to transcripts or the like, and not even a record of what year they are in college.

And also, it's a password-requiring site, and like any site that requires I use a password but that I only access once a year, I can't remember the password....and so I had to wait for the "reset" e-mail. And of course they expect a "Fort Knox" grade password - for a site that contains little information that would be useful to an identity thief or other wrong-doer, and a site that is sufficiently obscure a thief would likely not know it. (I wrote it down, this time. Yeah, that's GREAT security, guys: expect people to have a sufficiently obscure password it's hard to remember, so people write them down).

At any rate: I didn't get my exam written today so I have to do that this evening, which I am also not so happy about. And I haven't picked up my mail but MAYBE I can do that in the brief window between my last class and the required title IX training.

(And yes. It annoys me that I may have to keep dealing with no hot water because of a federal training thing I cannot apparently skip out on. In a saner kinder world there would be some way around things but....I'm a Gen-Xer and I expect to be shafted. (I can't just miss the training; they take attendance). I don't know what someone with a sick kid would do. Or someone like my colleague who got hit by a car while out on his motorcycle this weekend. Oh, he's mostly OK but is sore and has to get checked out by a doctor, but.....yeah. I can't quite justify to myself "I need hot water" as a "so I should be allowed to skip this thing" but it's so disheartening trying to deal with working full time plus all the house issues....)