random thoughts – Day 2,318 (Monday) – tasks and taps

Tasks were accomplished. There was a three-ring circus of website portals and online billing documents that made me miss paper bills delivered via snail mail. One portal told me that due to privacy, info on my previous payment could not be provided. To me. The person who logged into my own patient portal using their multifactor authentication system to check the details on my own previous payment to try to figure out the new claim for payment on their stupid system. Fun time.

One document featured to phone number to call with questions, but the number led to the automated number pressing hell of a menu that just kept looping back on itself. A second number finally reached a helpful human in billing who discovered that the payment I made in March was incorrectly applied.

Another portal for another medical provider in another town was a nightmare to access on my phone but I finally succeeded on my laptop and the payment was made.

New Internet in town!

After the nightmarish fun of the medical payment portals, I called to sign up for a new internet provider. Comcast/Xfinity is too expensive, but there is a new company in town (Gateway Fiber). The recent oversized postcard mailers (official marketing lingo) with the exciting news made it sound like signing up was as simple as scanning the QR code, but that just led to pricing info. A phone call was required to sign up for the service.

The Internet provider call center person seemed to be a remote worker operating out of a day care center  based on background noise and up-close sounds of a toddler practicing newly learned speech. As if that wasn’t enough fun, the call kept cutting out so it was a fragmented and slightly frustrating conversation. I think the outcome is that the service will be available in my area beginning August 6, and I will receive an email to schedule installation. I think. It was hard to be sure with the call cutting out and the toddler shrieking.

The tap water still appears clear as expected, but it suddenly tastes like a murky pond, which hindered my hydration efforts. People on social media have been complaining about both the new pond flavor and fragrance and the absence of info from city hall. A trip was made to the grocery store for water-flavored bottled water because I don’t especially like the new city-provided dirt flavor.

Newly trimmed trees.

The weather was exceedingly pleasant and the next chapter of create your own adventure day was using the loppers to trim tree branches in the back yard. It is possible I am the only person who will notice the trimming, but that is okay, I am also the only one looking at it daily. It was done for my own enjoyment of the back yard.

The tall barrel and the giant planter were filled with cut branches that had been reaching out over the lawn. The trimmings were delivered to the yard waste drop-off area where the earthy aroma of the mountain of decomposing yard waste was similar to the fragrance of the day’s offerings from the home faucets.

The evening walk included a hummingbird sighting. It was hovering its way through a patch of flowers in a front yard two streets over. My phone was in my back pocket instead of my hand. But the time I dug it out and got the camera on, the hummingbird had flitted over to a nearby bush, so there was no opportunity to try for a photo.

I don’t know if all the day’s motivation came from some special planetary alignment, the amazing weather conditions, or the new dirt flavored water from my kitchen tap that my morning coffee was brewed with before I knew about the issue, but whatever it was, the end results were great.