Aaaarrrggghhh

I’ve been trying to get fencing contractors to come to my house to give me an estimate on putting a fence around my front yard. Since I don’t know any fence installers personally, I am pretty much playing yellow pages roulette. Last week, I picked out three from the phone book, submitted online contact requests for two via their respective websites, and called the third. The phone call resulted in an appointment for last Friday but the guy never showed up. One of the online contacts did get back to me and set up an appointment for this Thursday, and I never heard from the other one.

Today I got out the phone book again and picked another three. This time I left messages. One called back. When I set up the estimate appointment the guy tells me “You’ll want to pick a time that your husband or whoever can be there.” Husband? Or whoever? Yeah, right. “That’s not necessary” I said, “you’ll just be dealing with me” in a very business-like tone. Ugh. We’ll see what happens when the man is here. I’m willing to give the benefit of a doubt once but any show of chauvinism or a less-than-competitive-estimate-because-you’re-a-woman and I’ll send him packing. Quite possibly with a piece of my mind.

In other news, Verizon mysteriously canceled my DSL account today. When I couldn’t get my email this morning, I chalked it up to a temporary problem. The problem continued throughout the day and I finally got a chance to phone them this evening. Strangely, I still had an Internet connection, I just couldn’t access email. Support told me it was billing problem and transferred me to billing. I confirmed that I had not, in fact, canceled my account. They were ever so apologetic, reactivating my account and giving me a month of free service by way of apology. How nice. However, I’m not entirely sure that my Verizon personal web space is working properly, so if there are images missing from this blog that’s why. I’ll have to straighten that out tomorrow.