the weather here is gorgeous. I’ve had windows open on the coach the last two days. No wind, nice sun, perfect!!!! Wish it would stay that way forever. I’ve received pictures from one of my brothers in N. Idaho, showing the snow around his place. WOW! All I can say is, “I’M REALLY GLAD I’M THERE NOT THERE!

Their house is a daylight basement model – built by Ken – and this is their kitchen window (away from the daylight basement side) and Vicki said the snow had melted about a foot so they could see daylight at the top of the window now.

The driveway comes up off of a county road – Ken plows from the county road on up to their place, every time it snows. BOOOO SHAW!!! This is the daylight basement side and their main entrance into and out of the house. The lower green roof is the entry from the basement.

I spent a winter in Sandpoint ID, ’68, where the whole town was closed down for over a week as the snow fell and the wind blew. The only thing that moved through there was the trains – and they ran 12 and 14 hours late, decked out with snow plows on the front of them. The whole area was ready to be classed as a ‘national disaster area. The city snow plows ran out of places to put snow. And when it did start to thaw, and the streets were plowed, there was a five foot snow median down the middle of the street. The snow drifted up over the top of the stoplights in town and emergency rescues were done by snow mobile. CREEPY!

The pool hall there had a poker game in the back at times. I knew about it but never played or even thought about playing.
I stayed away from there because I didn’t like the ugly, darkness of the whole place, the looks of the guys that hung out there, the stale smell of beer that seeped into the floor and atmosphere over a million years time. There were other reasons for staying away too, I had a small son, no money, and I had no idea why anyone would even want to play poker. Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!

*****

After my Countrywide phone call to the Home Retention team on Friday – and being told by one person that my lack of paying on time was reported to credit reporting agencies – and another person telling me it wasn’t reported – and being told that there was a glitch in their computer system and they would have to send an email to a tech support person to have tech log the fact that my payments had been made, etc., etc., etc., and wasting another half hour of my life trying to accomplish the same old crap that should have already been accomplished, I woke up Friday afternoon to another message from the Home Retention team – stating that I was in arrears.

I called again, spent another half hour of my life speaking to a nice young man that was probably kicking back with a martini and getting a massage as he chatted it up with me. He really was nice. Maybe he does drugs on the sly so he can deal with people like me. I didn’t swear, I didn’t raise my voice. I just stressed how irritated I was with the whole thing and I thought they should pay me by the hour for having to continually try to fix something that wasn’t broken and they were idiots for not being able to fix their computer system.

He said he would set up a ‘promise to pay’ for me and that should slow down the phone calls until everything was cleared with the computer mess. I did a, “What? I’m not promising to pay anything. I’ve already paid, I am not late.”

He said it was a way to get the computer to log it so I wouldn’t receive irritating phone calls. Totally amazing that the computer can log a promise to pay but can’t log the fact that I have two payments sitting there, credited to me clear back in January 1st but they haven’t been applied to my account balance. What an amazing bunch of bullshit.

Oh Well. I’ll be back on the phone this morning, going through the whole history of it all again, until I get it straightened out.

Damn…sometimes I wish I still drank.