Celebrate Women, Phone Issues and Lent - Random Bits and Pieces

Welcome to International Women's Day. Although I rarely write about women, they do pop up in my stories and longer fiction now and again. I don't really have hesitations in writing about female characters, I just prefer to write (and read) about men. Oh well, to each their own. I'm celebrating International Women's Day anyway, because women are still 2nd-class citizens in much of the world today and they deserve better - MUCH better. I'm a lifelong campaigner for women's rights and always will be. 

It's International Women's Day today. Don't kid
yourself. This world would stop dead if women
weren't around. We're absolutely necessary! 

Today we're gearing up for tomorrow's storm. Starting around noon tomorrow we're supposed to get pounded with 6"-13" of snow and blizzard whiteout conditions. Spring snows in the Frozen Northlands can be horrific. So today DH is getting groceries for the weekend at the store and if the weather is super bad tomorrow, I'll probably close early so that my staff and I can get home safely. Today, however, will be fine and we'll probably be busy. 

CenturyLink. Argh. Although everyone was super
polite, it was extremely difficult to get updates
and confirmations that my tech was actually
going to arrive. Still, once they got there,
it was fixed relatively quickly and I'm
now back in business again. 

Yesterday was a quiet day - not in terms of customer count, but because the telephones at the shop were non-functional. I contacted CenturyLink early in the morning. After playing their game of - "Oh, you're a business? This is the residential repair line. Hold, and I'll transfer you to the business section.", we were finally assigned trouble tickets for each of our main lines and a time frame of 12:30 pm - 4:30 pm for a tech to arrive. Tech #1 finally arrived around 4:00 pm. 

The CenturyLink mobile app was next to useless.
Although I had two different work order numbers,
it didn't acknowledge either one, nor did it
acknowledge the phone numbers. I ended up
uninstalling it by the end of the day. 

It took two techs and almost an hour, but they were finally successful in getting all three of my phone lines working again. The verdict this time? Ice! Apparently ice on our roof, where the lines are stretched, shorted the lines out. One more casualty of our crazy winter weather this year. 

Our customers were uncommonly gracious. Since I had no phone lines, I also had no ability to accept credit cards, and we haven't accepted checks since the mid-1990's. Each customer either had enough cash for their merchandise, or went to one of the two ATM machines located in gas stations nearby to get cash for their purchases. I'm thankful that each person was kind enough to understand that this was not planned. We did apologize for the inconvenience, and I added some extra discounts to their purchases to ease the headache. 

Seafood is on sale and there's a great deal on scallops. DH wants
to buy some today and make seared scallops with linguine
and roasted pine nuts for Saturday or Sunday dinner. I'm
totally in favor of that! AWESOME! 

Tonight is the first Friday of Lent, which means McDonald's fish sandwiches for me and DH. Although DH isn't actively Catholic, he still likes to keep to fish on Fridays during Lent, and I adore fish, so no problems on my end. McDonald's fish sandwiches are some of my favorites, and I treat myself every now and again throughout the year. I love Lent - I get Mickey-D's almost every Friday. He's also planning fish for dinner on Saturday and Sunday. YUMMY! 

Have an excellent Friday, stock up if you're getting this storm, and be safe. I'll be back tomorrow before our snow begins to fly.