Tension - It Can Be Good or Bad, But It's In My Life All Too Frequently

Obviously I needed just that little bit more tension in my life *sigh*. Yesterday was my Friday off, and I was happily cooking. Mid-morning, Chickie called me, telling me that our charge phone line was off-line and that she needed to make a charge for a sale. I referred her to the book for our charge machine which has all of the instructions/directions, and told her to contact our landlord as soon as possible. 

Although the talk is that landline phones are dead, they 
really aren't. I use my cell phone extensively, but at the shop 
I find using land lines more dependable, especially for 
credit card transactions. Unfortunately, the line for the 
credit card terminal is dead. *sigh*

Our landlord has been re-roofing our store - something that is desperately needed since we leak whenever there's a serious rain, and the snowfall melts have also caused leaking over the years. Because of that, he also cut down the tree that was next to my back door (I'm not exactly sure why - maybe wiring was in danger?) and for the past few days, we've had large thick black wiring cables coming down from the roof over the wall. It's been annoying, and probably not really the best thing all around. 

No dial tone means no ability to send or receive 
calls. Apparently our regular phone lines were 
working fine, it was the charge machine that wasn't 
working. *sigh*

But ... getting back to the current tale. We suddenly had no dial tone on the phone line that operates our charge machine. *sigh*. After our landlord checked things out and admitted that he had no idea what wire was supplying our telephone line, I contacted our phone company. Earlier this year we had switched from Century Link and AT&T service to Clear Rate Communications. One of the main things I had asked them was what would happen when we had a phone problem, and they had assured me that they contacted Century Link (Century Link holds the repair contracts for the metropolitan area) and that repairs would ensue within 72 hours. So ... that's where I'm at right now. It's been reported, and now it's in the air. 

I'm wondering if either of the sales staff thought 
about plugging the main phone line into the 
credit card terminal for the sake of making a 
transaction. Then it could be switched back 
to the telephone for customers to contact us. 
I'll have to ask Chickie if she tried that at all 
when she comes in today. 

When I get to the store, I need to check my paperwork for how to run a remote charge. I know there's a phone procedure, I just have to find it and make sure it's something we can use. Apparently we lost a rather large sale just before closing last night, because all she had for payment was a credit card. I know there's a way to make this happen, I just have to jump through the appropriate hoops. But what a mess! 

My chicken jerky turned out really great. It's a little darker 
than this photo because I had soy sauce as a component in 
the marinade, but it's the perfect texture and it's very tasty. I'm 
calling this experiment a total win. 

On the plus side, I made homemade fresh cranberry sauce for my Thanksgiving Day dinner (and it's really lovely!!!), and then I took out my marinaded chicken pieces and started making chicken jerky in my little dehydrator. After six hours, it was perfect! I then grabbed my jerky extruder and the ground beef I had marinating, and extruded logs of beef which then went into the dehydrator for another six hours. I maybe should have pulled them 30-45 minutes earlier than I did, but they're really tasty and everything turned out great. I also made my next batch of Ogre Juice - I'll be working next Friday, and I need to be on top of things before the Holiday Season officially arrives. 

My fresh cranberry sauce was a fun thing to make, and 
it cooked up so FAST! I'm already looking forward to eating 
it with my Thanksgiving Day turkey. So good!!! 

So - good and bad - it was quite the day. The Minnesota Wild are playing two days of hockey in Sweden starting today at 10:00 am my time. Tomorrow's game starts at 7:00 am. As much as I am a fan, I am NOT waking up for that one. Next week will be a little piece of "Too much to do and too little time in which to do it", and I need my catch-up sleep on Sunday morning. I will absolutely turn on today's game, of course. It should be a fun one to watch as they play Ottawa in Sweden. Have an excellent Saturday and a good weekend. I'll be back on Monday morning. Please cross your fingers and say a few prayers that I have an operational phone system again by Monday. Slava Ukraini and חיים למען ישראל.