"A continual state of inelegance" & annoyance...

What dreadful hot weather we have! It keeps me in a continual state of inelegance. ~Jane Austen


Elegant cannot be said to accurately describe me at the best of times, dreadful hot weather tends to make me bad tempered and ultra-inelegant to boot. Thank goodness for air conditioning. Without it I'd have had to return to Blighty, for sure.

I notice that transiting Mars and transiting Saturn have both been making trine aspects from Gemini and Libra to my natal Sun in Aquarius during the past week or so. Mars, in this case, meaning ANNoyance and challenge, Saturn = putting the brake on plans, and need for persistence. (Caps seem appropriate because that's my name!)

ANNoyance #1

Oklahoma is no stranger to extremes where weather (and conservatism) are concerned. The heat this year, though, seems more continually excessive than during the previous 6 summers I've spent here. We had triple digit temperatures (around 40C for those across t'pond) for several continuous periods during June, and into July, no rain to speak of for at least 6 weeks, perhaps longer. Our county is dealing with extreme drought conditions. There have been only two days since November 2010 when rainfall amounted to more than half an inch. Having (fingers crossed) traversed the 2011 tornado season unscathed we now find wildfires to be a continual threat, and one about which we cannot afford to be blasé.

We'd been tentatively planning to get away from Oklahoma from next weekend, heading north and west - Wyoming in fact: higher ground with somewhat lower temperatures, just for a couple of weeks. But, all things considered, especially the fact that our house backs on to a pasture and woodland where any spark might set off a blaze that could engulf our home rapidly, we've decided to wait until a substantial downpour comes along to slake down the extreme dryness. before starting out. Who knows when that might happen? Not that we could do much about a wildfire if one started, but we'd have a chance to quickly pack valuables, documents, photographs etc. in the car trunk before moving out of danger, and be on hand to sort out the resulting mess - if any.

Katharine Whitehorn (superb 20th century British journalist) once wrote: of the weather:

People get a bad impression of it by continually trying to treat it as if it was a bank clerk, who ought to be on time on Tuesday next, instead of philosophically seeing it as a painter, who may do anything so long as you don't try to predict what.

ANNoyance #2
TRACFONE customer service! We've used a Tracfone prepaid cellphone for some 5 years without much hindrance. We hardly ever use the thing - it's an "emergency only" acquisition. We don't even use our landline much except for receiving calls from my husband's offspring, and the odd reminder about a dentist appointment. Our old cellphone model is defunct, wasn't holding a charge for long, so I decided to replace it with a refurbished newer type from Tracfone online - doing my bit for the environment - or so I thought.

In trying to get the replacement charged and activated via phone calls to Tracfone I've spent periods of one and a half, and two and a half hours on the phone (landline 800 number).

It takes around 30 minutes to get to speak to a human being to start with, then it's not always easy to understand the accent of the human being one hears. Call centers are located in Central and South America I think - and maybe in parts of Asia too. First time around was a frustrating disaster. I tried to make a nice, patient-sounding guy understand that the refurbished phone wasn't holding a charge and wouldn't switch on properly. Having been told this several times he still insisted on going ahead transferring our phone number and remaining units/minutes from our old phone to the second phone.....thus leaving me with two useless phones. DUH!!! I eventually made him understand I'd need to go out to buy a Tracfone from Wal-Mart, so that the stuff from my old phone could be transferred. He gave me an "interaction number" for use as and when, and said a fond "goodbye ma'am".

Two days later, with a new Tracfone from Wal-Mart charged up, I attempted to reach a human being at customer service again. First three tries brought forth the news that due to current volume of calls they couldn't take mine. Fourth try, several hours later, put me in a 30-minute waiting line of callers. This time I eventually got a female human, with accent easy to understand, she seemed to understand me too, was patient and helpful. But the action of inputting yards and yards and yards of code into the new phone still took well over an hour and a half, followed by more waiting to speak to yet another rep, in the returns department, to get a ticket number and address to which to return the faulty re-furbished phone for a refund.

And.... the new phone is still not active - it takes 2 business days to get the phone number transferred to a new network (or something).



ANNoyance #3
I bought a 4-DVD set of a TV series called Firefly from an ebay seller. Brand new, in wrapper. When we tried to watch at the weekend we found that apart from half of the first episode the rest of the recording was faulty - pixelating all the time, two of the four DVDs wouldn't even start. So they must now be returned.....

Thanks Mars and Saturn.....now b..... off please, and make your trines elsewhere.