Annoying two weeks

I had a service switch order from my power company issued on August 27th.

On September 1, they came and shut off the power in the name of the last tenant here. Sitting in the dark, I called them. "Oh, I don't know why they would do that. The earliest we can send someone out is on the eighth." I pointed out that only the maintenance guy has access to the meter in the basement, and that they need to call both myself and the landlady.

So I waited for a week in increasingly Roast Beef darkness. They showed up without calling, waited outside the locked door, and then left. I called up, and found that the moron had specifically overridden the automatic preparatory phone call. "Oh, I don't know why they would do that. It's right in the service order. Odd."

"We have an opening tomorrow and monday. [clickety] no, tomorrow is booked. [clickety] no, monday is booked. We can come back on the 15th."

I was now in white hot shaking goddamn fury.

They came back on the 15th, calling this time. And the maintenance guy didn't have the key. I called. "The report says they waited while he searched through, he counted, 50 keys on a huge keychain. We can schedule it for tomorrow."

So I waited all day on thursday. No dice, no show. I called and was told it was only "reissued" and got some bullshit about Buffalo power outages.

On Friday they showed up but didn't call. At this point I was one cigarette away from tearing open a hole in the scrotum of the next National Grid employee I saw and stuffing it full of rocksalt.

I called. "Sorry, but we can't reschedule until you can guarantee us access."

"What the hell does that mean? You have access if and only if you fuckheads manage to call beforehand. Which you do not do."

"You need to ensure that we will have access to the meter."

"So I need to call my landlady and say, 'have the guy be there at noon' then call you guys and say 'be there at noon'?"

"No, we can't specify a time like that. It will be any time between 8 and 5."

"Fat lot of good that did you assholes every other time before. So he needs to be here all day and hope you pigfuckers show up?"

"We just need to have access. You'll have to work it out yourself before calling back."

So I called my landlady, and she told me to just reschedule and tell them I will give them access.

I was able to reschedule it for monday, between 8 and 10 a.m. Called the landlady, the maintenance guy would be here during that time. The ONLY possible way National Grid could fuck things up would be by not showing up at all. Which they'd already done.

On monday, they showed up without calling, got access, and turned it on. They turned on the power they were not supposed to have turned off in the first place, after more than 2 weeks.

This is it. After ritualistically mutilating the management of National Grid and their children using highly energetic gerbils, I'm building a Tesla Coil to energize the Heaviside Layer. Then, I will tell them I want a month free power.

Oh. My sleep schedule during these two weeks went odd. I shifted into something like SPAMAYL, but more regular. It's the only way to deal with being on a polyphasic sleep schedule without a way of knowing the time or setting alarms. The longest nap would be about 3 hours in the wee morning, and 10 minute catnaps throughout the day with a few normal 20 minute naps. It's not quite Uberman, not quite Everyman. Now that things are back to normal I'll drift back into my old Uberman + catnap schedule.