Apparently, the worst thing in the world you can do, other than harming babies and puppies, is get a cell phone for work and have your employer pay for the phone. Because when you leave said place of employment, and you return the phone to them, you're left with a contract and no phone -- which is, I have learned, akin to being a human being with blood, but no blood vessels. The useful stuff is all in there sloshing around, but you just can't access it.

I found myself in this predicament last night, and after much frustration online, I called my local Verizon store to see what they could do. And what they could do, it turns out, is wheedle me, upsell me, and insult me. But no good deal on a phone.

I laid it all out for everyone I spoke to. I have a contract, but no phone. I don't want to pay retail for a phone (even the crummiest pieces of garbage phones -- the ones they give away -- are $150 retail). I'm willing to do any kind of red tape shenanigans to get a cheap phone; restart the contract, cancel and get a new contract, invoke a lesser demon from the planet Voltron. I don't care how it happens, but I want a first-generation enV (a modest, middle of the road phone) for not much more than the $130 contract price. This is not brain surgery.

The guy on the phone is optimistic. He says, "Come in and ask for Joe or Katie. Under no circumstances should you talk to Angie. If you have to, you can talk to Sandy. But Joe is the best. Come after 7:00pm and ask for Joe. He'll definitely be able to do it for you."

So I follow his instructions. I leave my house in Isle La Motte around 6:30pm and get to the Verizon store in SoBu an hour later. Harry meets me at the door and I run down the issue with him. His first response is that I'm in a bad situation. He says it with gravity, as if I've got necrosis of the foot and I'm not actually talking about discounting a piece of plastic and wires. I reason with him.

"I want to pay you monthly. I even want to pay for the phone. They have it online for $80 with a contract, so clearly the price on the phone is oh-so-flexible, and I'm even willing to pay your $130 posted price. I just won't pay over that."

"Yeah... you really don't have any options," is his answer.

I wait for a moment. I probably blink antagonistically a few times. "Really, is that it? You're recommending I just cancel the contract?"

"Yeah," he replies.

I mention I was told to come down and Joe would hook me up. His face brightens (because Joe is clearly the doer of all things) and runs off to tell Joe that I need his help. At this point, Joe is helping someone. It's an interesting kind of helping, which involves him standing nearby while a customer speaks on the store phone to someone she knows about what type of phone to get. But fine, he's busy, and he knows I'm waiting, so I play with phones and wait.

Forty-five minutes later, I'm still waiting. I look over at Harry, who goes back to Joe and has a little powow. Harry comes back with this little tidbit:

"Uh, Joe says you have the protection plan, so you can report the phone stolen and he can give you the one-year price [of $250] for the new phone."

See if you can find the hole in that plan. Remember, I'm returning the phone to my old employer because they paid for it and it's legally theirs. Got it yet? I turn to Harry.

"Which would mean, I assume, that when my company goes to use the phone, it will be reported as stolen and unusable."

"Uh... yeah. I guess you can't do that. You'll have to talk to Joe."

I head back to play with the phone and Joe finally comes over. We aren't five words into the discussion when I realize I'm with a guy who thinks he's a "closer." He's got that salesman lilt to his voice. Like he's over-acting some kind of monologue to distance himself from the ridiculous words that are coming out of his mouth. Let me recreate this gem of a soliloquy:

"Let me run down the 'logic' here. You bought a phone from us, a nice phone, from over there. [He gestures at the PDA/Smartphone rack.] You paid what, like $500? So you spent $500 with us. And you have the lowest plan. Now I'm not saying that's bad, but that takes, like, eighteen months to recoup that. So you're paying $40 a month over two years and that's like a thousand dollars. And it'll take us time... you know, to make that back. Do you see my 'logic' here?"

I was not seeing his logic here. The way I saw it, I gave them $500 already, as well as $80 monthly (phone and data service). It wasn't entirely clear what they needed to "recoup." He continued.

"What I can do for you is this. You need to get accessories, right? You'll need a bluetooth package, a case, and a car charger, and the Vcast service to get your music, right? So I can sell you the phone for the one-year price if you'll buy those bundles. And I'll even discount them!"

Keep in mind that these bundles together (discounted) equal $109 plus $15 monthly. Added to the $250 1-year phone price, I would get a better deal just paying retail for the phone instead of taking all of the junk I don't need.

I simply responded, "I have accessories, and I have an iPod for music."

He sighed dramatically and started to explain the "logic" again, as if I was dumb. As if I wasn't getting how paying $539 was better than paying $350 for a phone which was clearly marked $130 and sells online for $80. They'll be giving these things away in Cracker Jack boxes in two months. He spoke fast, mixed metaphors, and threw in all kinds of obscure concepts. I've seen this in other people whose aim is to confuse and intimidate you. It was at that point that I realized that Joe had no interest in helping me get a non-retail phone. He also had no interest in keeping my business. I realized, disappointed, that I was going to have to walk away.

I smiled, and said,"No thanks, I'll just cancel the contract." I'm sure it was that icy cold smile that those who know me have come to recognize and enjoy. It's the "I'm done with you, but I'm pretending to be nice, so let's pretend together and get this over with," smile. Joe has never seen this smile, so can you blame him for doing the exact wrong thing?

"Awww, now you're upset," he goaded. "Don't be upset if you just can't see the 'logic' here."

It was the low blow of a man who knows he just lost the sale and is lashing out with one last-ditch effort to shame me into a purchase after trying to confuse me into a purchase. He knew it too, he would barely look at me as he completed the contract cancellation.

The kicker is that I went online and bought the same phone for $80 this morning. Even with the cancellation fee, it cost much less than the 1-year price plus accessories that Joe offered; however, I found that my SSN was flagged for credit review -- odd, because if my credit score were a phone number, it would be toll-free. Could Joe have had his revenge after all?

UPDATE: After two hours in the Verizon store last night cancelling the account, it turns out my account was not really cancelled. It was just fakely cancelled. Even though I have a little slip of paper that says the disconnect date was 05/29/08. And even though I can no longer make or receive calls, texts or emails on the phone itself.

I was told by someone at the Verizon phone center that I needed to go back to the store and re-cancel. A two hour round-trip to do, again, what I thought I did successfully last night. So I called the store to circumvent a road trip and guess who I got... what do you know, Joe!

Joe had this to say: "Well, like we discussed last night, your account was cancelled, but you would have service until June 21st."

And I had this to say: "Except the phone is disconnected now. So I don't really have service, and I'm paying through June 21st for absolutely nothing."

Listen folks, I am a hoop-jumper and a rule-follower. If you give me a set of parameters, I'll work within them. But on the flip side, I expect that when I fulfill my end of the bargain, you'll fulfill yours too. I played along with the little Verizon game of cancelling my work contract to get a personal contract, and paying the cancellation fee out of my own pocket just to make some phone calls, but now I'm ticked. Like I told the gent at the call center, I'm about two seconds away from ditching Verizon and going to Unicel. I have the Unicel plans web page open and my mouse is hovering.

I don't like getting testy with people who work in service -- really, I'm the woman who waited, smiling and joking, in the Shaw's line for 20 minutes last night while the register rebooted and lost my order. Service jobs are hard and stuff goes wrong. But today I'm snappish with the Verizon guys. There's a willfulness to their idiocy. They're already sticking me with fees and red tape, now they're even messing up their own insane procedures.

ATTENTION VERIZON: This would have all been moot if you would have let me pay you $130. I wanted to pay you $130.

FINAL (I hope) UPDATE: I managed to get the contract cancelled for real real and the new phone will arrive Monday, but not before Joe called me back, insisting on speaking to "Helen." I told him a few times it was me he spoke to previously, not this mythical Helen, but he was adamant. (Helen doesn't even sound like Tara.) Eventually, I told him I'd give Helen the message.

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After a decade in apartments, I have finally my first garden! There was a community garden in Eagle Heights, but we never got around to becoming members. And the backyard on Barbara Street was fenced, locked and off-limits. Aurora Street was a concrete jungle where residents used planters for cigarette butts and Melville Ave had a little strip of dirt (not soil) where we failed to grow anything but used car parts that kept turning up with the digging.

In order to make up for lost time, the plot this year is 35 feet by 50 feet. Because why fail at something small when you can go down in flames on a huge undertaking instead? (Speaking of failure, I have one more bread recipe suggestion from a good friend that arrived recently. More on bread difficulties after I give that one a try.) There's a five-foot strip down the center mulched with hay for the cart to drive through, and about ten rows of plantings on either side.



I found MyFolia.com -- a site that helps you track your garden plantings, trade plants with other growers, and connect with gardeners in your area. You can also blog on the site, but I tend not to post in other blog-friendly places (like MySpace) because I have Liloia.com. The site is in beta, so the closest active gardener is three hours away; however, I did find someone with a few registered window boxes in Burlington.

What I'm curious about are the trading features. While I'm more than willing to share plants, there are definite rules for doing so. The site appears to be UK-based, so I doubt it's legal for us to ship plants to each other. I suspect the site will be more useful to trading as more people come on board. Vermont is a grower-friendly state and when more of us register, we can swap in person.

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We have the most well-behaved hive of bees, ever. We suited up today and I lighted the smoker for the first time. The sisal rope smolders with lots of white plumes of smoke. It was easy to light and just a few feet of coiled rope was enough for today's tasks.

We drove the cart out to the hive and puffed the entrance a few times with the smoker. A bunch of beed hovered noisily by the entrance in a holding pattern, but they didn't seem to notice us. We smoked the top and opened it to find everyone busy on the frames. Again, none of the bees even looked up from their work.



We refilled the sugar-water feeder, removed the empty queen cage and scraped away some extra burr comb. I eventually gave up on the smoker since everyone was so calm without it. We lifted a few frames to see the progress. There wasn't a whole lot of comb being built, but they've only been in the hive for a week. Considering what a wet, cold week we've had, the ladies were all in a good mood. We didn't find the queen, but our eyes aren't trained to pick her out yet.

All in all, we were finished in about ten minutes. It takes longer to suit up than to work with the bees. I learned last time that my sunscreen agitates them, so I made sure to do the bee tasks before the garden tasks. Now we won't need to bother them again for another 3-4 weeks.

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I am head over heels for bees today. We humans are enjoying the brief bit of sunshine in an otherwise rainy and cold week, but there are 14,000 girls who are absolutely thrilled with the good weather. I understood that they'd be foraging in our fields, but I didn't quite grasp it until today. I stood on the deck and the backyard was vibrating with bee activity. You can hear the hum stretch into the distance. Now I can't say for sure that they're all from our hive, but I've never seen this many bees in our fields before today.

I got a little intoxicated with all of the buzzing and took about 500 bee photos. Just be glad I'm only showing you three here.












"Look at us, we're simply covered with pollen!"

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I unsubscribed from the FlyLady list after several weeks of trying to make it work. For those who haven't met her, FlyLady is a cleaning and clutter-busting expert who offers a home management system for keeping a household running.

Going from a one-floor condo to a big farmhouse has increased the number of my maintenance chores exponentially. Dave, as awesome as he is about keeping things running around here, now has five acres of land to tend. Mowing it alone takes a full weekend day. So the inside is primarily my responsibility.

I found FlyLady and made my daily cleaning lists, which work well for maintenance and de-cluttering. I changed a few of her tips; lace-up shoes are impractical when I have to change shoes several times a day for different tasks. (Don't wear the muddy gardening boots in the kitchen!) And there are only so many times I can remove twenty-seven pieces of clutter from a room before it looks like an IKEA showroom. I need to keep a few personal items around.

The trouble is not the cleaning advice, but the email newsletter. It's ironic that on a clutter-cleanup list, there are over 30 broadcast messages a day.The volume of incoming email is extreme; I have several FlyLady filters set up and still about fifteen messages get through the net daily.

So how do you fill 30 messages a day with content? Some are reminder notices; start the laundry, shine your sink, etc. They might be useful, except that they rarely arrive in my inbox at a relevant time. I keep getting "put your shoes on for the day" messages after 11:00pm, or "Tuesday is clean the living room day" reminders on Wednesday night.

Some of the messages are missions -- special areas that need to be cleaned on that particular day. Again, when they come in at the end of the day or the next day, they're fairly useless. And if you're using your task list, a reminder email isn't necessary.

The rest of the messages are a mix of lengthy essays on why it's important to stay organized and a large number of rambling testimonials from other people using the program. I'm already on the program -- I don't need convincing ten times a day.

The kicker is that when I unsubscribed, I received a bewildered autoreply from FlyLady that condemned me for leaving the list because I "hate change." Exqueeze me? In the last year alone I renovated a house, moved to an island, took a job, quit a job, started beekeeping, and switched breakfast cereal from Rice Krispies to Raisin Bran (<- not easy!). I hate change?!

The letter also said that I felt her reminders were "negative voices from my past." Uh huh. Or maybe they're just way too much junk mail.

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Costco scares me, but I'll walk across burning coals for 12 sheets each of 20 colors of tissue paper for $7.



I have an idea for a rack of dowels on the wall to store these babies.

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These are adorable little houses that I pass on the way to the DC office in the morning. In some areas, it looks like the neighbors collaborated to coordinate their colors. It all looks very colonial.



I wonder how they mow their tiny front and back yards. It can't be practical to buy a lawnmower for five square feet. Communal mowers? Landscaping service? At least one of them took the,"you don't have to mow overgrown vines," approach to their lawn.

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