On cold days, the sun still shines

It wasn't that long ago that the phone company was the domestic bureaucracy that inspired the greatest terror. Lily Tomlin and Elaine May developed and performed brilliant characters based on the stereotypical telephone operator. "We're the phone company--we don't have to care." So, when I called to cancel the phone service at my father's house, I delighted with the empathy and efficiency of the Verizon customer service representative. The line would be disconnected within a couple of hours and there'd be no charges for that portion of the month that he was, for a pretty compelling reason, unable to use the phone.

There is a little-understood principle called the Law of Conservation of Malevolence. If one company gets a clue and starts to treat its customers well, then, at least one other company must inherit the former's astringency. On this occasion, it went to the cable company: Comcast. A couple of years ago, I bought cable service for my father so that he could watch the ball games. The bills came to me; my social security number was on the account; all the Comcast promotional material came to me. So, when I called to cancel the service, the CSR told me that I needed to bring a copy of the death certificate to the nearest Comcast office, proving that my father was indeed dead so that I could stop the service that I had purchased.

CNN mentioned this site - Grammar Girl's Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing - earlier this week. The podcasts (audio programs) are four or five minutes long and provide good guidance for writing and speaking well. This week's program covers the use of bad vs. badly. ("I feel bad." and "I feel badly.")

We're receiving our first real cold blast of the season. At this writing, the temperature is -2°F. With a northwesterly breeze, the wind child makes it feel as cold as a Comcast CSR's heart.

Sometimes, the odometer click is louder than usual. Happy 40^th birthday, Mike. As we've said often, you and your family are giving our name a good name.

Finally, because of the turbulence surrounding my father's last days, I didn't get a chance to mention Krista's 11^th birthday, two weeks ago today. I'm glad that she had a happy day.

Cooper's tracks

We've had a touch of light snow during the past few days, enough to barely cover the ground. In places where last week's ice is still around, it's very slippery underfoot. In the fresh snow, footprints show up nicely.

The dog from across the street, Cooper, had been visiting my father's house. My father would save scraps of food and feed the dog from the back door. Cooper was tentative the first time I opened the back door to offer him a treat; he took the snack and backed away quickly. Now, we have several sets of Cooper's footprints circling the house. No one was home. Even if there had been someone at home, there's nothing left to eat.

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It was easy to stop the newspaper delivery, cancel the telephone service, and have my father's mail forwarded to my home. The cable company (Comcast), however, wins the trophy for Insensitive Business Practices. Even though all of the cable bills had been coming to me for the years that we had cable at my father's house and my SSN was on the account, I had to bring a death certificate to the Comcast office in Leominster to prove that he was dead so that I could stop the cable service that I was paying for.