Day 105

I spent the better part of today waiting for a telephone repairman to come out and fix a bad line at the office. The guy never showed up. This is the second time this has happened in less than a month. Anticipating problems, I asked the AT&T dispatcher this morning if she could give me a time of day when the repairman was expected to arrive. "I'm sorry," she said. "I'm not even located in your city. I just turn in the repair order and the first available technician will be there sometime today." Probably the first available technician will arrive unannounced three or four days from now when I'm not even here. That's what happened last time. No wonder people are abandoning their land lines in droves and using wireless for everything. It's just about impossible to get an old fashioned, plain vanilla telephone fixed anymore.

Be careful what you ask for folks. I've been trying for months to get some new project assignments from my European clients. Got an e-mail today from my German friends asking if I'd be interested in writing about one of their Brazilian subsidiaries. Fantastic! Only one small problem. All the input material for the project is in Portuguese.

My rental property is officially leased. I signed all the paperwork this afternoon. Hopefully, this will be a good tenant. They all start out good. Something always happens though. They lose their job. A boyfriend moves in with them. They join a cult. They have loud parties and drive the neighbors crazy. We'll see how this turns out. I've discovered over the years that the best tenants are traveling salesman. People who spend a lot of time on the road and just need a home base usually turn out to be perfect tenants. They're not around enough to trash the place. Once I rented to the activities director on a cruise ship. This guy was hardly ever there at all. He was the best renter I ever had. I guess the holy grail would be to find a renter who never even moved in at all.

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