Today, I am Angry

Not "was". "Am".

I wish it were past tense, but it isn't. And being angry is not at all good for my blood pressure. I am trying to settle in with a nice bottle of chianti, which went well with our eggplant Parmesan dinner. Homegrown eggplant. Even that, however, is not helping much.

I had a whole bunch of work stuff written here, but I decided to delete it as it was too easily deciphered. Let me just say this: as of today, I am pissed off enough that [redacted]. Never before has my ire risen to this level. I do not suffer incompetence well, and this has gone on long enough. It's worse than when I had to work with The JohnnyB.

I had to look up "ire" to make sure I was using it correctly there. I was. Being a sooper-genius is a lonely life.

I was almost calmed down by the time dinner was over. Then I looked through the mail and noticed that I had a letter from my mortgage company. My insurance company had kindly sent them a note saying they had cancelled my policy, and the mortgage company was kindly inquiring as to whether I still had insurance or whether they should provide me with some at an exorbitant cost to me. This ticked me off again.

See, the insurance company had for some reason gotten it into their heads that they should bill my mortgage company for the premium rather than billing me. I don't know why this is, as I paid them for the initial year. But, at any rate, they sent a bill off to the mortgage company, who apparently looked at it a bit and decided to toss it in the garbage. Then, my insurance company was kind enough to cancel my policy at the end of the year term for non-payment of the renewal fee, send a note off to the mortgage company that the policy was canceled, then give me a courtesy call to say that the payment was overdue, then send a bill to me. Of course, they called on a Friday, and The Mrs. did not call me up to let me know when she got the message, but instead waited until I got home at 6:30pm after every insurance company in America is closed and said, "Oh, by the way, there's a message for you from the insurance agent."

Naturally, this was the night before HannahC's birthday bash, an event I didn't want to head into with no insurance. So I spent about an hour Saturday morning trying to figure out what the 24-hour help line number was for my insurance company. It's State Farm, which you'd think would be an easy number to find. But noooooooo. State Farm only has 24-hour service from select agents. Call your agent, and his voicemail may connect you. If it doesn't, you're SOL - you're agent isn't participating in the 24-hour service program.

Now, my agent's voicemail said, "Our office is closed, but don't worry. State Farm is available to assist you 24-hours a day, 7-days a week. If you'd like to leave a message for the office staff, please press 1. If you'd like to make a claim, please press 2. If you'd like a quote on auto insurance, please press 3. For everything else, please call our office during normal business hours Monday through Friday from 9 to 5."

Now exactly how in the hell is this 24-hour support?

After surfing the web trying to find a better way, I eventually settled on pressing 2 for claims. The claims people are pretty on-the-ball at an insurance company. It connected me to a phone tree that included "make a payment" and "speak to a representative" in addition to "make a claim". I chose "speak to a representative" cuz I figured I needed to get my policy uncanceled, which I thought was more complicated than "make a payment". I was wrong. The guy pulled up my file and said, "Yup - we billed your mortgage company. Yup - they didn't pay, so we sent a Notice of Cancellation. Oh, it looks like we sent you a bill directly yesterday, too." "Is there any way I can pay now and get it reinstated today?" "Yes, but I have to transfer you to our payment department."

So I paid and got a confirmation number in time for HannahC's party, at which no injuries occurred, but you never know. But, sadly, my bank may not know this. The insurance company sent me a Notice of Reinstatement, but they sent it the same day my bank sent me the query. It possible they have the info already, but I'll fax it in anyways tomorrow, and then call them to confirm.

It's not really a huge deal, but it's enough to set me off again on a Bad Day.

Two of our three pet caterpillars are beginning to spin their chrysalises today. I don't think I mentioned the pet caterpillars before. All three are black swallowtails. All were discovered on the pond parsley we have in the koi pond over the weekend. One (HannahC's) is named Katie and two (MaxieC's) are named Alex. The Alex's replace a tent caterpillar, named Alex, we found the day before along with Katie but had to let go because he wouldn't eat. MaxieC went ballistic over that, and luckily The Mrs. was able to find a couple more black swallowtail caterpillars the next day. They've been chowing down on carrot greens from the garden and getting big and fat since the weekend.

The whole house fan is great on nights like tonight where it isn't insanely hot out. I am starting to fell like it was worth the money, unlike in July when it didn't get colder outside than inside until 11pm.