Grrrrr. Yaknow? I am not one o’ them thar stay-at-home moms who sits around eating bon-bons and watching soap operas. I betcha I did about thirty chores and errands this morning and I have more to do this afternoon and I have some work to do on the computer/internet and I am trying — really — to start a business. I don’t have a whole lot of clients yet but I am working on it and I have a lot to do. So when the land line rang this morning, my thoughts went along these lines:

1. Damn, I forgot to turn off the ringer.
2. I wonder if it’s a solicitor. (Yes, I am on the do not call list. It’s pretty good but it isn’t perfect.)
3. Or someone who just wants to chit-chat.
4. Or a relative in dire need of some piece of paperwork that I’ll have to spend the next twenty minutes frantically rummaging for. With an emergency trip to the safe deposit or the post office uscan (or Kalamazoo (love you Mouse ;-))) thrown in for good measure.
5. I won’t even mention the “who died” calls. 😐 (In all truth, I didn’t get this far down the list this morning.)

Seriously, I love y’all, but I haven’t ever been crazy about telephones. Phone calls are *interruptions* that too often bring bad news or annoying solicitors. And I have to be in the *mood* for chit-chat. If I’m not, you’ll just think I’m ticked off at you or depressed or distant or whatever. Chances are almost 100% that I am not, rather that I am merely preoccupied with whatever I’ve got going at the moment and can’t get into the chit-chat groove.

If I had caller ID on the land line, then I could at least triage the calls. If I were Mouse, I could just figure that anyone who wanted to call me would call my cell and I’d ignore the land line. (I love you, Mouse. :-)) But I don’t have caller ID on the land line and some people have my cell phone number and some don’t and some who have both tend to call either on a random basis.

When I answered the phone this morning, it was “Kaiser.” I don’t know how he spells his name but he said he was from Network Solutions. He told me that my domain name, ababsurdo.com, was about to expire and tried to sell me ten years of renewals at a “special” price. Hmmm. mousesnest.com *was* due to expire a couple weeks ago and I had already renewed it. I was pretty sure that ababsurdo was nowhere near expiration. I should’ve just hung up on him like I usually do, but I decided to ask him *when* ababsurdo was due to expire. “In a few weeks,” was his response. “Can you give me the exact date?” I asked. “No, I don’t have the date, but in a few weeks,” he replied. I said, “I’ll deal with this on-line, thank you,” and hung up. Turns out that ababsurdo does not expire until late September. Definitely not “in a few weeks.”

So, who was this guy? Was he *with* Network Solutions? Or was he just trolling through the whois records? Usually, I get email reminders from Netsol. And even then, I don’t click any of the email links. I go over to my browser of choice (which is Firefox, by the way) and enter www.networksolutions.com all on my own and go from there.

Several things to be learned from this:

1. Beware of anyone (ANYONE) calling you on the phone trying to sell you something. Even if (especially if) you have an account with the business they supposedly represent.
2. The best way to get my attention is to EMAIL me! You can just hit the link over on the right rail. If we need to communicate telephonically, it can be arranged.
3. If you are calling up for random chit-chat and I sound “distant” or “bothered” or whatever, it’s not (usually) because I don’t like you. It is because I have about umpteen-gazillion things going through my head and I am not in a chit-chat type mood. Unless you happen to have REALLY GOOD NEWS! That will cause my mood to shift pretty fast. But it’s been quite a while since I’ve had a phone call that qualifies as good news.

Sincerely yours,
Kayak Woman

P.S. I’m actually gonna go do something fun now. I’ve earned it today. Don’t call. I won’t answer. 😉

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 31st, 2007 at 12:36 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.