The Good

So, I just had my main bathroom redone. Unlike pasketti, I paid people to do it for me. However, I still had to go out and buy fixtures myself. I have a whole stack of receipts to add to my "House" folder, so that if I ever have to figure out how much I put into home improvements over the years I can. Yesterday, I got the Visa bill including most of these purchases. Even without checking the receipts, I could identify most of the purchases (light fixture, toilet, cabinetry, tile, towel bars). But, the Lowes charge was a bit of a puzzlement. I couldn't locate the receipt, and the charge seemed to be too high. All I could remember getting at Lowes was the mirror and some CF bulbs for the new light fixture. There was around $100 unaccounted for. So I called customer service at the Lowes I shopped at, read off a few numbers from the statement and confirmed my name. The CS rep put me on hold for less than two minutes, and came back, telling me that the third item on the charge was a faucet set. Yep. The new faucets in the new sink came from Lowes.

The Bad

This morning I decided to take my shower (in my new bathroom!) after breakfast. That turned out to be a bad decision. As I was drinking my coffee, the power went out. I looked outside, and there was a crew from United Illuminating moving lines to a new pole. They clearly had cut the power to do so. So I threw on some clothes and went outside to find out how long the power would be out. The guy I spoke to told me that it would be at least an hour-and-a-half. He further said that they had knocked on doors to alert homeowners who would be affected of the power cut. I told him that nobody had knocked on my door, and that I had been up and dealing with breakfast for well over an hour. He told me that they had. So I went inside to finish my coffee (a shower was out of the question as there are no windows in my new bathroom). After a few minutes, I decided to call UI to register a complaint. The woman I spoke to was appropriately sympathetic. But it was only after I got off the phone that I realized that I should have asked for a few dollars credit. Oh well.