When Time Warner and Acceller ripped me off

Don't mess with a woman who takes notes

I knew getting an apartment in NYC had its pitfalls.  Needless to say, I got ripped off by companies that you would expect to do good business... but wait, they are monopolies, why should they bother.  I should have expected to get ripped of.

It went like this.  I called ConEdison to set up my electricity.  That went well. Before I ended the call, I was asked if I wanted their help in setting up my TV and Internet. I said sure.  They said, OK we are transferring you over to someone who will verify that your Electric was set up properly, and then they will help you with your TV and Internet.  I thought this meant I would be sent to another department within Con-Ed, but that was not the case.  They transferred me to a company called Acceller (AKA Home Connections), and no one ever once mentioned that I was now dealing with a company that gets paid to "help me" set up my utilities.

I asked the operator (name I was given is Cody Bland) what my options were.  He Strongly sold me on Time Warner.  I made it clear that I needed the smallest TV package as watching TV was not the reason we were getting an apartment in NY.  I was told, and I quote, " Basic service at Time Warner is $44.99 for 126 channels".  I said fine and move forward, and even paid a $50 deposit even though my credit is stellar.  I then asked about Verizon Fios, my

Purging and simplifying

At the end of my last post I mentioned that being in a small apartment made me want to simplify at home.  After being in this house for 15 years and raising my kids, and homeschooling them here, I have accumulated more stuff than a girl can possibly need.  Even after giving away a lot of the homeschool curriculum and such, I am still overwhelmed with stuff.  Having the spare apartment in NYC makes that crystal clear when I come home.

So I have been home in Atlanta for just over two weeks and working on costuming a show.  It opened this weekend, and I am finally coming up for air.  Right before I started sewing, immediately after I got home, I cut the contents of my closet by 2/3.  I kept 1/3 of the items in my closet.  It was quite a feat, but I had to do it while I was still excited about it.  Since then, I have not done laundry, but have had something quite decent to wear every day, and could probably squeeze out 2 or 3 more outfits before I had to wear winter clothes or something exceedingly fancy.  So, I now know I did the right thing by paring down my closet!

I have spent all of last few weeks furiously sewing for Cabaret.  I am so pleased that so many people are mentioning the costumes in their comments and reviews.  We are so proud!  The show is definitely rated age 16+, I'd probably say 18+.  It is of course about a seedy night club and the happenings of people involved in it as Hitler came to power.  Suggestiveness, scant costumes, and violence.... but it is more than anything else, historical, and a reminder that if we look away from atrocities happening to other people, we are also perpetrators... AND it is just a matter of time before those horrors are turned on us.

I haven't had the time to take photos of costumes and did not get permission from the actors, so I will be posting costume photos later.

My first month in NYC

My cell phone camera is like a memory bank.  I don't use it so much to take photos of beautiful things I see... first, because I don't fancy myself a tourist.  Second, because everything is beautiful.  I can get caught up in the most fascinating textures of gritty places, and gleam of glass and steel buildings.  In NY, It's all art to me, but I digress.

<<Here's my most used photo.... a reminder of when the ferry to IKEA runs.

It can be kind of hard to ignore social issues when you are in NY. Right now everything around here is rainbow colors in celebration of the right for gay people to marry.  People are literally celebrating in the streets, since there is an actual parade going on not too far from my apartment, and this week I went to Broadway sings for Pride, which was an AMAZING show and since the main goal was preventing young people

My first week in NYC

So I am coming to the end of my first few weeks in NYC, I am heading back to the suburbs of Atlanta in a few days, where I will be furiously working on a costuming project, spending time with the young adult kids, and then coming back here to finish setting up the apartment. I will bringing some stuff from the house like plates, and other stuff I have in triplicate to make the apartment more homey.

I am very lucky to have pen pal of sorts.  Writing to someone daily helped my chronicle my journey.

Here are some of the more "fun" occurrences as they happened:

I am on the bus to NY right now. I should be there In a few hours. I need a Xanax. I thought I was all hardy and such. I could rough it. I'm not above the bus. Ummm. Apparently I'm a delicate flower. First, the lack of communication. How dare I expect customer service and think my questions should be answered. This is the bus lady and it costs $50 round trip. Shut up and get in line. I climb onto the bus and I say "the floor is sticky". An older pretty well put together woman looks at me and says "and..." I. Other words, were you expecting caviar? I silence myself and settle in only to find that my seat was In The back of the bus. The front rows were reserved for the workers they were transporting to work. For real. So I'm the back of the damn bus with a bunch of folks that are neither aware of or give a darn about niceties. They brought aboard the most pungent smelling food and ate it noisily. When they were done they fell into sleep apnea filled slumbers. I wanted to get up And poke people to make sure they were breathing.
 And finally as I settled in and was comfortable with an adorable tattooed young male nestled into my shoulder, I saw a roach. I like to have died. Everyone else was like. Oh yes, a roach , let's call him Ivan. Me, I'm trying to get a photo of it for my online review while simultaneously calculating how far a walk it was from that point. And when I got up for our potty break, I saw thAt everyone had thrown their half eaten dinners in the floor. There were little sewAge streams on the bus. At least that told me I could take my butt back to sleep because the roach/es were not thinking about me. It had a virtual smorgasbord to enjoy. 

While I was on the bus, I got a phone call from my kids.  Son finally passed his road test.  Not