I woke up grumpy after a poor night’s sleep. I was mad at myself for a couple of mistakes. I was mad at my insurance company for giving me an unreasonable quote to protect my newly upgraded house. (They want to insure it and my possessions for way more than they’re worth, and they insist on including coverage for expensive outbuildings I don’t have — all to generate a premium I can’t afford.)<\/p>\n
In desperate need of a short getaway after this summer’s push-push-push to finish Mo Saoirse’s exterior, I checked the one little beachy studio I used to be able to afford. As I thought; its rental cost had more than doubled since last time, so that was out. But AirBnB had some pretty darned good deals in the area. I created an account with them.<\/p>\n
AirBnB happily accepted my login. They insisted upfront on knowing my birthday. (I lied, but gnrrrrrr.) Oh yes, they had to have a working phone number. When I found an amazingly inexpensive cabin with a river view, available for two days just when I wanted it, they accepted alllll my payment information. No sweat. Data-data-data; happy to have it, thanks for the gift.<\/p>\n
Then when I clicked the final<\/em> button to confirm the booking … they tell me they’re no longer accepting payments on my “out of date app” and dismiss me with an order to “update your client.”<\/p>\n Well, I wasn’t on a smartphone. I wasn’t using some app I could update, but just whatever website they chose to present me, with relevant scripts allowed (but none of the Google, FB, and Bing crap they also wanted to foist on innocent would-be customers). But there I was, stuck. I’d just given marketing data up the wahzoo to a company that won’t deal with me and won’t give a coherent explanation of why.<\/p>\n BUT. Ever since then AirBnB has been spamming me, both via phone and email, to “accept the invitation” of a particular host I queried (but decided against) to make a reservation at their place. This despite me having clicked the “no marketing” option when I signed on.<\/p>\n AND. Shortly after that, I got a voice call from a number I didn’t recognize. I ignored it as I always do — then was surprised the caller actually left a voice mail. <\/p>\n The message, from a very grumpy male stranger, was, “I don’t know how you g*d***ed got this number, but don’t you g*dd**m call me again!”<\/p>\n My sentiments exactly.<\/p>\n —–<\/p>\n Ahem. Yes. I admit it felt good to rant that rant. I needed to do it. Whether you patient readers needed to see it or not is another question.<\/p>\n But I’m not ranting merely to rant. I’m ranting to de-rantify and get the day on a different track.<\/p>\n You see, I’m remembering another extremely, wildly, overwhelmingly annoying Monday. A Monday on which every little thing went wrong from breakfast to bedtime. A Monday on which it seemed all the gods were against me and the fates were engaged in a conspiracy to irritate and upset me at every turn.<\/p>\n It was, in fact, another Monday, September 10. And the very next morning I sat down first thing to write a hearty rant in my journal about how rotten the world had been to me the previous day.<\/p>\n But before I ranted that rant, I checked my online news feeds.<\/p>\n It was Tuesday, September 11, 2001.<\/p>\n Ever since then, I’ve tried to keep things in better perspective.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I woke up grumpy after a poor night’s sleep. I was mad at myself for a couple of mistakes. I was mad at my insurance company for giving me an unreasonable quote to protect my newly upgraded house. (They want to insure it and my possessions for way more than they’re worth, and they insist on including coverage for expensive outbuildings I don’t have — all to generate a premium I can’t afford.) In desperate need of a short getaway after this summer’s push-push-push to finish Mo Saoirse’s exterior, I checked the one little beachy studio I used to be…<\/p>\n