Good customer service

Good customer service. I was looking for a way to say this, but I’ve been beaten to the line: “I am a Southerner. Southerners like to tell stories. They like to tell you the truth, but that doesn’t mean they’re going to be factual about it.” [From one of them nice Scorpio’s.] One advantage to losing a contract is that I’ve got a lot more time to do what I like to do, and the fact that I’m doing one less weekly column now means that I can start using a little more care, and worry a little less about deadlines. 50+ e–mails, before noon. I logged on and the timer kept running, seems I spent more than six hours working on Monday morning. I was about to leave, and I saw the UPS truck parked behind a fence. I crawled around the edge of the fence, through the weeds and trash, to get to the truck as I knew, just as soon as I left the trailer, that UPS delivery would come through. I thoughts, “Here’s the proof, they just sit, watch and wait until you leave before they attempt delivery.” It wasn’t our regular driver, so this one didn’t know about delivering to Shady Acres. After that, I spent a portion of lunch pulling briars out of the shirt I had in hand when I went through that fence to get to the delivery. All that for a flat package: proof that folks will buy anything on the net. It’s a piece of leather [damned expensive piece of leather, if you ask me] that fits over the keyboard on my notebook when it’s closed. So far, though, it seems to work. I’ll find out if this is really a “must have” accessory this weekend. Late last night, I thought I’d swing by the Alamo Drafthouse. Monday night is dollar night. I’d heard good things about “Blow” [the movie], so I was off to see what turned out to be a sold out show. It’s always interesting being the one of the oldest people in the audience. The movie itself left me a little shell–shocked. I was busy, in the first half of the movie, mentally keeping track of the tunes and making sure the period pieces were done correctly. But the second half of the movie was creepy, eerie, and touched a nerve or two. There was an understated quality to the acting, and the wretched excess of the times was played just right.