Patience is a Virtue

Just a little update on my last post. I had told myself that as soon as I posted my rantings about being on hold forever that I would hang up the phone and try again another day, but I didn't.

I just started doing something else and after a while I finally heard a voice, a real human voice. It did have an Indian accent, but I could deal with that. I grabbed the phone and said hello, hello, but apparently the agent couldn't hear me. I kept trying... hello!....HELLO! He also kept saying hello and then he said, "I will hang up now. Apparently you are no longer on the line."

Alan could hear this because the phone was still on speaker. He said he wished he'd had a camera to capture the look on my face. I'm sure it was one of panic and despair. At that moment there must have been a divine intervention because I hit the TALK button. I didn't know why, I was just trying anything. That turned the speaker phone off, finally, and best of all the agent could hear me now.

Raul was great. He fixed everything. In the course of our conversation he asked me how long I had been on hold. I promise I didn't bring it up, he asked. By then it had been really close to 2 hours, but I said an hour and 45 minutes, just to give them the benefit of the doubt. He politely apologized and then said that he was going to see that I got an extra 30 days of virus protection for the inconvenience. Woot! Woot! I love free stuff.

Later I worked it out and I probably made a whopping 2.50 an hour by being patient. Oh well. At least I got the dishes done, some filing of pictures and had something to blog about. I guess it was worth the 2 hours.

P. S. I was going to try to find a picture on Google images to go along with this post, but when I went there it said that "using this site could damage your computer." It said the same thing on Yahoo image search and others in the list. Is that warning always there and I had just never seen it before? Has anyone else ever seen that? Do I have to call Raul again?

Freaking Dang it!

Freaking Dang it! is a missionary curse word combination I have heard one of the Brazilian elders here use. He is trying to learn English and this is what he uses to express his frustration. It makes me laugh every time I hear him say it.

But today I'm using it and I am not laughing because I have been waiting on the telephone for over an hour. It might be an hour and a half by now. I just had a simple question for someone about why Norton Internet Protection keeps sending me pop up things that say my subscription protection has expired and it doesn't expire until June 2009.

I really hate being on hold. This has gone on so long I feel like they put me on "mold." The "music" they have for you to enjoy while you pass the time is really getting on my nerves. It just isn't that enjoyable. The really sad part is that I decided to do the dishes and a few other things while waiting so I pushed the speakerphone button so I could hear it as I was working. I didn't want to miss it when the agent came on the line. Now I can't get the darn thing off speakerphone and the music is starting to bug Alan too.

So why don't I just hang up? Everytime I think I can't stand it anymore and I am going to hang up, a voice interupts the music to say, "We appreciate your patience. Please don't hang up. If you hang up now, it will increase your wait time as all calls are answered in the order they were placed."

Yes, I have it memorized, word for word.

I don't want to start over with this thing. I had already spoken to an agent in India who asked me all the initial questions before giving me this customer service number. Even though I had to ask her to repeat a lot of things I tried to be patient and nice because I understand a little about trying to be understood while speaking a different language and how frustrating it is when people don't really even try to understand.

Well, my patience is exhausted. The music track is cycling again and I just heard a really horrible instrumental rendition of "A Time for Us" for at least the 3rd time. I am through waiting. If a virus gets me, it gets me. I just can't take it anymore, freaking dang it!

The Party is Over...Way Over

We knew our way fun Christmas was over when, just a few days ago, Alan was eating the last cherry chocolate the kids brought down. Is that a sad look or what? But we had a great time with our whole family down here for the holidays. Here are a few pictures of how it went.

We were absolutely spoiled this year, not just because all of our family was here together, but they brought us 10 suitcases , full to the max, of mostly food items, that we had been missing.

The trip wore everybody out so the first day, I saw a lot of this.

The tables were turned this year. We were opening all the gifts......

The kids were looking on with hardly a thing to open. Sorry, kids.

Thanks for all the nice things you sent us. Dale and Angela sent Alan this sheep ornament and that put him in a festive mood.

We managed to have a really nice Christmas dinner with most of the things we usually have back at home and a few new things too.

As is usual during the holidays, we ate a lot. Our waiter took a picture of us after we finished a meal at the churrascaria. It is one of those places where they keep bringing you different meats to eat and you keep eating it until you are sick.

We all posed for a picture after a lunch we had with one of our elders that was leaving the mission a little ahead of his group. I was glad the kids got to meet him because he was a really great elder.

Of course we went to the beach. This beach has some pretty interesting colors of sand. I liked the contrast of the blue sea and the terra cotta colored sand in this picture.

We rode dune buggies along the shore and up into some sand dunes.

We had to stay out of the sun for a day or so after all day at the beach. Let's just say most of us got a little pink. So we played games, mostly a variation of Clue that Lee and Kim brought.
It probably doesn't look all that exciting to anyone else, but we had a really great time. I'm pretty sure it will be a Christmas we will all remember.