Conversation With a Cable Telemarketer

So my internet contract is up and I called my internet provider to see what cheaper

options are available. I sort of felt bad for the person because once I make up my

mind I sort of know exactly what I want and nothing can change it. I wanted to save

money and not pay any morefor the same cable service, they wanted to sell me not

just internet but a basic cable subscription. The conversation was kind of amusing

at one point it went something like this:

Telemarketer: For only $2 you can get basic cable, golly gee isn't that great!

Me: I don't need basic cable

Telemarketer: But you can get the local news, what happens when a hurricane starts

to come towards us, how will you know?

Me: I have a digital converter box that the government paid for so I get 3 local stations

Telemarketer:But you can't watch anything, basic cable is only $2 more!

Me: Nah, I don't want to pay $2 more

Telemarketer: Well what do you do at night with all your free time?! Do you travel a lot,

I mean you need something to do, so what do you do?

Me: I read. A lot.

Telemarketer:Oh (silence), but it's only $2 more.

Me: You know you're right, this level of internet service actually costs too much, downgrade me to

the cheaper version.

Telemarketer:Oh, and add t.v?

Me: No

The end of the conversation was the person agreeing to give me

my old level of cable service for the same price.However when she tried

to enter the contract it didn't work because my contract was still good so

I have to go through this all over again tomorrow. Oh well, it's kind of fun.

Gone, but not forgotten

So as you can see blogging has not really happened recently. One of my readers (o.k. my mother) has told me that I need to rename my blog "Down the drain" because I never post. Today I would like to reassure my readers that I do exist, I am aware that I have not blogged in several months, and that my posts are short. This is because my life did not slow down after grad school, instead it accelerated. So since I've missed posting for the last few months I decided to do a blog re-design and start all over again...

So dear reader to bring you up to date these last few months have been filled with hard work and fun. The weather has warmed up into the high 90's here now so I've started going to the beach! I've gone to visit friends and friends have come to visit me. As I'm writing this post I'm sitting in the hallowed halls of John's Hopkins University's School of Public Health. On a rather crazy whim I decided to use my mandatory work training to attend a week of statistics training, which when you consider how much I didn't like Math in high school is crazy. However, I found in grad school that I actually liked stats and now that I'm working in the real world I need to better understand why how to use them.

In other news I've almost reached the one year mark of starting my job in VA. Lord willing I've put in the paperwork for renewing my fellowship and I anticipate spending another year in the VA beach area. I love my job and I still find it very rewarding and challenging.

Not really much else to report, I hope that you all are well and I promise to try and write more. Perhaps this summer I'll do a monthly essay on a given subject, thought anyone?