Elepent

Far from family and short on space and funds, a traditionally gluttonous Thanksgiving was not in the cards for us this year.  This does not mean, however, that we weren’t able to make ourselves a special dinner anyway.

The Incorrigible’s convection oven is laughably small for cooking a turkey…so we found ourselves some laughably small turkeys.  Actually, they’re Cornish hens of course, but they roasted up just fine, and combined them with greens (turnip and mustard, with chopped ham), some Bisquick drop biscuits and Lexie turned some of our pureed pumpkin into an incredibly delicious pumpkin soup (dolloped with Cool Whip of course).  If you ask nicely, she may give you the recipe.  Hm, that wasn’t supposed to be a great big product-placement spot, but oh well.

Unless of course, it gets us free stuff.  *ahem*  We’d also like to thank Tyson, Gatorade, and PBR for their contributions to our Thanksgiving dinner!

Note the fine melamine cafeteria-tray china and real-silver mismatched antique silverware.  Nothin’ but the finest for this crew!  Last night we ate well, so we’re in a good mood today.  Cornish hens don’t seem to put you to sleep the way turkeys do, either.  This was a bonus.  It was a nice day out (65 and sunny) so Lexie and I went for a bike ride before making dinner, then settled down to couch-potato out and watch movies (Pieces of April, Stranger than Fiction and Mean Girls, if you’re curious.  PoA is probably one of the best Thanksgiving movies ever made, by the by.)

During the movie there was also more providence from that pumpkin, in the form of pie.

The Halloween pumpkin isn’t as flavorful as a pie pumpkin, but it turned out tasty nonetheless.

We tracked down Nashville’s Sunday night goth/industrial night, called Salvation, and gave it a visit.

Photo courtesy of Ray+Wendy.

Salvation (located in a bar just outside the touristy part of downtown called The Rutledge) has quite a nice layout. It’s clearly a smallish live music venue first and a club second, with a decent-sized entry area, bar up front, and then stage slash dance floor slash raised area with tables in a separate space to the right. The sound system is good, and the lights aren’t ridiculously extravagant.  From what we’re told, this is Salvation’s new location, only a few weeks old.

The dance floor itself is a delightful thing.  Slightly uneven (like concrete that’s been poured into a shallow depression, it raises subtly at the edges), it’s surfaced with a springy, grippy material that feels for all the world like a cross between cork and rubber.  It’s probably some kind of recycled rubber surface.  What it is, is super-comfortable to dance on (because it’s got give–enough that we could do completely painless knee-drops), grippy enough for very fast bouncing but also slick enough for toe-sliding. It’s also slightly absorbent, so beer spills don’t create slippery spots.  Dance-nerd Emmy absolutely loves this dancing surface, and when we make our own club will have one.

Salvation also has a video screen and an outdoor smoking patio (many clubs down south are smoke-free and have outdoor puff-patios) and the goffy Salvation-night staffers are as nice as can be expected, in that “you’re new here and we don’t know you” sort of way.  Lexie and I met R., the unofficial club photographer, and a variety of cool people as well.  Salvation’s patrons are a mix of locals L. and fabulous drag queen A., and world travelers like J. and D. who have settled in Nashville for one reason or another.  Everyone seems to know everyone else, and conversation is easy and relaxed.

The music is a solid mix of goth, synthpop and industrial.  Salvation has a lot of special nights, and hosts concerts regularly as well.  We attended an “eighties night” where the creative DJs spiced up the usual selection of Sirius First Wave-worthy tunes with unusual gems like “Weird Science,” “Doctorin’ The Tardis” and “A View to a Kill,” as well as some more aggro Danzig and Cult tunes.  On regular nights, good stuff includes Covenant, Rob Zombie, God Module, Sisters of Mercy, Imperative Reaction, Rotersand and Psyclon Nine.

Well, we were told they had the best network coverage. Great, wonderful, comparable service plans, we’ll take it. Or, so we thought.

This month, only the 2nd in our contract, and our first full month of regular usage, our bill is over budget to the tune of nearly $200, for 758MB of transfer. Why?

Verizon charges .25 cents/MB for overage.
ATT: $0.00048/KB which equals $0.49152/MB
Sprint: 5¢/MB

Our allotment is 5 Gigs, the largest any current provider offers, for 59.99, which is comparable to each of the other plans. Transfer weighs in at about $0.01/MB. Read that again, Verizon charges a 2500% markup on their overage. At either of the other companies, while still being sufficiently robbed, our overage would have cost us one-fifth what it has at Verizon.
Now I know business is business, and all cellular companies are out to make money, but this is beyond highway robbery and into the realm of “Thanks, we can’t pay our rent” for someone living as close to the poverty line as us, and how many other American’s today?

You could say to us, “Well, don’t have cellular internet service then.” Unfortunately all of our income and personal business relies on having steady internet access, and we’re already trying to make do with the least expensive solution. Opting out of an unfairly priced but necessary service is not really an option at this point, since we are also signed into a contract.

Now, I’ve never in my life paid even a $200+ phone or internet bill and I certainly don’t intend to do so now. But I’ve called customer service, and their answer is to charge us $100/mo for twice the allotted usage.  Unfortunately, we’re already driving one another nuts having to share the aircard because we don’t currently have a router. My reasonable, make-everyone-happy solution? Get a second Verizon aircard contract for 59.99/mo and credit us for the current overage. Well, they’d have to transfer me to sales, sign me up for a second 2yr contract, and then MAYBE they would offer me a credit on my current outrageous bill.
Not good enough. I pay a visit to a Verizon store, thinking they can handle both the customer service AND the sales under one roof and I can get some kind of guarantee that I’m not going to get financially raped for this month’s minuscule overage. Oh, no. I have to call customer service. I just told you I did that already. Why don’t you call customer service for me and get this resolved, isn’t that your job? Or does it say “Nothing is your responsibility, please give customers the run-around at any and every opportunity” in your job description? It must, because I’m not getting much more than “I can’t do that” from any CSR I’ve talked to over the phone or in the store.

I’ve complained inwardly about the Cingular service going into the crapper after the AT&T merger, but this is absolutely THE WORST cellular customer service, and possibly some of the worst customer service, period, that I’ve ever had to deal with. I essentially threatened to pay off the bill and my contract cancellation fee on the spot and the CSR just treated me like an idiot, saying that would “defeat the purpose of having the service in the first place.” No, silly, it would leave me free to sign up under a competitor. If Verizon doesn’t care about our patronage, even though it will cost us half a month’s worth of income to escape their clutches, in the long run it will bleed us of much less than this kind of monthly robbery, and it’s probably what we’ll end up doing.

Anyone have anything to say about either of the other cellular aircards? We currently have our phone service through AT&T.  The only reason we deviated was because [it seemed] there was no benefit to us having the aircard on the same plan, since they treat each one like a new contract and all of the plans seemed comparable on the surface. If I had had the option of adding a line to my existing contract, and then just paying a larger data fee on that line, that would have been ideal.