I’ve had a problem off and on with my landline phone for almost twenty years now. I am autistic, and I qualify under state law for a bare-bones, no-frills landline phone line for really cheap; the idea is that I have a phone to call 911 on if necessary.

For some reason that I have never discovered, the local phone company that supplies that lifeline landline is utterly convinced, beyond any reason, that I am operating a small business and the landline is my business phone line.

For the first few years living here, I averaged one telemarketing call and two mailed promotional letters inviting me to upgrade to a business phone line. I always said no because the basic business line doesn’t do anything my lifeline doesn’t with regard to voice calls, and while it works better for faxes or modems, I never used those on that line.

Then, one month, without my knowledge, they switched me to a business line, causing my phone bill to go from $12 a month to $90 a month. But I was on paperless billing because my monthly bill was fixed by law — $12 a month — so I just kept paying my $12, and the unpaid bills kept piling up.

Eventually, the phone company sent me a paper Final Notice in the mail, saying that if I didn’t pay my bill in full immediately, they’d cut me off and take me to court.

I probably should have let them do it, because it is illegal under state law for them to cut a lifeline plan, and the judge would not be amused about that fact, nor would the judge be happy that they had switched my phone line from a lifeline plan to an expensive business plan without permission from anyone with authority to sign contracts on my behalf.

But, I decided to skip the hassle and just point out the problem to the customer service representative on the phone.

My next bill — no longer paperless — showed the proper balance owed: $12.

But… ever since, I’ve been averaging one promotional letter per week from the phone company trying to get me to upgrade the phone service for “my” small business to one of their business plans, so I’m always wary of it happening again.

Many years ago, I used to own half a horse — the left side, if you’re curious. A friend who lived in the country owned the other half, as well as several other horses. The area around her place was wonderful for riding, particularly one old farm road with no vehicular traffic.

There was a problem, however, with a pack of six little yappy dogs. I’m not sure what breed they were; they were different color variants on the same style of dog, so probably pedigreed yappy-thing. They were owned by someone with more money than sense who had bought a place in the country. Yeah, that kind of person, and that kind of dog.

When we rode down the dirt lane past the house where the dogs lived, they’d come pouring off the porch, through the hedge around the property (about twenty yards from the house) and into the dirt road, where they’d harass our horses. My horse never threw me, but it was a close thing a few times because he was incredibly nervous about his feet, much more so than a typical horse. The dogs’ owner was never in evidence; they just threw their little house dogs out in the yard and ignored them.

One day, I wasn’t riding my horse; I was riding one of the other horses my friend owned. And this horse was a bit weird. I could tell you horse stories all day, like the fact that we saw him trying to imitate a Tennessee Walker’s running walk gait — and actually doing it for a couple of paces. (My horse was a Walker and was kept in the field next to him.) He’d take down fences and graze right outside, just to prove he could.

Well, the little dogs poured out through the hedge and started doing their thing. At that point, I’d had enough. I yelled, “Let’s get ’em!” and turned him toward the dogs. He put his head down and went for them. It was maybe twenty feet from the center of the dirt road where I was riding to the hedge. And those little yappy dogs put their little yappy tails between their legs and covered that distance at a speed I wouldn’t have expected, with me yelling, “Git on home!” the whole time, and my horse trying to grab one. The dogs ran back to their yard and hid under the porch.

After that, when the dogs came pouring out, I just had to yell, “Git on home!” and they’d flee, no matter what horse I was riding. I have no doubt that they continued to harass anyone else riding or walking down that road, though.

In Alaska, getting rid of nonfunctional cars through legal means tends to be pretty expensive because they usually need to be shipped “down south” for disposal. Consequently, it’s very common practice for people to abandon their derelict vehicles in whatever parking lot, bike lane, or piece of private property (rarely their own) they find most convenient. It is also common practice for these abandoned vehicles to remain in place for months at a time despite complaints, supposedly because the tow yards and police impound lots are full of other derelict, abandoned vehicles.

In January, two abandoned Subarus, complete with missing wheels and smashed windows, appeared in the parking lot of the local Little League baseball field, in clear view of a major road. Every day, I passed these cars while walking my dog and while driving to work. Around mid-April, the cars still had not been removed despite their obvious abandonment.

One evening, I took my dog out for a walk around 10:00 pm after a very long day at work. While passing by the Little League parking lot, I noticed a pristine black SUV parked next to one of the abandoned Subarus. A man appeared to be loading a box of something into the back of the SUV, and he gave me a good thirty-second death glare as I walked past on the sidewalk on the far side of the parking lot from him. He slammed down the trunk door, jumped into his car, and then blasted out of the parking lot so fast he skidded in the snow.

After getting home, I filed an anonymous tip to the cops that I thought the abandoned cars were being used as a drug drop.

Both cars were gone from the parking lot by noon the next day.

I’m only disappointed that I don’t know more about the corners of this story to share with you all.  

I work in an office building that has a bank on the main floor. Every day around 7:30 or 7:45 am, the armoured truck with the armed workers shows up to bring money to or take money from the bank.

I show up to work just before 8:00 one morning to see both the armoured truck and a downed light pole blocking the main entrance to the parking lot and one lane of traffic. The front driver’s side tire is off the rim, the rim and axle both look bent, and the light pole and box are lying over the truck box, spitting angry sparks.

A couple of hours later, I go for a dart and see that the sparks have stopped, and a tow truck has arrived, along with the police. The two armed employees are refusing to get out of the truck, citing safety policies. The tow truck driver is refusing to lift or move the truck with passengers, citing safety policies. The police officer is losing it at everyone, threatening to arrest everybody if both trucks aren’t out of traffic in the next ten minutes.  

I next go out a couple of hours later at lunch, and the armoured truck is now in the parking lot, sans tire and employees. I heard from the building manager that the tow truck driver eventually agreed to tow the truck fully into the parking lot only, with the employees inside. After another hour or so, another armoured truck showed up, the workers transferred the money, and the employees could leave.

The real question is, how fast do you have to be going in a parking lot to hit a light pole hard enough to knock it off the concrete and bend your rim and axle, and how do you even do that in a parking lot that you attend every morning? Also, does it seem super suspicious to strand an armoured truck for several hours?

I was in a lecture on fluid dynamics in my final year of university. There was a LOT to cover. The lecturer was writing it all on the whiteboard, and we were scribbling it all down.

As you’d expect in any engineering lecture, Greek symbols were used a lot, including one new one. It was a vertical squiggly line, and it cropped up a LOT in the lecture.

It was only just toward the end of two hours of note-taking that the lecturer made some comment that made the entire class groan.

There were TWO very similar-looking Greek letters he had been using throughout the lecture, but everyone thought it was the same vertical squiggle!

Ugh.