{"id":21,"date":"2001-12-09T14:11:38","date_gmt":"2001-12-09T19:11:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/wordpress\/uhaul_webitch"},"modified":"2001-12-09T14:11:38","modified_gmt":"2001-12-09T19:11:38","slug":"uhaul_webitch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/2001\/12\/uhaul_webitch.html","title":{"rendered":"UHaul, WeBitch"},"content":{"rendered":"

\nWe moved Mike and Nancy on Saturday. Phase I (moving Mike) went smoothly.
\nWe were just moving him from his apartment on the 7th floor to the one
\nalmost directly below. The only hitch was that the auxilliary elevator had broken
\nthat very morning, which made the trip four times as long as it should have been.
\n(“We apologize for any inconvenience,” the sign on the elevator said.) But with
\nhelp from me, Don, and Pat<\/a>, it wasn’t so bad. Even Mike’s
\nsecretary Audrey helped. (And they say it’s hard to find good help these days.)\n<\/p>\n

\nPhase II did not go as smoothly. We backed the U-Haul truck into Nancy’s
\ndriveway. Then we realized that we had to pull forward a few feet. So Pat
\nturned the key… nothing. The battery was dead. Not wanting to try
\njumping the truck with my Sentra, we called U-Haul. They had nothing
\navailable at all, naturally.\n<\/p>\n

\nSo until tomorrow night, Nancy is sleeping on her couch and fishing through
\nboxes for clean underwear. I guess it could have been worse. We could have
\nloaded up the truck and then<\/em> discovered the problem.\n<\/p>\n

\nNevertheless, let us not be too quick to curse U-Haul and swear eternal fealty
\nto Ryder. Ever heard Sam’s<\/a> story about the time he tried to
\npick up a Ryder truck on the weekend? Closed on Sunday<\/em>, the sign said —
\nright next to the sign with the company motto, We’re There When You Need Us!<\/em>
\n“As it turned out,” says Sam, “they weren’t<\/em> there when I needed them.
\nThey could have at least taken that second sign down.”\n<\/p>\n

\nAh well, on to Good News and Bad News.\n<\/p>\n

\nGood news, from AndrewSullivan.com<\/a>:\n<\/p>\n

\n

\nSo after a good long time at the helm, the old cleric finally decided to surrender
\nhis last remaining fortress – the place where it had all begun not so very long ago.
\nWhat should we do with him? Capture? House arrest? Public humiliation? I think we
\nshould let Pat Robertson get on with the rest of his life in peace, don’t you?\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\nBad news: looks like my good housing deal has fallen through, sort of.
\nI can live there for two or three months, but then I’d need to move again.
\nHmmm… the price is right… but as we’ve seen, moving stinks. But on the
\nbright side, my longing to haggle over the rent (see sidebar) might become
\na reality. Be careful what you wish for…\n<\/p>\n

\nGreat<\/em> news: I’ve sold a short short story, “Watercooler”, to the Bay
\nLaurel Ebooks anthology,
\n“Why I Hate Aliens<\/a>“.
\nNow we’re not talking a lot of money here… my story is only 1000 words, which means
\nthat according to my calculations I’m entitled to roughly $0.04 per copy sold.
\nBut the important thing is that I wrote<\/em> something and
\nsomeone else<\/a> liked it enough to publish.
\nSo hooray for me! Besides, all the other books I’ve written in the last few years
\nhave had titles like, “Lucent Computer Telephony Products Utilities User Guide” —
\nsmashing blockbusters for which I have gone lamentably uncredited. High time
\nwe turned that around.\n<\/p>\n

\nAnyway, I’m feeling pretty good. And fired up, too. Time to turn in, and get
\ncracking on another story tomorrow night, right after work! No wimpy freewrites,
\nno journal, no tinkering with the broken HTML tutorial<\/a> — no,
\nthe real stuff. A bonafide story.\n<\/p>\n

\nExcept… I can’t. I’ll be helping Nancy move. Arrrggh.
\nWe hates U-Haul. We hates them forever.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Closed on Sunday<\/em>, the sign said — right next to the sign with the company motto, We’re There When You Need Us!<\/em> “As it turned out,” says Sam, “they weren’t<\/em> there when I needed them. They could have at least taken that second sign down.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-personal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}