"I'm Taking Control of your Mouse"

I was 30 minutes into a chat with a rep from Audible.com when "Kimona" typed "I'm taking control of your mouse." Sounded like something ominous.  But it was a last gasp to fix what had gone wrong with the download function of my Audible.com account.  No point in explaining the problem but s/he already had me try all sorts of stuff.  "Type this" and "type that" and "what does it say now?" (The interesting thing about the process was that the encounter started out with those canned phrases that they all do.  "Hello, I'm Kimona and I will help you.  Can you tell me your problem?" and then "I hear you saying that....." But the longer the suggested solutions proved unsuccessful the more personal our conversation became

S/he asked if s/he could take control of my machine.  I was thrilled.  Sure!  But even that didn't work.  Everything I was told to do, which I did faithfully, did not produce the expected result.  Finally I was asked which browser I was using and when I said Firefox, the suggestion was made to try it again with Chrome.

Bingo.  As soon as I booted up Chrome it wored like a charm.  That's when I lost control of my mouse, but as I watched things zip here and zip there and things being typed and screens changing, suddenly it was all back the way it was supposed to do.

"You've made my day!" I exclaimed to my new friend Kimona, and when the feedback form, I happily gave Kimona a very positive review.

That was the part of the day that I did for "me."

I overslept in the morning and saw it was 5 minutes to 9.   I leaped up, poued myself a cup of coffee (which Walt had prepared earlier) and was out on the road by 9:15.  There was a "mandatory meeting" at Sutter and I didn't want to be late (also they were having stuff for breakfast snacks which I didn't want to miss),

Given how close it was to the time of the meeting, I was surprised that there were two empty spots set aside for volunteers.

I rushed into the building and noted there was nobody at the information desk, confirmation that there was a meeting.  I went to the meeting room and was surprised to find the meeting already in progress since I was at least 10 minutes early.  Fortunately I looked in the window first.  No snacks.  No grey haired ladies, all "suits" and a speaker I didn't recognize.

I went to the gift shop and asked the volunteer here about the meeting.  She said that meeting is not until October. I couldn't believe I'd made that mistake.  In fact, the original date had been changed so I not only missed it the first tim,e but I missed it the second date as well.  The real date of the meeting is October 19.  This means I had the morning free! Yippee!

But in addition to all the stuff with Audible, the morning was spent on my mother ... three calls from Kaiser, two from her doctor's nurse and one from a woman, Lydia, who was going to help me see about switching doctors.  

By the time I finished all the phone calls, it was time to pick my mother up and take her in for an x-ray and blood work.  Poor dear just follows along blindly.  She didn't have a clue where we were going or what we were going to do.  She just sat when I told her to sit and went into exam rooms when I told her.

I checked the pharmacy and canceled her prescription, which her doctor's nurse had told me was the wrong one for her.

But then it got good. 

I went to the business office for 3 reasons.  The first was to get a hard copy of the power for me and her stepson.  I know there is a copy around here somewhere, but I don't have a clue where.  I've never needed it because it's in the Kaiser system, but I will need it on Wednesday, when I meet with the nurse from her long term care insurance company, who needs to see it.

No problem.  The woman ran off a copy of it for me right away.

Secondly, I had left a list of medications for her doctor to sign, so that I can turn her medication management over to Atria.  They had not called from the doctor's office, but I thought I'd take a chance and see if she had signed it yet.  Apparently she had not.  I was disappointed, but not really surprised.

The third thing was more complicated.  About 10 years ago, I started setting my mother up with her own email account at Kaiser.  At that time she had a doctor in an Rafael and I wanted to be able to communicate with her long distance.  Only I did something wrong and I could not access the account.  I tried everything.  I saw every person possible, up the line, all the way to the God of the Internet and nobody could help.  Once an account is started it can't be changed or deleted.  I finally gave up, which is how my mother ended up with the same doctor I have...I can write to MY doctor about her.

But when I was talking with Lydia, she told me that a lot had changed in the last 10 or so years and she thought I would have no trouble now. 

The woman in the business office agreed with me, sent me to the patient services office, which tped a couple ofthings and told me that I now had access to my mothers account.  I couldn't believe it.

I drove my mother home and dropped her off at Atra, still in pain and confused about where she was, but experience has shown that once she gets in the building, she can find her way to her apartment.

I came home and fell asleep, to be awakened about half an hour later by a call from her doctor, explaining the thing that made me angry with her over the weekend in the first place (so I've decided not to switch doctors after all). She also told me that the medicine for my mother was now at the pharmacy.  It was 5 p.m., they close at 6 and I got in the car immediately.

Traffic was horrible, but I did get there in time and picked up the medication.

I drove back to Atria and was surprised to find the apartment empty.  She had not been in the dining room or in either of the places where she usually sits so I didn't know where she was.  As I was a cutting pill in half, she came in the door and when I asked where she had been, she said she didn't know.

But I gave her a pill and sat to talk for a bit.  I had to laugh when she asked me, several times "what have you been doing today that was fun?"

Persistence Pays Off...Finally

So.  Audible.  

Today was the day I was going to get my Audible accounts straightened out.  It took 3 phone calls, but in the end I am VERY pleased.

I have been buying books from Audible for many years and have been enrolled in several plans over the years, and then thought I'd quit entirely and started new accounts.  Ultimately I had four or five different accounts in variations of my name and e-mail addresses.

This has not posed a problem, until I tried to download two books yesterday and Audible suddenly realized I had more than one account and wouldn't let me do it.  The first rep I talked to helped me merge all of my accounts into one, which, he assured me, would mean that I could now download the books I wanted to download (which I had already purchased).

Only it didn't.  iTunes still saw that I had two accounts, so I called another guy who said that he would delete both of those books and credit my account for two new books, plus another credit for all of my troubles.  Since I had received a credit yesterday, my monthly "free book" (not exactly "free," of course) and had downloaded the book immediately (without problem), I was thrilled to have THREE credits to shop for more books.

But then when I checked my account information, I discovered that rep #2 had enrolled me in the wrong account, so I called back again to ask to be switched to the proper account.  I was already downloading one of the replacement books, which used one of the credits I had been given by guy #2.  Guy #3 switched my membership and gave me a free credit.  So I still have 3 credits.  Then I went to download the second book I had ordered and discovered that today only it was on sale for only $4!   So rather than use one of my credits, I just paid cash for it, so I still have 3 credits and I THINK that all of my problems are solved.

Audible is solved, Amazon is solved, Snapfish is solved.  Now I just have to write my Rock of Ages review.  It's another productive day!

In the evening, there was a book club meeting in Sacramento.

I almost didn't go.  It was raining, and I don't like driving in the rain at night, but I hated to miss out on the discussion of the book ("The Floor of Heaven" by Howard Blum) and had lots to say about it.  Also, Walt went to the symphony in San Francisco and had rented a car to get there so I could have the car to drive to Sacramento.

(Walt realized several years ago that it is so seldom that we need two cars that our second car, which had been David's car which we took after he died, just sat in the driveway for weeks on end and we were paying more to insure it than we were to drive it, and that if we got rid of it and rented a second car when we needed one, it would cost us less money ... so far that has proven to be true and it is rarely when we have to rent a second car.)

I didn't want to admit to Walt that while he was driving a rental car, our own car and I were sitting at home because I didn't want to drive in the rain, so I decided to go, and I'm so glad I did!

This week, I got there early and instead of sitting in the car listening to my audiobook, I went inside.  

Several of the members were already there and this time I started talking to them.  One woman had found a book on Downton Abbey and the three of us were fans of the show, so we talked about that.  

Then, as we wandered around the store, we began discussing our book collections.  One woman is very disciplined.  She only allows herself two shelves in her house for books.  If she get a new book, she has to get rid of an old one to make space for the new one.  The rest of us found that difficult to believe, as we all seem to have homes which are bursting at the seams with books.  Our own house could easily be a small used book store, if we were to consolidate all the books we have all over the house.

We set up the chairs for the discussion.  Twenty-two people had RSVPd for this meeting, but the rain must have kept many of them from coming, since I think there were only a dozen of us there, mostly women and one man.

"Floor of Heaven" is about 3 men whose paths ultimately cross in Alaska during the gold rush (one of them was George Carmack, the man who discovered gold in the Klondike originally).  Unlike "The Stupidest Angel," the last book we discussed, the reaction to which had been very divided -- we either loved it or hated it (I was in the latter camp) -- we all really liked this book and it sparked a nice discussion of the story (which is non-fiction), the conditions in Alaska in the late 1800s, conditions in general at that time, and comparisons to life today which, in many respects, isn't all that different, at least poliltically.

I was very glad I had come and have even started remembering the names of some of the other people.  Tonight I remembered Gail, Wanda, Leslie, and Ted.  

 
Now if only I can continue to remember them for next month, when we will be discussing Willa Cather's "My Antonia."