Happy Anniversary (of a sorts)

Cast your mind back two years, to April, 2001: Fed up with the drains in the basement at Xoozland backing up again (eeeecccchhhh, Peeeeeewwwwww!), I called in the drain specialists to come in and dig up my front yard and basement and replace the drain lines between the house and the city sewers. Two days, and some $5,000 later, things are flowing smoothly again. Even better is they replaced the shoddy job the previous owner had done on the drain from the laundry tub. (What a piece of work this house is, but that’s a different issue!)

So what was the problem? Tree roots, from the beautiful silver maple tree in front. The Good News was that because it was a City-Owned Tree, I was eligible for a rebate from the city. It wouldn’t cover all the work but every little bit would help.

What did I need to do? Nothing, because the sewer contractor would submit the necessary paperwork to the city for me.

Except I never received any acknowledgment or cheque from the city. I made several calls to the sewer contractor, who told me they submitted the paperwork to the city. What really happened was that the sewer contractor lost the necessary paperwork to the city!

Now go forward a year, to April 10, 2002: Fed up with waiting to hear from someone, anyone, I tracked down the phone numbers to call at the city. When the guy finally called me back, he told me my application was NOT in HIS file. “Perhaps it’s in the downtown files,” he said. I got a phone number and called the person downtown.

She didn’t have my paperwork, but knew the administration person at the sewer contractor, so she’d call and get it sent. If she got the paperwork, she could send it to the works yard that day, and they could probably get the cheque to finance by the next Thursday.

I called two weeks later, and she told me she got the paperwork, and sent it to the yard and it should be to finance by the end of the week. Nope. No cheque was ever received. (The I got busy with other things, and forgot about it for a while.) Come January, I started calling again, at least weekly, sometimes multiple times a week, always with the same story: “The cheque has not arrived.” Eventually, this Amazon Woman got fed up with me calling and with her own inter-departMENTAL bureaucracy, and physically went over to Finance to deal with them!

So here we are now, two years after the work was done, on April, 12, 2003: I called my contact, who told me she personally mailed out the rebate cheque yesterday!

Now I wonder if “the cheque is in the mail,” or if the cheque really IS in the mail!! Stay tuned to this journal for next week’s results.

(mostly for pinque)
In other Anniversary News, ten years ago today, back on April, 11, 1993, I was on a tour of the east coast of Australia, somewhere between Mt. Seaview and Surfer’s Paradise. I don’t have an entry for that day in Parrots in the Trees (a travel journal consisting of Notes, Details, General Commentary, and Various and Sundry Thoughts of Mikey’s Grand Adventure Down Under taken March 23rd to May 6th, 1993), but I was in Mt. Seaview on the 10th, and Surfer’s Paradise on the 12th. Maybe I’ll post some of the more interesting entries of how I toured the country, had a completely fabulous and amazing adventure, and yet managed to engage in absolutely no sex whatsoever!