Saturday, November 2, 2013

I think it's the Anticipation

Hopefully this will be a quick one because it's late, it's been a long day, and I'm tired.

I got up to get to work around 8am so that I could get as much done to prep for payroll as possible before the stores submitted it.  I ran into a problem right around noon when one of my managers called me saying that he'd received a call from Xcel Energy saying they were going to be shutting off the power at 4pm for non-payment of a bill back in September.  He gave me a number to call back to get more information.  They guy I talked to said that they did an update of their billing system and that we were supposed to have received notification of it, but that in doing this update, they were not able to honor the check we sent in for our September payment.  They said that in order to keep the power on, they needed payment TODAY, and they'd allow us to make a partial payment, but to do so, we would need to go to a specific location, like a Walgreens or a Circle K, and buy something called an Express Pass and load it with the money that we owed for payment.  Once the card is loaded we were to call them back with a registration number for the card and they'd keep the power on.  I freaked out on the guy, saying that they were shutting our power off because of a fault in THEIR system, and that now I had to go way out of my way to make a payment because I couldn't make a payment over the phone or online, or they were going to shut the power off to one of our restaurants?!  I actually said, "You have got to be fucking kidding me."  They said that I could only pay for this card thing with cash, and I said that I do not have access to cash, to which I was told that I had better get in touch with someone who did have access to cash. At this point I'm really starting to freak out because my boss wasn't in the office and I was on a really tight schedule for the day and wouldn't have time to go out and do this crap, and I didn't know what to do.  So I took a phone number so I could return the call, and then left my boss a message, essentially freaking out, and then called Xcel directly to see if I could verify that we were behind a payment.  I had checked our online statements and it said that we had $0.00 due and were all up to date with our payments, which I had already been fairly certain of since I'm the one that sends the checks out.  By the time my boss called me back I began to realize that this was probably a scam, since they were asking for a cash payment only and the phone number they'd given me didn't match anything I'd seen on the Xcel website.  We decided that it probably was a scam, but that I needed to get in touch with Xcel anyway just to make sure.  Sure enough, our account was perfectly fine and up to date on all payments.  So I told the woman that I had received a call from someone claiming to be Xcel asking for money, and she took down the details because apparently scams like this have been happening all over the country and they have received other complaints of similar calls from other customers.  She said that they're doing their own internal investigation and that I should perhaps call local law enforcement to relay the information because some departments are doing their own investigations.  That all taken care of, I called the number back that the scammers had given me and said that I was fully aware of what they were attempting to do, and that they could go fuck themselves, and that I'd already reported them to Xcel and would also be reporting them to the police as well.  They hung up on me.

So there was that little bit of excitement in my day, aside from the usual catastrophe that payroll always is.  I wasn't even able to get all of it done before I had to leave, so I will be finishing it up from home tomorrow morning.

I spent much of the day, including the drama with the phone calls, feeling like a basket case, full of anxiety about the upcoming evening.  I did the best I could to just breathe and ignore it, but ended up popping a couple of Ativan on the way home from work.  I got ready and headed to Denver.  I looked super cute if I do say so, myself (thanks to Meredi playing dress-up with me).  I used the valet parking at the restaurant and ran straight into my friend and his girlfriend.  Turned out there would only be 6 of us at dinner, and then 8 for the show, with a couple of extra tickets.  Dinner was spectacular.  I had a couple of glasses of champagne ($12/glass from a $15 bottle but oh well), and then I had broiled jumbo scallops cooked Oscar style with jumbo lump crab meat, over steamed asparagus and hollandaise sauce.  It was melt in my mouth oh my god mouthgasm delectable amazing.  I do so love scallops.  And crab.  And hollandaise sauce.

With a couple extra tickets, I decided to invite my friend Ethan, who I'd last seen when we went camping.  I've been keeping in touch with him a lot, talking over Facebook and stuff, and he'd mentioned wanting to see the show, so I asked the folks I was with if I could invite him if he'd pay for a ticket, which was fine.  So he popped down to Denver and met us for the show.  I had only heard that Book of Mormon was a funny show, that had won the Tony award for best show last year, and otherwise I didn't know what it was about.  It was kind of silly and absurd with undertones of seriousness, and many very musical qualities.  I think I need to let it sink in a bit, but it was really funny and I had a very good time.

The night itself was pretty nice.  It was a little tough to get conversational at first, but I relaxed into dinner and by the time we got to the theater and Ethan showed up, I felt pretty normal.  I'm really glad I made the decision to go, I am really glad I got to see my old friend, I'm really glad Ethan was able to come, and I'm really glad I followed through with my plans.  I always feel better about myself when I follow through with something.

Over all, though it was a long and incredibly emotionally stressful day, I did have a good time this evening and I'm tired and have lots to get done over the weekend.  I plan to sleep in tomorrow and get as much work done on the computer as possible so that I can do some other stuff around the house.  The place is filthy and needs a lot of attention.  I also need to wash my car and vacuum it out from camping, plus I have some homework to get caught up on.

And now it's time for bed.  Here's hoping things continue to look up.  I'm glad tonight is over and done with.

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