It’s sad news for our cell phone plans. We have been using a prepaid AT&T service. The minutes roll over. Over the years, we had each built up well over $300 in unused minutes. It’s all funny money, of course, as has been proved in the last few weeks. AT&T and another prepaid service (I forget which one) both require a phone sold by the carrier. The excuse they give is the shutting down their old 3G service, but that can’t be the true reason. Danita, I, and at a few of our neighbors all have 4G LTE phones that don’t qualify for prepaid service. AT&T will end all prepaid service on non-AT&T phones in February. For whatever reason, my phone has been blocked frequently even though the deadline is months away. I switched myself to Google Fi. I’ll switch Danita in February. Her existing phone is older and doesn’t support Fi, so she’ll be getting a new phone.
This is a busy and fun time of year. Friday we did our traditional Christmas shopping at Bob Evans for breakfast. It turned out that we couldn’t actually shop at Bob Evans because their WiFi service wasn’t working. I tried using my Fi to set up a hot spot for Danita’s laptop. It didn’t work, so we did our shopping at home after breakfast. Later, I figured out that I missed the step of authenticating myself when requesting hot spot service. Some of our gifts are drop shipped. All of the gifts being delivered to our house should arrive by the end of the day today.
We don’t exactly go overboard with Christmas decorations, but Danita usually sets up the Christmas tree in the basement. We haven’t been able to do that yet. All the construction repairs for the year are complete, but the painting isn’t done. The painter said he would be in last Thursday and hasn’t shown up since. Besides the repairs, we ordered two new doors. (Water rolling through the doors into the basement wall was the major cause of our rotting.) The door in our bedroom is replaced, but the door in our living room is not replaced. The doors arrived last week, but they look different in some way I don’t understand. Everything will come to a grinding halt while the condo board agonizes over what to do. I’m hoping they go ahead with the doors and all interior work can be done before Christmas. It takes the crew a day to swap doors and a second day to do the finish and trim. Then it’s a few days for the painter. If this comes to pass, they will be done until spring. When temperatures warm up, they will return to install stone on the outside of the basement wall.
We had a lot of neighborhood activities scheduled this week. We had three food trucks, two of which actually showed up. We weren’t warned the third truck wouldn’t come, so we did an impromptu dinner at Jason’s sandwich shop. We had clubhouse decorating day, which Danita attended. She got free pizza and cookies. This week we have a Meet and Greet and also a Mix & Mingle. The former is wine and cheese. The latter is wine and dinner.
Our Nissan Leaf had the 12 volt battery die again. Fortunately, it died while parked in our garage, so it was only a minor inconvenience. I took the car to the dealer. They claim there’s nothing wrong. They have one mechanic trained on electric cars. I have an appointment to discuss this with him in person Tuesday.
Danita’s taking physical therapy for her knee. She was very sore after her first appointment. The therapist was more gentle the second time. She only had a little discomfort.
Wow! Lots of news in one week. I hope this finds everybody doing well.