How exasperrating is it to try and text someone who says something and then disappears?  Voice texting, btw, not fingers.  I went to Dallas today, got the pipe and heading back I couldn't get either dog nailed down for picking it up. Finally, the first dog I posted on my FB wall texted me - I had emailed her several times and finally just left my phone number - saying she really hopes I haven't passed by Tyler yet? No, I was still 30 miles out.  Got it done in a Walmart parking lot.  I wasn't exactly impressed their reasoning to get rid of this dog.  They don't want to take the time to finish house training it to pee outside.

Ooooookaaaaaay.  I'm not necessariliy looking forward to it, but they sell pee pads now you set down by the door in your bedroom, for example, and the dog hopefully pees on that.  I don't remember the rest of how to get them to pee outside, Addler wasn't house trained but he refuses to pee in the house, I had nothing to go through there.  This dog is still very young and has a lot of growing to do.  It did not like getting into the truck and it was attempting to get out of the closed door on the passenger side - a virtual impossibility but she tried anyway.  It would be a little difficult to bring a tractor trailer rig into my neighborhood - not impossible but  if I can avoid it, yes, avoid it.  So the new guy living here came and got her from a parking lot 2 blocks away.

Well the Dallas drive took all day long because it's not only 400 miles of driving, there was quite a bit of ridiculousness to go through just to get the truck loaded.  1st stop the will call. Well you walk through the door and there is a sign in stark, bold letters telling you to push the ringer and wait.  So I did.  Even though there were 2 forklift  drivers and a man walking around the floor and then a minute later even more employees - right there.  After 10 minutes of waiting and being ignored, I walked to the office. No one in there. Back to the waiting area, where I finally got irritated and pushed the ringer - a very LOUD ringer - and held the button down.  Yup, just like that, I did it.  What kind of customer service is it to have will call associates ignoring their customers?

So some dude with an "air" of authority appears around a corner some distance away, waving his hands at me while he walks into the office.  Ringer kept right on going.  He's in the office, waving his hands.  Ringer kept right on going.  Come over here and tell me something.  Yes sir, we know you're here, one moment.  Yes sir, what do you need. Something!  Finally some other dude comes up to where I'm standing and says: well, I see you like to hold down the ringer.  No, dude, I hit the ringer when I first came in here and you and those guys on the forklift completely ignored me.  He looks around, says he didn't even see me standing here. How could you not? We may EYE contact.  Whatever.  Then there was an issue with the Purchase Order which took an additional 15 minutes.

THEN, I am sent out of that yard to  a guard shack down the street.  Sit there and watch a safety video, fill out all kinds of forms and sign them and get my paperwork.  THEN I am sent to yet another gate off the main street.  If they wanted to make this any harder for customers to wade through their maze of gates - 3 of them I ended up going through by their instruction - well I dunno.

Well whatever.  An hour and a half to get 5 sticks of pipe and a fitting.  The only good thing about it is that by the time I got back to the yard, it was time to go home.  I'm surprised the manager didn't just waste another thousand dollars having a hot shot driver bring it over.  That's what they do. Instead of giving us some real gravy runs that we could do, they hire hot shot drivers to take materials down to Baton Rouge or Sulphur and other places, trips that could be made in a day in any of our trucks, we get the run, we get the hours and the company is saved a significant amount of money.

Anyway, I'm home with the new doggy, Addler is a bit jealous, he'll get over it with time, the new doggy a bit skittish, I would have rather have gotten the dog at the beginning of this coming weekend and had 3 days to work with it getting it settled in, but I didn't want to lose the opportunity to get it so here we go. Tonight? May be a very long night, who knows.

However, one good sign: Addler and Aspyn (I don't really like that spelling, I may change it to just plain Aspen) are playing.  So yeah, that is what I wanted to get this dog for, hopefully it will pan out.

Meanwhile, I still have the ac problem to deal with and frankly? It will probably wait until the weekend.  It's obviously been going on for quite a while now, the floor is water-damaged around the AC closet, the wood flooring is buckled up and it has been that way for a long time and getting worse.  I'm pretty sure the man of the house saw what was going on here and just did nothing about it.  Because I remember some time ago walking through there and seeing the floor buckled, but not near as much as it is now.  And then, finding out they have never had it cleaned since they moved in here.  Ugh. This sounds like it's going to turn into a project. My plans were to try and borrow the pressure washer this weekend, not spend it trying to fix a plumbing problem and trynig to clean coils while I'm at it.  But, I watched the dude doing it when it was done at my house - and charged a fortune to do it.  All he did, really was spray some stuff in there and then wait a while and flush it out with water.

But, the charge was probably worth it.  You see, they guarantee the AC is going to work for a year after that. So, they do have a stake in it.  But, funds are kinda tight right now after that water heater deal and a few other things that came up, I'm guessing minimum $250 for them to come out and clean that thing and who knows how much they would charge to fis the plumbing problem.  There are things I won't deal with on AC units because I don't have the equipment, but this is stuff I can do and being careful, I won't damage anything.  I remember long ago when I caught Mary, a former tenant in the Phoenix house, vacuuming the evaporator coils.  She was using a hard plastic tip and was smashing the fins in on the coil.  Uhhh, Mary, do you see what you are doing?

She got mad at me because she was "just trying to help me". Yes, but you are damaging the unit and when the air can't flow through those fins, the air doesn't cool and the volume of air is reduced.  You are suffocating the system by doing that.  Oh.  She thought I was stupid and didn't know what i was talking about.  My first rounds at dealing with AC was in cars long, long ago.  It's the same principle.  Liquid gets heated as it passes through the evaporator, it is pumped to the condensor outside which cools it and reverts it back to a liquid and then back to the evaporator - back and forth.  Now that I know the coils haven't been cleaned, I also know that that is what probably has clogged up the drain.

Oh well.  Just not looking forward to it.

Well, long day.  Call this one done.