More uninteresting crap… Now from England!

Oh, how I wish I were bored.

Spent the first 2 weeks of April showing my Grandmother and Mom around England. It was their first trip abroad, and I was especially happy to show them around. We visited London, drove through the Cotswolds, toured castles, ate/drank well, and enjoyed 10 days of fabulous weather.

We flew back with them to the US, as I needed to attend some training at our HQ in Pittsburgh. To some degree I think we should leave the country more often… it’s been so easy to fill up our social agenda. People need much better excuses to avoid us now. We’ve been doing something (other than laying around in our PJs, soaking in TV and WiFi, occasionally rising for food) every night. Yesterday, I learned I’m here for another week. I also learned I’ve got another week of training scheduled for May, and probably a week in June in Greece. So after this week of training, I’ve got 3 more straight weeks.

I want a sensory deprivation tank.

I suppose it’s the American way. Lawsuit as negotiation tool.

Wilkinsburg Borough for several years had the wrong address for my house (further evidence our house should be part of Churchill with it’s lower much lower property taxes.) They would mail out the municipal services bill (garbage collection) and it would never be delivered. The way we’d find out about it was when the a collection agency would threaten first the previous owner, and now us. I thought I had finally straighted out the problem after the 2003 bill. It took so long to fix, that the 2004 bill had already gone out the door, never to be delivered. The 2005 bill showed up shortly thereafter, and I mistakenly thought all was well.

A year later Portnoff Law Associates a great bunch of douche bags, after months of allegedly getting no response decided to have me served with court papers (over a $120 bill)… somehow the Sheriff was able to figure out where I lived. By now that bill was over $600. I immediately contacted Wilikinsburg, they said it was out of their hands, but provided me with a print out of activity on my account. It clearly showed that they had mailed out the invoice with the wrong address. I’ve tried to negotiate with Portnoff over the last year, to no avail (the bill ballooning to >$850) I’m not a lawyer, but I gamely put up a fight, filling an Affidavit of Defense. I figured that if I made it painful enough for them, they might just settle for a smaller amount of easy money. But now that I’m in England, I just don’t have the desire to keep up that fight, and after being served with another summons, I’ve caved. It’s cheaper to pay than to bother with a lawyer.

I took my lumps.
I paid my bill.
And if I may paraphrase Snoop Dogg, “[Portnoff Law Associates] can eat a fat dick”