Strange Lack of Swamp Lizards

Had a session of Patrick's game. Jen was absent, without word as to why -- the last anyone heard from her was that she'd be there. She's on Jury Duty, but I can't imagine a court case lasting 'till midnight...

At any rate, we sort of kind of made progress, but not really. When the path before you is longer than you thought it was when you started, it doesn't feel like progress.

( game summary )

No game next week, since Patrick is going to be in India, since apparently remotely managing a team of outsourced workers wasn't working so well. He *hopes* he'll be home for the week after that. Because he really hates India.

Urge to kill... rising...

It's bad enough that I have to pay an estimated water bill now, but this month 'ISTA', the sham corporation that does nothing but pretend to send water bills while actually just sending extra bills from the apartment management company, forgot to send me a bill.

So I called them up to find my account balance, and they said (not in so many words) that they couldn't help me because they were only a sham corporation that pretended to track water usage and send a bill, and actually just sent a bill saying whatever the apartment manager wanted it to say. So I'd have to ask the manager what the bill was supposed to be, because they didn't even keep records of what the bills they (theoretically) sent out said.

So, I went down to the manager. I was already running late, so it was around 10:15 -- well within office hours. But no one was there, because no one is EVER there. There's one person staffing the whole building, and they have other stuff to do than office work.

At any rate, I figured I could call from work and get the number over the phone. Unfortunately, while it's very easy to find a phone number for my apartment complex on the web... or for that matter, to find FIVE DIFFERENT phone numbers for my apartment complex on the web... none of them actually work. They're all 'this number is no longer in service!'

I've still got tomorrow and thursday to manage to get hold of these people. Hopefully they'll actually know what the bill was supposed to be when I do.