A true story:

WALTER:
Give me a hug.

WALTER'S MOM:
(takes a step back)
Why?

End scene.

Working title: Unconditional Love Is a Myth.

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Look, I know I have in the past said that there's nothing much more to a plumber's job than a willingness to enter uncomfortable small spaces and get dirty, but I'll at least admit that the secret to their job is knowing enough to enter any uncomfortably small space only once.

I, on the other hand, seem to be incapable of working on pipes without breaking something in addition to what I was trying to fix. For example, the last time I repaired the rotted drain pipes under the kitchen sink (in November 2018), I ended up needing to cut the still-serviceable sink tailpiece to get it to fit with the new pieces. But I cut it a little too short; it ended up just long enough to barely hold a washer with no room to spare. We got away with that for a while, but gravity won out eventually. So this week, when I spotted a leak for the second time in a month, I went to Home Depot, bought a replacement, brought it home, cut it to an appropriate length, went to screw it tight... and promptly broke the sink strainer basket.

Ok, technically I didn't break the strainer. I just torqued it hard enough to dislodge the old plumbers putty that was sealing it in place. Without the seal, it leaked much worse than the problem I was fixing. Too bad I didn't have any fresh plumber's putty. So another trip to Home Depot was in order.

The one smart thing I did was clean the old putty out out of the sink before getting in my car, and while doing that, I discovered that the nut holding the old strainer in place was also stripped and the whole strainer would need to be replaced. (How could that have happened? See November 2018 again.) Whew. I would have hated to have discovered that only after I came back with fresh plumber's putty. I draw the line at going to Home Depot three times in a day.

Of course, clearing out the old plumber's putty made my hands dirty, so I did what the pandemic conditioned me to do and promptly washed my hands... in the sink that was now missing both a tailpipe and a strainer basket. D'oh. No professional plumber would have made that mistake, either.

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I received in the mail an envelope with an unexplained check from my bank. I hadn't been expecting a check, so I called the number on the stub to find out why I had received it. The lady who answered the phone, who I'll call Uma, seemed new at her job. She was polite and friendly but completely unable to identify why I had received the check. I should have called the policy department, she said, not the banking department. She kindly proposed to transfer me to the policy department.

However, I had a secondary reason for calling the bank, specifically that I could not use the bank's app to transfer funds into or out of my savings account. I was certain that this was definitely an issue for the banking department, but Uma couldn't identify the source of this problem, either. She proposed transferring me to the IT department for an investigation. Deciding that the mystery check was the bigger issue, I asked Uma to transfer me to the policy department, which she did after encouraging me to have the policy department connect me to IT after I was done there.

Pause for hold music.

The lady answering the phone in the policy department introduced herself — I'll call her Susan — and asked what she could do for me. But when I started to tell her, she warned me that my voice was much too hostile and I needed to calm down immediately. Now, I know I can be both loud and aggressive, but in this case I wasn't trying to be either; I was just curious about a mystery check. I tried to explain that I wasn't mad and if I sounded loud, maybe it was because I had been on a speaker phone during the hold music and now my mouth was too close to the speaker. Susan didn't sound satisfied with my explanation, but she also didn't waste any time tracking down the information that my check was a refund for overpayment of an insurance policy, which, she said, if I had read the letter that accompanied the check, I would have known. Except I didn't get a letter with my check, just a check. Susan blamed this on the banking department.

Mystery solved, I passed along Una's instructions that I should next be transferred to IT. "We don't have a plain IT department," Susan explained. Turns out the company has many different departments that deal with many different techologies, and Susan needed to know which one I wanted so that I didn't get "the runaround." I repeated my conversation with Uma for Susan's benefit, and she decided that I should talk to the website troubleshooting department. That sounded good enough to me. Away I went.

Pause for more of the same hold music.

The woman who answered in the website troubleshooting department, let's call her Alice, asked what my problem was, and I explained that I thought it might be a problem with my savings account not being configured for transfers. Alice must have been an experienced debugger, because she asked me to duplicate the problem on the app and tell her what the error message said exactly. So I did. "There has been a system error," it said. I relayed this information to Alice, and she said this message wasn't particularly helpful.

After poking around a bit more, Alice decided that there wasn't anything *technically* wrong with my account, certainly not my savings account, and that if anyone could solve the problem, it would be the banking department. Runaround averted. Transfer, please.

Pause for even more of the same hold music. It's not even a whole song, just a television jingle that repeats over and over and over. Amazing that Corporate America has found a way to make me miss Muzak.

A calm, deep male voice answered for the banking department, and I'll call this guy Albert. When I explained the problem to Albert, he immediately said, "oh, your savings account must be set as inactive in the system, let me fix that for you." And he did!

Three women to do the job of one man? Insert misogynistic joke of your choice here!

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Took my car to the mechanic, walked in the front door, said to the receptionist, "I'm Walter Stephens," and she said "I know who you are."

Which suggests that it's time I start thinking about getting a new car.

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"Atlanta, N. Georgia brace for snow, ice" reads the AJC headline.

Did I get in the car today and go to the grocery story to buy a gallon of milk despite the fact that I have two half gallons in my refrigerator? Yes, yes I did. The store had only three gallons in the case. When I walked away, there were two. Yes, I am part of the problem.

But at least I don't hoard little ducks made from petroleum based products for the dashboard of my Jeep. Nor do I release helium-filled balloons into the wilds or set all of the leaves in my yard on fire on windy days. I'm so much better than those people.

Is this a rationalization to make myself feel better about my irrational life choices? Yes, yes it is. If something is horrible because it does selfish things, and all humans do selfish things, all humans are horrible. If I'm a human being (spoiler alert: I am), I'm just going to have to learn to accept that.

On the bright side, self-loathing tastes better with milk.

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For a guy who claims not to like Christmas very much, I sure do buy a lot of Christmas-themed comic books.

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During the month of October, inspired by an inability to shave my face because of a poison ivy rash, I thought it might be fun to try and grow a goatee for the first time in my life.

It was not. Goatee is now gone and is only being shown here as a reminder to self in case I ever get such a stupid idea again.

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"Why haven't you posted to Wriphe.com lately?" asks friend Brian. Answer: Because I don't know what to say, Brian, other than "Fuck you, America. Just... fuck you."

I cannot say when regular posting will resume. Or even if it will resume. I'm largely stuck bouncing between the anger and depression stages of grief, and I don't know how long it will take to find my way out again.

For the record, I have found jigsaw puzzles and whiskey helpful, though not so much simultaneously

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I have voted already, but I still cannot get away from this election. I think I have to stop watching the news. And talk shows. And football. And Jeopardy!. And maybe all television and streaming services. And given the amount of yard signs popping up like mushrooms in my neighborhood with some variation of "I'm voting for the convicted felon" on them, I might even have to stop walking the dogs. I just can't take it anymore.

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New stickers for 2024. Now I feel like they're taking this thing seriously.

Two things of note:

Thing One: Following the flurry of law changes made in effort to appease the certain percentage of the country (and candidates for president) who still feel the 2020 election was rigged, I was under the impression that Georgia mail-in absentee ballots were only available to people too old or infirm to make it to their assigned polling places. However, according to the Georgia Secretary of State's website, "Any voter registered in Georgia can vote absentee by mail." The new law is that elderly folks only have to apply once annually, and us young 'uns have to apply for a new absentee ballot before each primary, general, and runoff election. Somehow, that makes everything safer. I guess.

Thing Two: In 2008, I decried early voting (which the state officially calls "Absentee Voting in Person") because it actually took longer than voting on Election Day (which the state encourages me to capitalize). My county has finally fixed that. They moved into a new building last year that was previously a movie theater until the Pandemic closed all of those. They now have a lot of dedicated space for early voting, sorry, Absentee Voting in Person, and I was in and out today with the only delay being the time it took me to silence my phone's ringer (in honor of the building's former use). So despite what you've heard in an endless stream of political advertisements, some things in this country are moving in the right direction.

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