Cablevision - Before and After

As you know, we've been redoing our apartment; fresh paint, new furniture and our latest purchase, new flat screens.  We had Cablevision come in to swap out our old boxes for high def ones and add two additional lines, one for each of the kids rooms.  Unfortunately for us, they sent out a field technician last Saturday who clearly had no clue of what he was doing and as a result, made a complete eye sore, mess, safety hazard of our apartment.
 
He had 3 cables coming from our living room window.  He should have had one and spliced the other lines behind our computer terminal.  This is how he left it; unit dangling with two cables secured down to the rug and the third left unattached.  You can see the third, unattached line running down from our window, across the living room floor to our tv set.  Who does this?  Who thinks this is acceptable?  Little kids or clumsy mommies tripping over the cables = safety hazard!  Aside from that, no one in their right mind would want their living room to look like this.

As you can see by the following pictures, none of the cables were secured down in any of the rooms.

Not even Ava's room.  He's got this cable running out in the middle of her carpet. 

Ok, so he did manage to staple these cables down in her room.

Directly into a working drawer in our built in closet!

Cablevision said they'd send someone out to look over and repair the damages but not until 5 days later.  The window they gave me for this past Thursday was 10am to 8pm.  Don't tell me they weren't screwing with us.  I sat here and waited for cable to come all day long.  Luke missed one of his little classes, then I missed Kickboxing and Ava missed her dance class after school that day. On top of that, I needed to send Ava to aftercare until I finally asked a neighbor to wait around for Cablevision while I picked her up because aftercare only runs for so many hours.  Cablevision never showed up until 8:30pm Thursday evening.

When they finally arrived, the new technicians could not believe their eyes.  One of the guys said he's NEVER seen anything like that before,acknowledges that it was a complete eyesore and a danger to the 5 and 2 year old little kids running around here.  The other said he was "speechless."

I truly don't believe that they believed us when we called to complain.  We've probably been documented by customer service as "Difficult Customers."  Hence the 10 hour window they didn't even abide by.  

It took the new guys an hour and a half to fix the first technicians mess.  These guys were great and totally knew what they were doing.  It's a shame we had to go through all of this to begin with though.

This is how our apartment should have looked when the first technician left last Saturday.

Note the nice and neat, securely fastened single cable line running from our living room window.

You will also notice the absence of the long white 3rd cable dangling free from the window and stretching down the middle of the living room floor over to the tv set.

  There are no more cables attached to our built in closet.

The cable in my daughter's room no longer runs down the middle of her floor.  It has been moved and run over the molding.  It blends so well you can't even see it in this picture.

Our apartment renovations have surely been an experience. It's frustrating to me that you can't count on things being done correctly the first time, but aside from that, our apartment now ROCKS so it was worth it.
Now on to our kitchen make-over.

Oh Please, Let ME Get That

So, my doorbell rings this afternoon and I buzz the UPS guy in.  Most of the packages that I've ordered from QVC were schedule to arrive today and I was really excited to see my purchases.  He arrives at my door with 3 boxes and notifies me that there's a 4th package downstairs.  "Can you get that?"  He asks.  "That way I don't have to come back up the stairs."  He goes on and says,  "It's just a rug."

Oh, just a rug.  Just the 5x7 wool rug I ordered?  Don't worry Mr. UPS - MAN, no need to strain yourself by walking up the stairs with ALL of my packages.  Let ME get that for YOU.  Sounds great! Just need to grab my coat and shoes.  The kids will be fine if I leave them alone.  They're 5 and 2.  They're perfectly capable of minding themselves.  You know what, next time why don't you just ring the bell and wait outside.  Or better yet, just wait inside your truck and beep.  I'll come out, hop on the truck and load the dolly myself.  Don't want to cause you any trouble.

So I say to him, "Yes, sure, my husband will get it." 

QVC - Crack for the Midnight Snacker's Soul

I love QVC.  That's it, I'm hooked.  Hooked on Mally Cosmetics, hooked on Lock & Lock's containers, hooked on Temp-tations, in fact I'm tempted, get it tempted, to buy another set that will go with my green one.  It's so pretty.

My mom bought me the Prepology 5 piece nonstick colored paring knife set as one of my Christmas gifts.  It rocks.

Just bought myself a Dyson, a beautiful handmade Royal Palace Damask rug, Liz Claiborne luxury 400 thread count sheets and gorgeous Liz Claiborne platinum poppy comforter and shams to go with. Oh, and some bedroom curtains too.  All in one week.  Stephen is going to be thrilled once he sees all of my bargains.  He usually tells me that I hoard the money.  Boy will he be happy when he finds out.  I feel like my Aunt Dolly must have, staying up 'til 3am, at the after party following our wedding reception.  Unleashed!

Easy pay? You mean to tell me that I can buy my Dyson vacuum cleaner today and you'll ship it out this week for 5 equal monthly payments of $106 and change? Who was the genius that invented that?  Love it!

It's become my go-to channel when nothing else I'm interested in is on.  I like to watch it even if I'm not interested in buying what they're selling.  Stephen came into the bedroom the other day and asked, "Why do you keep watching this?"  He seemed annoyed.  I don't understand.  Everyone's doing it. 

My mother's hooked, my sister's hooked too.  In fact, my sister was just telling me that now, instead of snacking when she wakes in the middle of the night, she just flips on QVC and buys something.  It's like crack for the midnight snacker's soul.  I actually just called her to ask if it would be ok to share that story with all of you and she said, and this is a direct quote, "It's so bad, I just bought a sweater last night and I have 5 other packages in route to my apartment this week."   It must be so nice to come home to presents though, right?  It's like Christmas everyday.

Even little Ava girl is getting in on the QVC action.  This Summer, while watching QVC's Santa's Toy Shop segment, Ava spied a doll baby she couldn't do without.  I told her to put it on her list for Santa.  That always satisfies her.  All of a sudden I hear, "Mommy, mommy, call Santa quick!  There are only 1200 baby dolls left!"  Naturally, I immediately ran upstairs and called "Santa" to place my order.  "He" said that rest-assured, the new baby doll would arrive at Grandma's in 5-7 days.  Thanks Santa!

Any other QVC addicts out there?  What are your favorite brands?

Apartment Makeover

I'm really looking forward to getting our apartment done.  It's almost all painted with the exception of the kitchen and bathroom which will be completed this week.  Our new couches are gorgeous.  I'm really glad that we went for them.  The length of time it's been taking to get everything done is frustrating though.  The delivery guys broke the bunk beds we ordered and left without me knowing. They actually broke the support rack for the wood planks that support my daughter's mattress and left without saying one word about it. They actually had to hide the wood that split in one of their bags to haul it out of here so I wouldn't know.

Raymour and Flanigan is replacing the whole thing as well as throwing in a free Bunkie Board for our troubles, so that's cool, however I'm sickened by the fact that two grown men would break part of the support of a child's bed and have the ability to walk away and stash the evidence without saying a word.  I also can't stand the fact that our one week old bunk beds are going to have to be hauled away and replaced, after the rooms the delivery men will be hauling them in and out of, have been freshly painted.  It's ridiculous.

Same kind of nonsense with Cablevision.  The technician came out yesterday to run lines for 4 high definition boxes/flat screens and screwed everything up to the point that his supervisor will be coming this week to observe exactly what's been done.  Nothing that can't be fixed, but again senseless.

Is everyone out there incompetent?  Why does everything need to be done twice?  It's frustrating.

Once we get through this week and are able to get things back in order in the living room and bedrooms, I'm going to feel a lot better.  We can then focus on all of the fun stuff and finishing touches like artwork and lamps.  I'm looking forward to that.  All that's left will be the kitchen furniture and hopefully we'll decide on what we want by Winter's end. 

When we first got the apartment the place was a complete wreck.  So much had to be done to make it clean and safe to move our then 1 1/2 year old Ava in.  Coats and Coats of paint, the ripping up of the old floors and replacing them with new.  All of this stuff needed to be done within a 4 week period, enough time to make the place safe and clean, not enough time to personalize anything.  Now, we're finally making the apartment ours and that feels really good and I absolutely love all of the choices we've made so far, from furniture to paint.