The continuing saga of the infrastructure of the house

It's been a good couple of days, we've finally moved in to the most gorgeous place in hyde park. The SBC guy came too, and he was all patient and friendly and we chatted about lousy contractoring and switchboards and wiring and he was all nice and didn't charge me a single cent for hooking up the phoneline. I paid him a couple of compliments and gifted polite niceness upon him.

So now i have internet.

But for some reason the gas company doesn't see to want to hook up my home with gas. This probably involves something like 2 minutes of work turning a valve in the basement, but over the course of 6 weeks, they have absolutely refused to do so. First the internet system refuses to believe that my address exists, then the callcentre (mired behind a regular minefield of electronic answering systems) finally lets us make an appointment after being on hold for longer than the gestation period of a small mammal (thank you wanyun).

I wait on the fated day for their call, they come, they go. no news at all.

I call and raise hell, but the machine bears it all with the patience of a disembodied voice who'll be there for all eternity. I make another appointment, and i tell them to call me 30 minutes before they get here so i can prepare for them.

I wait for their call. they come, they go. I pop down to run an errand, and on the way back see this note on my door saying "sorry, but we missed you." and goes on to inform me of how they need access to the place to turn the gas on. Like, what the heck. I bet they're running low on funds so they're hiring small kids to go around on their bikes and stealthily stick these green sorry notes on all the doors they're supposed to go to.

And so we still have no gas supply in our apartment, and the next scheduled date is next monday. So one more week of not cooking our own food. So we went out and bought lots of microwave dinners. Brian would be proud of us!