A Few Quick Notes 554

-Though we have finally dropped down to sub-zero temperatures in Wolfville, things are still looking quite nice today.  A few recent dustings of snow are making things look particularly festive.  I am even hopeful that we may manage to squeeze out a nice sunset this afternoon evening.

-My Christmas preparations, aside from some gift shopping and thinking about all of the cleaning I will likely need to do, started in earnest today when I made some bread that I eventually intend to use for the turkey stuffing.  As much as I am willing to admit that it does seem a bit weird to intention bake bread to allow it to go stale, it seems even weirder to me to buy bread with the intention of letting it go stale.  Anyway, the deed has been done and the bread is now working its way towards staleness.

-The individuals previously associated with our phone number are still receiving daily calls from creditors.  While I seem to have talked a collection agency into not calling, we are still receiving regular calls for another individual from a major financial institution.  As I have already spoken to the company once I don't really know what my next step is (the calls are automated, making one-on-one interactions with the staff difficult).

(While writing this I had to deal with another such call, though this time from a person.  I suspect I was talking to a collection agency, but as there number was blocked I can't confirm this hunch.)

-I probably listen to too many podcasts.  I consume them while cooking, cleaning, walking, procrastinating, and riding the bus.  They're the best.  And there's little I like more than discovering a great new podcast with an archive I can compulsively listen to over the course of a few days.

Anyway, this is a long way of saying that I have recently found two podcasts that I am in the midst of acquainting myself with.  The first one, HOW TO DO EVERYTHING, which seems to be NPR/WBEZ associated, is pretty light and concerns itself with a Richardson's Rounduppesque assortment of topics.  The second one, 99% Invisible (which I discovered thanks to a recent Radiolab episode), is a little more serious and generally deals with topics relating to architecture and design.

Not one, but two

So it seems that we our phone number was likely associated with not one, but two individuals being hounded by collection agencies. While it seems that I was able to shake one of the companies, and hopefully everything for the first guy, companies are still calling about the second guy.

Fun.

Do you think they will give us a Christmas morning call?

That explains the daily phone calls

Since we have had the phone number we have now we have been getting all kinds of calls for someone named Johnson. These calls started within hours of the phone line's activation.

My guess would be that we are currently getting about a phone call a day for this Johnson, presumably the previous occupier of this number.

After a while Jeannette guessed that the frequency of the calls suggested that this Johnson likely owed somebody money. Well, after just having receiving an automated call from a collection agency I feel that I am in a position to confirm this hunch.

The upside is that we now know why we are getting so many calls. The downside is that we now also know that until we convince them that we are not who they are looking for we will continue to receive daily calls.