International Bowl

Today Skip, Scooter and I and 29, 997 other people attended the 2nd annual International Bowl at the Rogers Centre in The Big City (Toronto). The Big Mac team was the Ball State (Muncie, IN) Cardinals vs. the Big East team - Rutgers (Piscataway, NJ) Scarlet Knights. We arrived early to see all the pre-game preparations - teams warming up on the field, marching bands assembling, little kids lining up on each side of the players' entrance, etc. etc. I particularly like the marching bands and all the pomp and pageantry. We were on the Ball State side of the field because the Rutgers side was sold out when I tried to buy the tickets three weeks ago. There were lots of Rutgers fans on our side, too. Rutgers won handily but it was a fun game to watch.














Of course, I managed to get some knitting done.



I cast on a 3 x 1 ribbed sock in the car on the way to the game and got about 3" knit during the game. Both teams' colours are red and black so I was safe wearing my nice, bright red hoodie.







Speaking of knitting, I finished the baby blanket for Carrie's baby girl who is due at the beginning of February.













I also finished one of the washcloths.














On Thursday evening, I tried to get online and my Internet service (Bell Sympatico) posted a message on my homepage that my service had been suspended. They claimed that they had tried to contact me numerous times about a problem with my credit card and were left with no alternative but to suspend the service. Of course, when I tried to call the number onscreen at 8:30pm, I was informed that their office was open Monday - Friday from 8 to 5. Argh!!!!

So the next morning, I called and got the billing problem cleared up - or so I thought. They needed an update on my credit card as the expiry date had changed. I told the young lady that contrary to their claim that they had tried to contact me, I , in fact, had not been contacted by mail, e-mail or telephone before they suspended my service. I told her that I was very annoyed (to say the least). She said my account would be activated within 24 hours. I told her I had already been without Internet service for over 12 hours and an additional 24 hours was unacceptable. She apologized and said that it was possible I might be connected sooner than the 24 hours.

I called back at about 5pm to inquire about the status of my account. It was at that time we discovered there was something wrong with my DSL. After being on the phone for an hour the technician said he would have to hang up and adjust a couple of things and call me back. At 8pm I called the lovely people at Bell back to inquire as to the status of things. I was informed by the customer service representative that my account was still suspended. I explained to her that I was exercising a tremendous amount of self-control at that moment and that she needed to reactivate my account. She then told me she saw an order to activate my account and that she thought that I should be connected by the next morning (this morning). I then told her that I was not impressed with them cutting off my service without prior notification and also doing so in the evening outside of business hours when I could get the situation rectified.

This morning I noted that all the correct lights were lit on the modem and when I logged in, the Internet was finally working. I will be calling the nice people at Bell on Monday to ask for 2 days credit on my account for the service they did not render and to also make a formal complaint that my service had been cut off without prior notification. It's a very good thing that I was not relying on the Internet service for some business transaction or some other very important thing.

But things are back to normal, relatively speaking, and I'm getting all caught up with Facebook, Ravelry and with my blogging.