A Bad Case of Gas

I've had some exceptionally bad luck with waiting around for service people - like the time I told Time Warner it would be easier to cure cancer than to get them to actually install our internet or the time the plumber made me wait eight hours only to not actually fix my toilet - and this past weekend was no exception. Our hot water went out and the gas company was hardly accommodating. 

All I had to do was wait around the house from noon to eight P.M, which is an unnecessarily long window of time to begin. For the sake of showering, I made my peace with it and waited, hoping he'd come in the first four hours rather than the latter. But eight hours passed and no one arrived. So we called and said "Why has no one shown up?" And the gas company explained, "Oh, when we say noon to eight, we actually mean eight, or until the order is filled." Like, DUH. "So he will still be coming?" "Yes!" they promised.

But then nine rolled around and then ten, and I was beyond skeptical that they were still sending out technicians for non-emergencies past 10 on a weekend night. I call the gas hotline and they assure me someone is still coming. "This late? When is the cut off?" I asked. Evidently, there is no cut off, there is no policy. "So someone can just come at 2 A.M.?" "Oh no, we wouldn't do that, we want to wake anyone up" as if plenty of people wouldn't have already gone to bed by that point, especially after waiting around for that long. 

At 11:15 P.M., the gas man arrived. I was as cordial as someone who just had his Saturday entirely wasted could be. 

Well, maybe not "entirely" wasted. All that waiting did give us the opportunity to watch Dolphin Tale. It was a silly movie, but enjoyable thanks to a internet drinking game we found which had drink: 1. when someone was shown overcoming a disability (this kept happening) 2. anytime you successfully predicted what would happen next (we were good at this) 3. Morgan Freeman finally shows up to rescue the movie (it was more than halfway through before he arrives, but when he does, he is a godsend and I cracked up multiple times at his delivery of that shitty dialogue).

Next, we decided to stick with the theme of hokey based-on-a-true-story family films and watched We Bought a Zoo. Though we didn't play a drinking game, if we had, it should have been to drink anytime one of the characters actually uttered the sentence, "We bought a zoo" as it happened at least four times. I give this film a lot of credit because the title, in no ambiguous terms, spells out the movie. It's right up there with Snakes on a Plane for me in that sense. 

Finally we saw Waterworld, which despite having a reputation for being the world's worst movie, might actually be one of the most enjoyable films of all time.  

Maybe being homebound and "forced" to watch "bad" movies all Saturday was actually a blessing in disguise… but I'm sure as hell not going to admit that to the gas company.