...And I'm Not Going To Take It Anymore!

Ok Fine. Have it your way. I quit. We'll see how you like it now. That's right - no more knitting in my knitting blog. It seems you all are a lot more interested in bugs and baseball. Fine. I'll give you bugs and baseball!

Lately I've noticed a dearth of comments. No questions about patterns, no compliments on my even stitches, no nothin'. I knit something in the round with straight needles and nobody said anything! But then Oooo, I mention baseball, and you all turn into a bunch of Chatty Cathys! so if that's the way you want it, that's what you're going to get.

;)

Today's post is going to be about electricity. First you should read this. Really. I'm not going to re-explain it, so go read it. It's short, I promise. Ok good. Thank you.

The saga continues:
The next month I still had a huge bill, even after NO air-conditioning, so I called the electric company, Ameren UE, to see if they had anything they could do to help. Maybe they could tell me what appliance might be taking all that electricity! They couldn't, but they did tell me to go check and make sure the meters were labeled correctly (I live in an apartment complex, and our meters are grouped together.) I didn't find any labels on our meters, but there were serial numbers and it turned out that the number they had on file was not the number on my meter. (Some of our units were empty, so I had to flip all the circuit breakers, go see which meters weren't running, flip them back, and then see which one was running now to figure out which was mine.) They said they were going to open an investigation, and that the address attached to the meter number I really had was not my address, and I figured "Good. They'll get it fixed, and I'll be credited all the extra I've been paying all this time."

Wednesday I got the bill for last month. The meter readings had changed completely, and my new bill was only $23.51. However, there was now a "prior balance" of $318.40. $318.40? What? This was not good. With my "budget balance" added in, they wanted me to send them almost four hundred dollars! I wanted my old meter back. So I called yesterday, again, to see what was going on. After much putting on hold, I was finally told that the person I needed to hear the explanation from was out to lunch, but the rep I was talking to thought it was done backwards, and that I should have been credited that amount. She could see exactly how much energy I had used every day, and there were still some higher bills, but none as high as $140. She said she'd call me back when she could talk to the person who did the adjustment.

Today I got a very apologetic voice mail while I was away from my desk.

This is every light in my apartment. They're going to credit my account with $527.89. And they're having system problems, and I wasn't even supposed to get that bill. Which means that I can stop turning off the lights and filling the freezer with ice and turning down the water heater and cleaning the refrigerator coils and I can turn on the A/C if I want, because apparently while I've been paying for the electrical needs of a small island country, the small island country has been paying the electrical bills of a small one bedroom apartment. (Sorry to be them! That'll be a rude awakening.) I won't have to pay an electric bill for almost a year. So today I am not living in a cave, I am living in fully-illuminated splendor. See the lamp with the five arms? Usually I only have two of the arms turned on, and those two 60W bulbs and the tv light the entire living room. But Not Today, BABY. I'm burning it up!