My Week that Was - February 12

Elie's Cafe on East Broadway, Madison.
2/5/2022 dwm photo

This was our second attempt to have our Saturday breakfast at Elie's, the last time we tried, the staff was taking a vacation.

We were rewarded on this visit with a friendly greeting, gracious wait staff, and good food at a good price.

I went with the cinnamon swirl French toast with a side of crisp bacon and glass of chocolate milk.  It was very good and the portion size was perfect - not too much, but filling.  

Elie's is a fair distance from our house, but it was worth the trip.

Sunday morning we learned our morning worship was affected by Covid-19 as our pastor couldn't attend after testing positive.  Lay members picked up the slack, and pastor, who was at home and asymptomatic, gave his sermon via video streaming.

Sunday afternoon, I finally pressed the order books button on our Storyworth creations.  It's exciting to reach the end of the process and I'm looking forward to seeing the finished product.  We're told they should arrive in less than a month.

I had two water encounters this week that stand out.  Tuesday, while walking to a donor visit, I heard a trickle of water in hallway where that was out of place, then noticed a growing wet spot on a ceiling tile.  Before my visit, I called in the leak, thankfully the facility team was able to stop the leak and dry things out.

Wednesday is the day I water the couple plants in my office which includes a Poinsettia I received after Christmas.  I gave the holiday plant its water and moved on to other things.  Two hours later, I heard water very close to where I was sitting.  It was coming out of the flower pot on to the desk return where it flowed toward paperwork and my desk calendar.  

I'm glad the leak happened while I was in the office, because damage was held in check.  That's what I thought, then later discovered some water fell from the desk into the tray which held my computer keyboard.  The discovery came after a call to our Tech Help Desk to see why I couldn't type as normal.  In talking with the technician over the phone, I picked up the keyboard so I could unplug it and noticed a big pool of water under it.

A water-logged keyboard isn't much help, but it's better to lose a keyboard than the laptop.

Thursday was interesting because a lot of my job includes phone calls.  While I read that 10 digit dialing was starting in October, that wasn't the case and everything seemed pretty normal for calls I made from my office on a landline office phone.  (My cell phone number is out of my local area code, so I've been used to 10 digit dialing for years, although I never needed a 1 before the phone number that way.)

Since it's an office line and there are hundreds of other extensions, you have to dial 9 to get an outside line, then the number.  Prior to Thursday, I could dial 9, 321-9876 and expect the call to go through.  That didn't work as of Thursday.  Neither did 9 608 321-9876 or 9, 1 608 321-9876.  This is what we call having a difficulty trying to communicate.

As of mid-afternoon Thursday our I.T. specialists (Information Technology) were working with our phone service to iron out the problem, so it was hard to know right away if its just a problem for us or for everyone in our area code.

The Federal Communications Commission website said this change to 10 digit dialing was going to be phased in between October 24, 2021 and July 15, 2022... I don't know if Thursday they hit us with their phasers.

When Friday dawned, our phones were working again.  The trouble was related to the switch over to 10 digit dialing, but the culprit was our work phone system needed a new widget to connect to the outside phone line.  From now on, we're hitting ten digits every time we make a call, which is a long way from BR-549.

Have a great week!