Sprint Sucks

Well, Jack is officially on his way to the desert. His plane left after midnight this morning, and he'll travel to Ireland and Kuwait before arriving in Iraq. He tried to call us yesterday, but with our fantastic Sprint service, it didn't get through. Our phone was on, the ringer was on, and we were waiting right by it all day, but the phone didn't ring, it didn't say that we'd missed any calls, and we didn't have a voicemail. This is just the latest in a long, long line of disappointments and frustration with Sprint. When we called to complain that we want out of our contract, we were told that we were under contract until May 2006 and that we would have to pay $150 to get out sooner. We argued that given our history with Sprint and the present situation, we obviously had extenuating circumstances and clearly they could understand that. We went through three levels of "customer solution specialists" (yeah right - they change the name of the position but not the crappy service you get) and are awaiting a call from the boss of the last manager with whom we spoke. Patty went on quite a tirade with the last person, something to the effect of "My brother is willing to give his life for our country, and because of your shoddy service, he couldn't even say goodbye to his family. Does Sprint care about our men and women overseas? [yes] These people act with nobility and protect your right to sit in your posh office and suck us dry with your charges and fees and do nothing noble with your life, and this is your chance to do something noble..." We're thinking of starting a second blog titled, "Sprint is Evil." That's just a working title, of course - we're open to suggestions. The ruder, the better. The moral of the story is this: Stay far away from Sprint, and for the love of God, don't ever sign a contract!

So we didn't get to say goodbye to Jack on the phone, but at least we said goodbye in style last weekend. He knows we miss him, and he'll write or call when he can.

Gabriel Summits His First Mountain

Yesterday, Tony visited us with the Coopers. After a delicioso lunch at Moe's, we traveled to Stone Mountain Park. We'd never visited the plantation there before, and the Coopers wanted to see it, so we went there first. It was really interesting. The house was beautiful, but of course we know that it was a plantation house and we can't get too excited about it. Still, it would be nice to have a house like that - except with a real bathroom. There was a smokehouse that smelled really nice, even though it looked like something out of a horror movie.

It was going to get dark soon, so we went to the mountain hiking trail. On the way up the mountain, Tony found a geocache - it was the first for him, the Coopers, and Gabriel! Gabriel had slept in the car for the last one we did, so this was officially his first. We left a Michigan basketball schedule and a dollar and took two things. One was a thing that looked like a credit card, but there were plane parts that could be punched out and put together to make a 3-D plane. The other was practically the find of the century. It was a stamp of chikara, the symbol that Patty has tattooed over her belly button. It means strength of an inner kind, and the more pregnant she got, the more strength she needed, and the bigger that tattoo got. But we digress...

As we got to our second geocache, the sun was setting over the city of Atlanta in the distance, and a fellow hiker got this great photo of all of us:

Just beyond this point, we found a carving in the mountain left by someone from Ann Arbor, Michigan. Go Blue!

Finally, we made it to the top of the mountain. It was quite dark and extremely windy. In fact, the sky train had been closed all day due to high winds. After a quick couple of pictures, we hightailed it back down the mountain. Gabriel was such an adventurer. He didn't complain at all, even though it was quite cold and windy, and his little hands were frozen. In fact, he had lots of smiles for all of us and even relaxed so much that he fell asleep in the baby carrier on the way back down the mountain.

We went to dinner at Ray's-Cedars and had some fantastic Mediterranean food and pizza before the gang went back to 'Bama.

Here are some more links to things we mentioned here:

Stone Mountain Park

Gabe's first cache

Our second cache of the day