Xmas in New Hampshire

Thanks to Ian last night for the loan of the guitar pic!

I left NYC with my laptop, my guitar, and my liquids and gels in a ziploc baggie, but for some reason I had no guitar pics on my person. With all of the travel and changing vehicles and switching guitar cases I lost track of my pics. And usually I have at least one or two in my pockets but since I had just done laundry I cleared out my emergency reserve.

So last night at the beginning of the show I was all set to play my set with my hotel room's key card (the best non-pic backup option I've found) and lo and behold one of UNH's finest stands up with a pic in his hand ready to loan me.

I knew it was going to be a good show after that, and I was right, it was a lot of fun up here in Durham, NH.

Now, if I could just figure out a way to get back to New York through this stupid storm. American Airlines cancelled all of their morning and afternoon flights to La Guardia, but the ones to JFK were still going for some reason.

Does the T run to Brooklyn?

Grand Forgobismot

That's Grand Forks, Fargo, Bismarck and Minot, North Dakota in AT&T Wireless speak.

I'm sure you've seen those clever commercials showing various professionals being craned and dollied into different locations, all the while using their AT&T Wireless phones to conduct business and stay in touch. At the end of the ads they mush all of the town names mentioned into one hilarious hybrid, thus proving how well the AT&T phones work all over the globe.

Well, bulls&%*. This fall I have been to many places (50+ cities in 17 states) and though I'm supposed to have a nationwide AT&T plan that includes free roaming and long distance in all 50 states, when I got a bill recently I saw that they had charged me $99 for three incoming calls I received while in North Dakota.

When I called customer service to explain my problem, the rep on the phone listened, paused for a moment, then said, "let's see, North Dakota is one of the 50 states."

I seriously think she had to look that up.

She said they'd take the charge off of my bill (never did get an explanation why it was on there in the first place) and when she was doing her mandatory summation of the call I almost had to stop her because she said, "you called to inquire about roaming charges on your bill, we discussed that North Dakota was in the 50 United States..."

No, we didn't 'discuss!' This call is being recorded for quality control purposes and I don't want anyone out there thinking we actually had to deliberate on whether or not North Dakota was one of the 50 states. What, were we like "I know South Dakota's a state, but North Dakota? That doesn't sound right does it? Isn't it part of Saskatchewan or something?"

I think Consumer Reports should give me a cell phone from every major carrier and let me take them all on the road with me for a year to see which one can hack it. Then we'll know who has the right to mess with our town names.