Stanford is still closed to visitors (they're private, they can do what they want), so there was nothing for it to complete what I could of the Tolkien bibliography research at UC Berkeley, which is an hour's drive from here without traffic, and UC Davis, which is two hours in the same direction. And it ws best to go as soon as possible before the next wave of virus hits. This week was good: quiet, no appointments, B. out at church rehearsal on Thursday, so no dinner at home.
My plan had been to go to Berkeley first, and finish up the lesser amount of material at Davis later in the day. But then on checking the hours I found that Berkeley is on intersession (Davis is not), and while the library was open in the morning, the privileges desk doesn't open until 1 pm, and a visitor without pre-existing access needs to stop there first.
So it was Davis in the morning, then, and Berkeley afterwards. I left on schedule at 7 AM, well fortified with caffeine, arrived at Davis on schedule at 9, long trudge from the nearest garage to the library (no privileges desk at Davis). Got some hard-copy items I needed to scan. The guy at the computer room help desk was apologetic but knew nothing, but a very helpful person at the circulation desk (and that's a phrase I don't type very often) knew how a visitor could scan items (though not that I had to buy a $1 copy card first, though it didn't charge for the scans), and even where the computers with guest accounts are so that I could access the library's online databases. At which point I found they had some books available online that their catalog didn't know about, aha.
Done by 11.30, lunch at a Burmese restaurant in town (good food in a rather fetid sauce), fueled the car, in Berkeley by 2, which would leave me 6 hours - just enough - to get my work done before the library closes (intersession rules again) if I could have found long-term parking. But by that time of day there was none to be had near enough to walk, and by the time I established that, not enough time to find one further way and get in by bus. Did find a short-term space by the GTU library, but that was only a little help.
So a satisfactory A for the day at Davis, a complete F at Berkeley, and I'll have to try again when I can come back in the morning.
Kalimac's corner: a journal by DB
Thursday, April 14, 2022
Tuesday, April 12, 2022
concert review: Redwood Symphony
My editor sent me to this concert, for my first SFCV review in six months, because they were biting off something bigger than a volunteer community orchestra would be expected to chew: Absolute Jest, John Adams's concerto for string quartet and orchestra.
Sounds congested, but in fact the quartet mostly plays as a group, not as four individuals trying to hog the spotlight, which is what multiple soloists in concertos usually do. I did what I could to study the work in advance, since I knew it had to be the focus for my review, but Adams's jittery, chaotic writing is not always easily absorbed. But I think I got the hang of it.
The other pieces, Beethoven and Copland that I know well and have been listening to since the days you had to get them on LP, were easier. Technical quality was kind of sloppy, but they got the jist of the music and gave it drive and enjoyability. The one thing I didn't find room to mention is that the Copland, which was the opening work, was accompanied by the sight and sound of ushers showing late-comers to their seats. Usual practice is to wait for a break in the music to do that.
And as I mentioned at the end, this is the third concert I've heard in a month - three weeks, actually - that was introduced with the Ukrainian national anthem. Winchester Orch, California Sym, now Redwood. Each with a different arrangement, too. As a gesture of support, it just shows how counter-productive Russian policy is. I wonder: if this were 1914, would we be hearing the Belgian national anthem?
Sounds congested, but in fact the quartet mostly plays as a group, not as four individuals trying to hog the spotlight, which is what multiple soloists in concertos usually do. I did what I could to study the work in advance, since I knew it had to be the focus for my review, but Adams's jittery, chaotic writing is not always easily absorbed. But I think I got the hang of it.
The other pieces, Beethoven and Copland that I know well and have been listening to since the days you had to get them on LP, were easier. Technical quality was kind of sloppy, but they got the jist of the music and gave it drive and enjoyability. The one thing I didn't find room to mention is that the Copland, which was the opening work, was accompanied by the sight and sound of ushers showing late-comers to their seats. Usual practice is to wait for a break in the music to do that.
And as I mentioned at the end, this is the third concert I've heard in a month - three weeks, actually - that was introduced with the Ukrainian national anthem. Winchester Orch, California Sym, now Redwood. Each with a different arrangement, too. As a gesture of support, it just shows how counter-productive Russian policy is. I wonder: if this were 1914, would we be hearing the Belgian national anthem?
Monday, April 11, 2022
names they should know
One source of amusement is closed captions written by people who don't know the subject matter of the (documentary, in this case) that they're captioning. (This is also why I declined the request to index a book on a subject I wasn't familiar with.)
Veteran orchestral player, elderly and perhaps a bit less than announcer-crisp, but quite intelligible if you know what he's saying, is talking about great conductors under whom he's played. And one of those names appears at the bottom of the screen as:
Fert Lengliff.
Care to guess who that is? It's perfectly obvious in the audio if you know it.
An even worse transcription is "Malcolm [mumbling]," which is quite intelligible as Malcolm Sargent.
Veteran orchestral player, elderly and perhaps a bit less than announcer-crisp, but quite intelligible if you know what he's saying, is talking about great conductors under whom he's played. And one of those names appears at the bottom of the screen as:
Fert Lengliff.
Care to guess who that is? It's perfectly obvious in the audio if you know it.
An even worse transcription is "Malcolm [mumbling]," which is quite intelligible as Malcolm Sargent.
Friday, April 8, 2022
concert review: Catalyst Quartet
Up in the City, this was the last concert in the Catalyst Quartet's series of the music of Black composers. I missed the previous concert because of the omicron wave, but I was particularly happy to get to this one, because it was an all-Florence Price concert. Not only that, it was all little-known works, all of which this group has recorded, but one of which they said neither they nor anybody else had ever performed in concert before this evening.
Two works for string quartet and two piano quintets with Michelle Cann, who proved most voluble when introducing the first work. When she begins by saying that Florence Price was born in Little Rock in 1887 and her father was a dentist, settle back, you're in for a long story.
The Piano Quintet in A Minor was written circa 1935 and fits the pattern of Price's other big works of the period. Four movements, starting with an earnestly Romantic, somewhat Dvorak-like, deracinated opening movement, followed by a gorgeous slow movement with a melody along the lines of African-American spirituals, then a lively Juba dance (again an African-American folk style), concluding with an equally lively but more deracinated and Dvorak-like scherzo.
The other piano quintet, which is in E Minor, is rather different. Three movements (possibly it's unfinished, but it doesn't sound so to me), the first much tougher and more irregular than other Price works I've heard, the Andante and concluding Allegretto more normal for her, but all of them very brief, which is unusual, for Price is normally a rather expansive composer.
The String Quartet No. 1 in G was unusual the other way around. It's definitely unfinished, having just two movements in the form of the normal first two. This time it was the first movement which was normal Price, typically agreeable. The second movement, instead of covering a single extended melody, was sectional with some repeating sections, of contrasting character, of which the most striking was the stealthy melody over a creepy walking pizzicato line from the cello.
The fourth work was Negro Folksongs in Counterpoint, not to be confused with the better-known Five Folksongs in Counterpoint, although catalogs often do, and the quartet said that until they saw the score they weren't sure if this was a different work or not. There's four songs here, of which I recognized two. I'm just reproducing the spellings Price gave them when I say that the two are "Little David Play on Yo' Harp" (which I know as "Little David Susskind, Shut Up," because what I know it from is an Allan Sherman album) and "Joshua Fit de Battle ob Jericho" (which I know as "Joshua Got a Bottle of Geritol," same reason). In both cases, playing it "in counterpoint" means using the opening phrase of the song as a fugue theme and running the piece out from there.
For dinner beforehand, I tried out a little Japanese-Korean restaurant that I ran across on my previous visit when I wasn't able to get off the bus until the next stop after the concert hall. I was curious enough to check the menu online and this time went back deliberately. It's mostly sushi and sashimi, which are outside my eating range, but they do have a decent menu of cooked food as well. I was a little alarmed when they told me the Korean-style fried chicken appetizer was five pieces, but it turned out that meant five small boneless strips, not five big pieces, so I could have ordered with it more than a plate of gyoza. But those chicken strips, besides being crispily fried, were inside fabulously moist and tender. I'll have to come back and try a more serious meal here.
Two works for string quartet and two piano quintets with Michelle Cann, who proved most voluble when introducing the first work. When she begins by saying that Florence Price was born in Little Rock in 1887 and her father was a dentist, settle back, you're in for a long story.
The Piano Quintet in A Minor was written circa 1935 and fits the pattern of Price's other big works of the period. Four movements, starting with an earnestly Romantic, somewhat Dvorak-like, deracinated opening movement, followed by a gorgeous slow movement with a melody along the lines of African-American spirituals, then a lively Juba dance (again an African-American folk style), concluding with an equally lively but more deracinated and Dvorak-like scherzo.
The other piano quintet, which is in E Minor, is rather different. Three movements (possibly it's unfinished, but it doesn't sound so to me), the first much tougher and more irregular than other Price works I've heard, the Andante and concluding Allegretto more normal for her, but all of them very brief, which is unusual, for Price is normally a rather expansive composer.
The String Quartet No. 1 in G was unusual the other way around. It's definitely unfinished, having just two movements in the form of the normal first two. This time it was the first movement which was normal Price, typically agreeable. The second movement, instead of covering a single extended melody, was sectional with some repeating sections, of contrasting character, of which the most striking was the stealthy melody over a creepy walking pizzicato line from the cello.
The fourth work was Negro Folksongs in Counterpoint, not to be confused with the better-known Five Folksongs in Counterpoint, although catalogs often do, and the quartet said that until they saw the score they weren't sure if this was a different work or not. There's four songs here, of which I recognized two. I'm just reproducing the spellings Price gave them when I say that the two are "Little David Play on Yo' Harp" (which I know as "Little David Susskind, Shut Up," because what I know it from is an Allan Sherman album) and "Joshua Fit de Battle ob Jericho" (which I know as "Joshua Got a Bottle of Geritol," same reason). In both cases, playing it "in counterpoint" means using the opening phrase of the song as a fugue theme and running the piece out from there.
For dinner beforehand, I tried out a little Japanese-Korean restaurant that I ran across on my previous visit when I wasn't able to get off the bus until the next stop after the concert hall. I was curious enough to check the menu online and this time went back deliberately. It's mostly sushi and sashimi, which are outside my eating range, but they do have a decent menu of cooked food as well. I was a little alarmed when they told me the Korean-style fried chicken appetizer was five pieces, but it turned out that meant five small boneless strips, not five big pieces, so I could have ordered with it more than a plate of gyoza. But those chicken strips, besides being crispily fried, were inside fabulously moist and tender. I'll have to come back and try a more serious meal here.
Tuesday, April 5, 2022
take me to your census
This is fun. I've been looking relatives up in the 1950 US census.
I found my mother in her college dorm, and her parents - even though the enumerator misspelled their name - back at home, with their two live-in maids. (Did I know my grandparents had a maid? Yes, I recall my mother mentioning this. Did I know the maid was live-in? Well, I sort of presumed that. Did I know they had two? No.)
I was unable to find my father. He would have been either at university or med school then, but he turned up in neither city, nor could I find his mother. But the two of them had moved around a whole lot after the divorce when my dad was 12. I did find my grandfather, who stayed put for the rest of his life.
B. wasn't available at the moment to ask, but I guessed what city her parents were living in then, and found them on the first shot, with a 3-year-old daughter, their only child at the time. (You will not get B's sister to admit how old she is today.)
Then there's the enumeration district maps. There's a terrible search interface for these at the National Archives, but someone has made a much better one. These are only necessary if you know the address you're looking for and can find it on a map, and need to know the district to limit your search. I found the name/county search function was sufficiently powerful that I didn't need that. But I did enjoy looking at the maps of the area I grew up in. Clearly the post-war boom which was going full-throttle in the 60s had not started yet in 1950, judging by the tiny towns and the vast agricultural zones (orchards, mostly, I remember, from what was left of them) separating the towns. A different world.
I found my mother in her college dorm, and her parents - even though the enumerator misspelled their name - back at home, with their two live-in maids. (Did I know my grandparents had a maid? Yes, I recall my mother mentioning this. Did I know the maid was live-in? Well, I sort of presumed that. Did I know they had two? No.)
I was unable to find my father. He would have been either at university or med school then, but he turned up in neither city, nor could I find his mother. But the two of them had moved around a whole lot after the divorce when my dad was 12. I did find my grandfather, who stayed put for the rest of his life.
B. wasn't available at the moment to ask, but I guessed what city her parents were living in then, and found them on the first shot, with a 3-year-old daughter, their only child at the time. (You will not get B's sister to admit how old she is today.)
Then there's the enumeration district maps. There's a terrible search interface for these at the National Archives, but someone has made a much better one. These are only necessary if you know the address you're looking for and can find it on a map, and need to know the district to limit your search. I found the name/county search function was sufficiently powerful that I didn't need that. But I did enjoy looking at the maps of the area I grew up in. Clearly the post-war boom which was going full-throttle in the 60s had not started yet in 1950, judging by the tiny towns and the vast agricultural zones (orchards, mostly, I remember, from what was left of them) separating the towns. A different world.
Monday, April 4, 2022
another 48-hour Shakespeare play festival
Silicon Valley Shakespeare does this annually: giving teams each with 4 actors, a writer, and a director 48 hours to write and rehearse a 10-minute skit based on a given Shakespeare play and employing a given premise, each different for each skit, and then perform them before an audience when the 48 hours are up. I've seen these before, and they can be pretty funny.
This year the venue was Foothill College, and the premise was to mash up your assigned Shakespeare play with a popular TV show of your choice. The most successful premise, as well as the most obvious one - possibly these facts are connected - was Titus Andronicus as Chopped, the cooking competition show (which I've actually seen). With one actor as the host and two as the judges, that left one to play all three contestants: Titus, Tamora, and Aaron, which she did virtuosically.
Best single line, however, was in another skit when Captain Kirk, trapped in a Shakespeare re-enactment, wonders how it will come out, and is told, "Not well. It's Richard the Third. Star Trek is never good when it's an odd number."
I also liked one with brilliantly goofy acting by a guy who keeps coming on stage as different characters who all promptly get killed, with his body repeatedly having to be dragged off stage by the same long-suffering other actor.
And the Puck, who, though the Dream mash-up was nominally with Buffy, kept singing snatches of "We Don't Talk About Bruno."
These few highlights aside, though, I thought this year's version was less amusing, and less coherent, than ones I've seen in the past.
This year the venue was Foothill College, and the premise was to mash up your assigned Shakespeare play with a popular TV show of your choice. The most successful premise, as well as the most obvious one - possibly these facts are connected - was Titus Andronicus as Chopped, the cooking competition show (which I've actually seen). With one actor as the host and two as the judges, that left one to play all three contestants: Titus, Tamora, and Aaron, which she did virtuosically.
Best single line, however, was in another skit when Captain Kirk, trapped in a Shakespeare re-enactment, wonders how it will come out, and is told, "Not well. It's Richard the Third. Star Trek is never good when it's an odd number."
I also liked one with brilliantly goofy acting by a guy who keeps coming on stage as different characters who all promptly get killed, with his body repeatedly having to be dragged off stage by the same long-suffering other actor.
And the Puck, who, though the Dream mash-up was nominally with Buffy, kept singing snatches of "We Don't Talk About Bruno."
These few highlights aside, though, I thought this year's version was less amusing, and less coherent, than ones I've seen in the past.
Sunday, April 3, 2022
air-fry at last
So now that I have the basket necessary for my oven's air-fry function, after six months of waiting for it, what shall I do with it?
Cook some chicken wings, of course. I'd seen coating mixes for sale specifically formulated for air-fryers, so I picked up one of those and tried it today.
The biggest mystery was the difference between the cooking instructions on the mix package and in the oven manual. The manual said cook chicken wings at 425-450 for 27-32 minutes; the package said 375 for 15-20 minutes. The latter seemed awfully fast; could the difference have anything to do with the oven manual saying no preheating was required for air-frying? For baking/roasting it takes about 12-15 minutes to heat up to such a temperature. Or could it be that the package instructions were for a dedicated air-fryer and not for an air-frying function on an oven?
I decided to lean towards the latter, preheated the oven, and cooked it at 425 for 24 minutes, which was quite long enough.
The basket is a metal mesh pan, with a slight basket indentation, with handles on both ends, almost as wide as the oven. (The ordering instructions had specified the size of the oven.) It's big enough to hold ten small-medium wings. You put it on a low middle shelf and place a baking sheet below it to catch any drips.
And it cooked fine, and it did not smoke up the kitchen. (An important point, since we don't have a kitchen fan.) Nice crispy and crunchy breading, but not too thick, on well-cooked but not dried-out wings, still tasty after they'd cooled off, a tasty meal. No grease, because no oil, ta da. But rather messy: coating dripped through the basket onto whatever surface I placed it on both before and after cooking, and adhered to the basket, which is too large to soak in our sink. So considering the cleanup, I may not do this too often, but it did taste impressively good.
Cook some chicken wings, of course. I'd seen coating mixes for sale specifically formulated for air-fryers, so I picked up one of those and tried it today.
The biggest mystery was the difference between the cooking instructions on the mix package and in the oven manual. The manual said cook chicken wings at 425-450 for 27-32 minutes; the package said 375 for 15-20 minutes. The latter seemed awfully fast; could the difference have anything to do with the oven manual saying no preheating was required for air-frying? For baking/roasting it takes about 12-15 minutes to heat up to such a temperature. Or could it be that the package instructions were for a dedicated air-fryer and not for an air-frying function on an oven?
I decided to lean towards the latter, preheated the oven, and cooked it at 425 for 24 minutes, which was quite long enough.
The basket is a metal mesh pan, with a slight basket indentation, with handles on both ends, almost as wide as the oven. (The ordering instructions had specified the size of the oven.) It's big enough to hold ten small-medium wings. You put it on a low middle shelf and place a baking sheet below it to catch any drips.
And it cooked fine, and it did not smoke up the kitchen. (An important point, since we don't have a kitchen fan.) Nice crispy and crunchy breading, but not too thick, on well-cooked but not dried-out wings, still tasty after they'd cooled off, a tasty meal. No grease, because no oil, ta da. But rather messy: coating dripped through the basket onto whatever surface I placed it on both before and after cooking, and adhered to the basket, which is too large to soak in our sink. So considering the cleanup, I may not do this too often, but it did taste impressively good.
Saturday, April 2, 2022
short answer to the day's burning science question
According to this article, the star-namers did have Tolkien in mind. Earendel was the name for the morning star (Venus) which Tolkien found in Old English poetry and which inspired him to create the character, originally of the same name, in The Silmarillion. In his later work he took to spelling it Eärendil, and that's how it appears in the published books. (The diaeresis over the "a" is to remind you they're two separate vowels, not a diphthong.)
concert review: Ragazzi Boys Chorus
And this is how I write a review when I want to emphasize how good the chorus was - when the local symphony or opera need a boys' chorus, this is who they get, and well-deserved - and de-emphasize some of the choice of repertoire and the instrumental part of the program.
Some of the repertoire was good. I actually decided to go to this concert because they had scheduled Bruckner's Locus Iste, which is my favorite motet of all time, and they did a gorgeous job with it. In fact, they did a gorgeous job with all the choral music, including some pieces that were not worth the trouble of performing. While the arrangement of "How Can I Keep From Singing?" was brilliant (and by a noted choral composer), the arrangement of Stephen Foster's "Hard Times" was, as I suggested in the review, "rather elaborate." At the least. And that final "Ave Maria" - there are better versions.
But on the decision to show off a couple of the choristers' abilities as pianist and violinist, I had to write with considerable restraint. Just because you're a good singer, and can also hit all the right notes on that instrument you play on the side, doesn't mean you should do the latter in public. The pianist eked out a dull version of a Debussy prelude, and the violinist played most of the first movement of the Mendelssohn concerto with perfectly adequate intonation and rhythm but no inflection or character whatever. Imagine a robot voice reading a Shakespeare soliloquy; it was like that. When he launched into the cadenza, which is designed for the violinist to show off, I could hardly believe the bleak landscape.
Fortunately that didn't last too long. Ragazzi's publicists are always after me to cover them, but it's hard to review concerts consisting of 16 short pieces, and it's harder to schedule reviews of groups that don't put their schedule out at the beginning of the season. Since I wanted to go to this one anyway, I filed for a review; and the opportunity to hear good chorusing inspired B. to come along, once I had made a scouting visit and established there were handicapped parking spaces within a reasonable walk of the mission church, which is situated in the middle of the pedestrian-only section of the Jesuit university campus.
Some of the repertoire was good. I actually decided to go to this concert because they had scheduled Bruckner's Locus Iste, which is my favorite motet of all time, and they did a gorgeous job with it. In fact, they did a gorgeous job with all the choral music, including some pieces that were not worth the trouble of performing. While the arrangement of "How Can I Keep From Singing?" was brilliant (and by a noted choral composer), the arrangement of Stephen Foster's "Hard Times" was, as I suggested in the review, "rather elaborate." At the least. And that final "Ave Maria" - there are better versions.
But on the decision to show off a couple of the choristers' abilities as pianist and violinist, I had to write with considerable restraint. Just because you're a good singer, and can also hit all the right notes on that instrument you play on the side, doesn't mean you should do the latter in public. The pianist eked out a dull version of a Debussy prelude, and the violinist played most of the first movement of the Mendelssohn concerto with perfectly adequate intonation and rhythm but no inflection or character whatever. Imagine a robot voice reading a Shakespeare soliloquy; it was like that. When he launched into the cadenza, which is designed for the violinist to show off, I could hardly believe the bleak landscape.
Fortunately that didn't last too long. Ragazzi's publicists are always after me to cover them, but it's hard to review concerts consisting of 16 short pieces, and it's harder to schedule reviews of groups that don't put their schedule out at the beginning of the season. Since I wanted to go to this one anyway, I filed for a review; and the opportunity to hear good chorusing inspired B. to come along, once I had made a scouting visit and established there were handicapped parking spaces within a reasonable walk of the mission church, which is situated in the middle of the pedestrian-only section of the Jesuit university campus.
Friday, April 1, 2022
XPO customer
Kevin Standlee often writes in his blog about XPO, the company he works for doing shipping logistics. Well, I have become an XPO customer. They delivered a package to me today, and I'm here to tell you about it.
For six months now, since we bought our new Samsung oven, Samsung has been promising to deliver the air-fry basket that goes with it that I ordered separately. They kept giving me delivery dates and then delaying them, a few days or two months. April 1 was like the sixth date I was given. But this time it wasn't delayed. On Wednesday I got an e-mail from Samsung saying it had actually shipped and they were handing me over to their delivery service, XPO.
On Thursday, I got a phone call from XPO. It started out as an automated phone call, but as soon as I pressed the first button on instruction, the automated voice said there was a technical problem and it would hand me off to a human. It did. First we went through some confirmation blither, then the human seemed to tell me that the basket wouldn't be delivered on Friday after all; then she said it would. (Possibly she was the idol that neither always tells the truth nor always lies but gives a random answer.) But after we got that straightened out, she said no delivery time window had yet been set, and they'd call me back when it was. Furthermore, the delivery guy would phone 30 minutes out. But an adult needed to be home to accept the package; they wouldn't leave it on the porch.
I was just telling B. about this, so she'd know about the expected calls and the delivery, when the phone rang again. Same deal: automated voice, technical problem, human, confirmation blither. This is my phone number, this is my name & address, with zip code, yes you may call me by my first name. (You'd think that the first time they'd have a checkmark they could click: "Yes This Customer Will Permit You To Call Them By Their First Name. Christ, Give It A Rest Already, Will You?") But this guy didn't have the delivery time window either. Instead, he seemed to think he was the first call. Same info. I listened patiently; clearly his computer hadn't told him that I'd already heard this stuff.
Despite these assurances, I never got a call with the delivery time window. Instead, I got it by e-mail. 12:30-4:30, Friday afternoon. Fine.
The phone rang at 11:30 AM. Good thing I was already back from my morning errands by then. He'd be there in 20 minutes. Took closer to 30, but he was there. Handed over the package, took a photo of me with it with his phone. No signature or any other fuss.
And that's my experience with XPO. Much more conscientious about their service than a lot of companies one deals with in this manner, but still subject to weird glitches, from the technical problem with the automated phone call, to some unclear statements by the first person, to a needless repeat of the first phone call, to being told I'd get another phone call but getting an e-mail instead, to a delivery before the time window, which is OK except that I might have missed it; and generally an immense amount of fuss over a package, the kind that Amazon would just drop off and that would be an end to it.
For six months now, since we bought our new Samsung oven, Samsung has been promising to deliver the air-fry basket that goes with it that I ordered separately. They kept giving me delivery dates and then delaying them, a few days or two months. April 1 was like the sixth date I was given. But this time it wasn't delayed. On Wednesday I got an e-mail from Samsung saying it had actually shipped and they were handing me over to their delivery service, XPO.
On Thursday, I got a phone call from XPO. It started out as an automated phone call, but as soon as I pressed the first button on instruction, the automated voice said there was a technical problem and it would hand me off to a human. It did. First we went through some confirmation blither, then the human seemed to tell me that the basket wouldn't be delivered on Friday after all; then she said it would. (Possibly she was the idol that neither always tells the truth nor always lies but gives a random answer.) But after we got that straightened out, she said no delivery time window had yet been set, and they'd call me back when it was. Furthermore, the delivery guy would phone 30 minutes out. But an adult needed to be home to accept the package; they wouldn't leave it on the porch.
I was just telling B. about this, so she'd know about the expected calls and the delivery, when the phone rang again. Same deal: automated voice, technical problem, human, confirmation blither. This is my phone number, this is my name & address, with zip code, yes you may call me by my first name. (You'd think that the first time they'd have a checkmark they could click: "Yes This Customer Will Permit You To Call Them By Their First Name. Christ, Give It A Rest Already, Will You?") But this guy didn't have the delivery time window either. Instead, he seemed to think he was the first call. Same info. I listened patiently; clearly his computer hadn't told him that I'd already heard this stuff.
Despite these assurances, I never got a call with the delivery time window. Instead, I got it by e-mail. 12:30-4:30, Friday afternoon. Fine.
The phone rang at 11:30 AM. Good thing I was already back from my morning errands by then. He'd be there in 20 minutes. Took closer to 30, but he was there. Handed over the package, took a photo of me with it with his phone. No signature or any other fuss.
And that's my experience with XPO. Much more conscientious about their service than a lot of companies one deals with in this manner, but still subject to weird glitches, from the technical problem with the automated phone call, to some unclear statements by the first person, to a needless repeat of the first phone call, to being told I'd get another phone call but getting an e-mail instead, to a delivery before the time window, which is OK except that I might have missed it; and generally an immense amount of fuss over a package, the kind that Amazon would just drop off and that would be an end to it.
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