Trash, houses, food and effing Xfinity

We've been building up a decent collection of trash since we arrived a week ago. As we're used to simply chucking bags of rubbish down the chute at our old apartment complex it didn't occur to either of us that we'd have to actually sort something out here to get rid of all the crap, and after checking with our landlord he told us to take it to the dump, or as it's called, the Transfer Station.

So this morning we loaded up my nice new shiny Outback with several 30-gallon bags stuffed with leftover food, bags of dog poo, empty tins/boxes/bottles and Christ knows how much plastic wrapping as well as a bunch of broken-down Amazon boxes and headed to the transfer station. We had no idea what we were supposed to do, so when we arrived we went up to the attendant and used the time-honoured phrase: "Hi! We're new here. Help?"

She took us through the process of weighing each bag, totalling it up, and paying to dispose of it. Our bags came to 48 pounds, costing us a princely $4, well worth it to get the stinking mess out of my Subaru. The attendant was great and we chatted to her for a while about being new to Vermont, the pros and cons of various parts of the state, and why we left California.

There's even a table where people can leave stuff they don't want for others to pick up. I spotted this old walkman and was tempted before I remembered that not only do I no longer own any cassettes, I don't even know where to buy them. I also saw a couple of radios, which was 48 hours too late as I bought one at Walmart on Sunday. Typical.

After our sojourn at the dump, we headed north to Middlebury to check out a couple of houses Alicia found online. It's a two-hour drive up Route 7A, through some beautiful Vermont countryside and the Green Mountain National Forest.

The houses we looked at didn't work out as they were too far off the 7A, up winding mountain roads. I mean, we both love the idea of living somewhere peaceful but not miles up a dirt road. So we drove back down the winding mountain roads, with Alicia enjoying the view as I kept my eyes on where we were going.

By this point we were hungry, so we stopped at Rosie's Restaurant in Middlebury for lunch. We went there last May during our week-long trip to check out Vermont and it was great then, and despite the social distancing and masks it's still excellent. We both got the large turkey platter and a diet Pepsi. I was so hungry I think my meal lasted all of five minutes before I cleared my plate.

After that it was back in the car and the drive home. On the way we passed a hotdog stand called Wank's Franks which I totally didn't get a photo of, and a statue of a gorilla holding an old VW beetle that I also failed to photograph. 

We checked out a house in Shaftsbury that looks promising, but apparently you have to reside in Vermont for two weeks or self-quarantine for the same period before you can actually visit a house you want to buy. We spend three years planning to move here and then everyone else has the same bloody idea. Great. We're hoping that particular house is still available next week.

One issue we've been having is the lack of internet in the house we're renting. We've got good 4G on our phones and use them as mobile hotspots for our laptops, but Alicia — who's back working tomorrow after two weeks off — has burned through her data allowance for the month and mine's going fast. So we looked around for internet providers in the area and found this. The only doable choice was Xfinity, so Sunday night I signed away my soul.

We returned home today to find our new Xfinity modem sitting on the deck outside the house. Yay, we thought, until we opened it, followed the instructions to the letter, and discovered the modem won't power up. In classic cable company style it's a reconditioned piece of shit; you can tell it's old because the "Property of Comcast" sticker keeps falling off as the glue's dried up. Hilarity ensued when we called the tech support number on Xfinity's site and the incredibly upbeat robot told us to try rebooting it, and then wouldn't put us through to a human because we had to wait 10 minutes for the non-powered modem to complete its powering-up cycle. So we waited 10 minutes, called back, and the bloody robot suggested rebooting it again. Screaming "OPERATOR!" down the phone had no effect.

Alicia managed to get through to an actual human on the Xfinity chat support, and a new modem will be with us "within 24 hours". The old one is boxed up and ready to be deposited at the UPS store in Bennington tomorrow.

ME FROM THE FUTURE: Somewhat shockingly, the new modem didn't turn up within 24 hours.