Bettie suffers another week as wife to an ailing online offering, before fleeing to Barcelona for 39-4-Ever’s first intercontinental conference.
As some do-goody adulterer once said: “It’s not work that kills men, it’s worry,” which, though comforting, means Big Frank is dead cert for a coronary unless he can get this crazy 39-4-Ever casino up and working. Only a few weeks into the whole stupid idea and Husband #3 is already having a hard time with his online offering. And, typically, his bedtime offering is going the same way. I’ll give you an example. There we were post Book at Bedtime and he turns to me and says, “Bettie, do you love me just because my father left me a fortune?”
“Aw, no,” I says back, “not at all, honey.” Which is God’s honest truth as I would love him no matter who left him the money.
The other fact that’s driving him bazongas is Muffy’s done a pretty good job of turning my soupçon of gossip into a veritable eighteen-course smörgåsbord – and now every one of the Akron clan is out with torches and pitchforks. And while having a stepsister with a worse privacy reputation than Facebook is extremely advantageous, it does mean our servers keep crashing under the strain of all the family phone traffic.
Apparently, this is due to our bandwidth bit cap, but to my ears this is just so much yada yada yada… Actually, I recall the exact moment I discovered I was computer illiterate. It was when Big Frank asked me to back up my hard drive and I couldn’t find the stick shift for reverse. Of course, in my world, machines should become more people-literate, but I’m digressing.
This is best illustrated when I intercepted a call I thought was from Aunt Irena – she of the legendary crumbling shoulders – but was instead some IT support dork ringing to final sign-off the 39-4-Ever.com web design. As Big Frank was out trying to buy 12lbs of rib steak on an island that last had bison circa the Ice Age, I thought, ‘What the heck!’ and stepped in to help. The final Q&A session was the stuff of nightmares, and went something like this:
Q: “What sort of backend are you looking for?”
A: “Preferably one that can crush walnuts in hipsters.”
Q: “What do you want to do about the possibility of user error?”
A: “We’ll replace them with another user.”
Q: “Would you like a demonstration of my latest bottom teaser?”
A: “My word, can we even do that on a mere phone call?”
After finally hanging up on him when he asked me if I’d ever had experience with a woman’s portal, it all left my last marriage looking like the Holy Grail of relationships in comparison. But as grannie used to say there’s three things you should never go back to: an unexploded firework, a wounded ninja or an ex-husband.
Still, one thing that’s true in this industry, there’s never time to sit back and sip Mai-Tais, for next we’re off to our first conference. This one was in Barcelona which had two things going for it: Spain in December is a few shades warmer than the UK, and I’d heard they’d just passed a law banning anyone whose not smoking in public. Sounds like my kinda town!
Three days later and all I can recall about this exposition-summit-whatsit was this nasty rash of a man who attached himself to me in the dinner pavilion. Got stuck with him all evening. Claimed he knew everybody and said to hit the Big Time, all you had to be was ‘juiced in.’ To this end, he suggested I join him at the casino’s private members’ club. Said he was onto a come bet, but to me didn’t look like he’d been close for a while. Much later, after one-too-many free Proseccos, he tried to impress me by saying his life quest was to do something for humanity. I suggested sterilization. That did the trick! Never did find out what he did for a living. Best guess? Stripping paint with his breath.
Suddenly the Isle of Man seemed like Fantasy Island in comparison – and definitely a case of Sagrada Overly-Família…
