The Hermit Poet

The last few days have brought a small crop of rejections.  Two from manuscript contests and one from Failbetter.  The editors at Failbetter.com were actually quite supportive and wrote a very kind email to let me know that two of my poems (again from the Babbage’s Dream manuscript) were highly considered and almost made the cut.  Which is great to know and certainly made my day.

On the other hand, I wasted the better part of the day on the phone dealing with Nissan USA, Nissan Canada, and  my local Nissan dealer trying to figure out who actually was authorized to do the recall work on my car.  The dealer originally forwarded me to Nissan USA (the car was bought in the US), but they (Nissan USA) then told me that I shouldn’t have been able to bring the car across the border without having had the recalls done first and that they would not authorize any recall work done in Canada.  After talking to a few levels of management, they finally suggested I talk to Nissan Canada.  Nissan Canada then informed me that yes it was possible to have the work done at the Canadian dealer.  The Canadian dealer then told me that he needed the paperwork from Nissan USA before he could do the work and that there hadn’t been a problem in the past.  When we reviewed the list of recalls for the car (1.  windshield wiper link;  2. auto transmission switch button), we discovered that only the first one was on the list of Canadian recalls.  Added to that is the potential problem of finding recall parts for a 1996 Nissan Sentra GXE in Canada — Nissan typically only produces a number of parts equal to the number of cars in Canada.  After the recall date, it becomes increasingly difficult to find the parts.  At this point my prepaid cell phone was about out of minutes, so now I have to wait till tomorrow to continue my efforts.  I hope I can find a more understanding ear tomorrow at Nissan USA — today’s set of CSR and management  had told me I had to drive back to the US to do the recall work.  Which is just plain silly.