Creative Cooks

My sister was on the Google bandwagon long, long, long before it was cool.  So I had Nest cams version 1.  And a Nest account version 1.  Google absorbed Nest and did their usual mediocre job at importing the accounts and killing off all the legacy stuff.  Then, on the off hand chance that their customer base had figured out how to deal with all those changes, they created Google Home wherein they incorporated all the old Nest stuff (sometimes call it Nest, sometimes calling it Home and charging under the latter). 

I'm pretty sure I went through this last year but I just had a charge on a credit card I never use and will shortly cancel for 'Nest' services with a phone number that no longer exists and gives no forwarding information.  Even Google can't keep up with the changes enough to put the new number on the old phone message.  

At a loss I went to my new best friend Gemini.  As usual Gemini was very sympathetic and said that the legacy issue was a problem and there here are the steps in order of likelihood to succeed.  I hit paydirt on the first step talking to Google Nest Support (a number not easily found by any other method).  The woman I talked to needed to push it up the chain and it was taking so long she asked if she could do it by email.  I gave her to Wednesday so we'll see.  They had to send me an email requesting permission to access my account so I have a case ID.

Gemini makes it so easy.   Even gave me some follow up tips to be sure I checked and got email verification and a refund confirmation number.  Amazing, really.  

I also did think to shut down both USAA credit cards so nothing else 'legacy' gets charged.  I'll cancel and cut them up once we're resolved.

Meanwhile, I got a check from my USAA insurance.  USAA is a mutual company so you pay a little extra on insurance and it goes into a pot of money and you get back a piece of it after each year is done and the costs of all the insurance claims are paid out.  It is a little check every year that gets bigger as your membership is older.  Since I cancelled everything but a little tiny piece of the banking that I can't quite shut down I get the balance that is mine in the USAA pot.  Check came today.  It is decent.  I created a travel fund with it since we don't need it for day to day and I've got everything else covered.

We'll go wherever Dana wants to go.  I don't much care.  She's watched so much Outlander and all the Viking stuff and her heritage is at least a bit from Scotland she's wanted to go there for the past few years.  It is fine with me.  I'll get with my friend at the travel agency and see if we can't put together a well curated and well transported trip to Scotland.  

Of course, now she can actually execute the trip she may change her mind.  She wanted to go to Hawaii badly when we first met.  I think she just wants to see a volcano.  Hawaii is somewhere I've actually been a few times with the Navy so, bad luck to her, I had no desire to fly 6000 miles from Jacksonville, FL to go to a beach.

Maybe we can stop at Iceland on the way home from Scotland.