Ushering my family into the 21st century

We made the decision today to become part of mainstream society. To become part of the 21st century. We are getting an ADT home security system installed.

I am always super paranoid about home invasion robberies because I watch way too much I Survived and am just sure it is going to happen to me. I am nervous all the time if I have to leave my house and come back after dark. I am just scared by nature mostly because of all the ominous TV shows and movies I watch. But THIS SHIT IS REAL PPL. They have ppl on those shows that it has actually happened to. I don't make this shit up. I just watch it on TV.

Anyway... Husband and I have discussed home security systems before and never really made a move on it because we thought you had to have a home land line phone to have a monitored security system. But, I got a pile of junk mail today. You know, the pile that comes with the local pizza coupons and ads for the Dollar Store all folded together and stuck in your mailbox once every week or two... I usually just chunk it, but today I flipped through it and on the very back page was an ad for ADT. They are running some kind of sale, yadda yadda... Well, I just decided to call them and ask if you HAVE to have a home phone for the system. It seems technology has caught up with those of us who refuse old fashioned home land line phones and you CAN get a monitored system without a home phone. You have to have something called a Cellular uplink installed. Oh Really you say? Yes. It makes you monthly monitoring go from 35.99 a month to 44.99 a month because ADT has to pay the local cell phone carrier $9 a month to use their towers to communicate with your security system. SO after listening to everything the guy had to say about the system, after checking my husband's credit, after I negotiated for free smoke sensor monitors we arranged for our new system to be installed 2 weeks from this Friday. My husband is leaving town tonight to go back to work so we can't do it until he comes home. He has to be here when it is installed since the account will be in his name.

I feel better already just knowing we are going to have a LOUD home security system installed. They said it has the loudest alarm siren allowed by law. That MF has got to be ear piercing.

Also...totally off topic... In those ads I saw a Papa John's circular. I didn't know we even had a Papa John's in this town until today. DD said it has been here for a few months already. So I went online and ordered a pizza from them to be delivered. It was an EXTRA LARGE pizza. SO I am expecting some GIANT ASS pizza that will barely fit through the door frame. NOPE. It was a 16 inch pizza. It appeared to me to be about the same size as a Pizza Hut LARGE. And they only cut the pizza into 8 pieces. The slices were huge. I found out later that you can request they double cut it and make smaller slices. I didn't know. I was a Papa John's virgin until today. The pizza was pretty good. The kids were fascinated that they stuck 2 green peppers in the box and nobody was brave enough to try the little carton of garlic sauce they give you with the pizza. I guess NO PIZZA PLACE in existence knows what extra sauce means. If you don't order extra sauce they don't really put ANY on. SO when you order extra you get normal amount of sauce. Same thing with cheese. I order extra cheese and pay $2 more per pizzas just so I can get a normal amount of cheese on it. That seems to be universal. However, for home delivery I found it to be kind of high. After you pay the pizza, the extra cheese fee, the tax, delivery fee and TIP the bill was almost $23 for ONE pizza. Now I could have saved the $2 delivery fee and the $5 tip if I had driven across town to get it myself but my laziness cost me today. I probably won't order from them again. But it was good to try it. I can't complain about the quality of the pizza. And what was weird is they had it to my door about 22 minutes after I ordered it. The online thing estimated delivery to be between 54 and 64 minutes and the girl called to get directions 19 minutes later and was at my house in less than 5 minutes. I was very impressed. Now when she got to the door she opened the pizza box and asked me if it looked OK. I said yeah sure, is that normal for y'all to do that? To show ppl the pizza before you leave? And she said yes they do it with everybody. I guess that cuts down on the people calling back in to complain that the pizza isn't right and requesting remakes or future free pizza. Whoever thought to do that probably saved the place a lot of money. Someone else I told about this said her local Papa John's has NEVER done that at her door so I am assuming each individually owned franchise does things a little bit differently.



Ok, tell me, do you have a home security system? Does it randomly go off and scare you and make you think someone is breaking in? Because if this loud MF goes off I won't know what to do. Get up and CHECK to see if someone came in? Let the alarm company call the police? The kids will be scared straight out of bed by it. I think our new instruction to them will be this... If you wake up and the alarm is going off get up and come straight to moms room. Their bedrooms doors are very close to my door so they don't have to go through the whole house to get to my room. Then what do you do? Lock yourself in your room and wait for police to come see what it was? Or do I take my gun and go walking through the house? I haven't discussed with my husband what I am suppose to do if the alarm actually goes off. SO that's why I am asking if you have one, what do you do? I will also ask the installer what he thinks you should do when the alarm goes off.