UPDATE: SCROLL DOWN TO THE BOTTOM OF THE POST FOR AN UPDATE!

As many of you know, we recently lost our German Shepherd Max. He actually had a long battle with an infection and the pain just got to be too much so we “sent him to Rainbow Bridge” as they say. You can see my tribute to him here: In Loving Memory - Max. Thank you everyone for all the wonderful sympathy and kind words about Max.

Anyhow, we still have another dog, Simon, that we raised from a wee pup of 8 weeks old.

Here is Simon as a puppy:

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Last night we went shopping.

At a mall.

All of us.

Well, not the dog.

Seriously.

A MALL!

I can’t tell you the last time I was at a mall.

Probably around the time most of the other patrons were BEING BORN!

Jeez, I feel old.

Well, not as old as Lori. I’ll never be as old as Lori.

This got really off topic.

Forgive me, it’s 3:30 am as I write this.

You gotta love inspiration that strikes when you should be sleeping, not to mention the hungry baby I just fed.

So.

Back to the business at hand.

We saw a woman while driving to the mall who did not appear to be a careful nor a considerate driver. She was weaving in and out, not maintaining a constant speed and simply being a highway nuisance. At one point she passed us up and I noticed she was driving with no hands, smoking a cigarette with the left hand and “texting” (man, I’m old) with her right. AND SHE HAD KIDS IN THE CAR!

Am I just getting so old and uptight (well, I’ve always been uptight) or was this just the most stupid behavior on the planet??? Did I mention the speed limit was 70 and she had to be going faster than that since she passed MY HUSBAND and he drives like Mario Andretti?

Ok, I’m done.

Discuss………..

This weekend we decided to go out for breakfast and then visit a Farmers Market and a Flea Market. We’re in a sorta small town, and made the drive about 20 or so minutes to get to all three which were located relatively near each other.

It was not a day that will go down in history as anything other than a big waste of time!

There was an X-Files once where Mulder said to Scully something like “it will be a nice trip to the forest” and she ended up almost being eaten alive by bugs.

I now know how she felt.
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I know you will be as excited as I am to hear the news.

The X-Files new movie opens in theaters on July 25th.

What’s that I hear?

Cheering!

no?

Dead silence?

Anyhow, I don’t care if I am the only one sitting in the theater, I will be there!

I’m a big time X-Files nerd from way back.

I have just one question…
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This is my list of things that they government could save money on if they simplified them:

• Taxes - self explanatory
• Drivers License Bureau - when you tell me what I need don’t tell me I need something different when I come back with the things you told me that were missing
• Voting - seriously?
• Mortgages - do they need to be 3/4″ thick?
• Insurance - can’t it be all or none so that us simple folk can understand exactly what is covered?
• Medicare - they actually hire people who you can call to explain Medicare and the medicare supplement plans available because they are so hard to understand.
• Phone, cable and internet bills - just tell me up front what the total charges will be so I am not surprised or confused by all the extra taxes and fees.

Ok, I’m done. Anyone have anything to add, feel free!

My wonderful friend Andy gave me an e-Bay gift certificate for Christmas.  I finally got around to buying something and attempted to redeem it.  Let me first say, that I love e-Bay and have never had the smallest problem with them.  But, now - I’m getting a little hot under the collar.

After several e-mails back and forth, I have been informed:

“Upon review, I can see that the gift certificate XXXXXX is a printed one. It will only be added to your account if you have already used it. However, you can’t use it because the sender was not able to indicate your PayPal email address in the gift certificate she purchased.”   Huh?  I can only add the certificate to my account if I already used it?  How exactly do I do that? 

They go on to say that the original certificate needs to be cancelled and a new one purchased.  Haven’t gift certificates been around for awhile?  Aren’t gift certificates supposed to be something easy to use?  Why has this procedure become so difficult? 

We went to an old house tour this morning, and while everyone was well mannered, there were a few people who exhibited some really annoying behavior. So, next time you’re on a house tour, try this Top 5 list of ways to annoy people if your feeling bored!

5. Stand exactly in the middle of a doorway. Not because the room is too crowded, your wife is the only one in there, but just stand there and take a good, long look.

4. Stand one foot in front of the poster resting on the floor which explains the items in the room. This position prevents any one from reading the poster. Proceed to have a conference with your friends about which room you are going to next.

3. Walk right in front of someone taking a picture.

2. Even though the tour guides explicitly told you to use the large stairway for going up and the smaller one for going down, go ahead and use those smaller ones to go against the flow. Be sure to bring a couple of friends.

1. In general, just be oblivious to everyone around you. Try to get in the way.

Okay, I feel better.

No wait… one more. We are, yet again, under a tornado watch. At least it’s not a warning. But, man, am I tired of rain.

Okay, now I’m done….

When we moved last year we bought all our new phone, internet and TV from one company - AT&T. To this day, I have spent at least a couple of hours every other week dealing with some issue or another usually involving something not working right. The other day, we discovered that our second phone line had been disconnected. My husband called AT&T after trying to use it and not getting a dial tone and they told him that our service was transferred to another carrier.

He angrily asked why and they said, “well, you approved it, sir.”

He loves being called sir…..

My husband responded, “if that were the case, why would I be calling you?”

It turns out that somehow our service was “slammed” (transfered to another company without our knowledge or approval) and we are in limbo because the company it was allegedly switched to claims they do not own it and AT&T says there is nothing they can do. We’ve been told that AT&T can switch it back with our permission (duh, where was that “permission” when they let it go to begin with?) but we can’t do much about the illegal activity until we get a bill from the other company, which we will likely never get because we do not have service.

We think AT&T screwed up somehow. Why would this other company claim to have no record of our account (and therefore no way to bill us)?

We filed a report with the FCC and are pretty much waiting for our line to come back on. I’m sure we’ll be smacked with all kinds of fees that I will have to fight down the road.

To top it all off, last night we got an email indicating that our other phone line, our MAIN line was being switched to another carrier. Today they claim that was a mistake.

IT BETTER BE!

What would I do without my DSL which is associated with our main line? That is a horrible thought…

The moral here, if you care to take something away from this story, is to call your phone company and ask them to put a freeze/lock on your account. It makes it much harder for the “slamming” to happen.

I wonder how many others this has happened to…..

Last week, the faucet on our big whirlpool tub broke.  The water could be heard running, but no water came out of the faucet.  Now, that’s a lovely situation to be in - where is all that water going???  I called my favorite plumber, trusty Jason.  He crawled around, brought a helper into the works (I’m not kidding - ‘Boo’), and finally figured out that the parts that mix the water and lead up to the spout had ‘blown off’ and were no where to be found.  (Of course, this was installed by the infamous Steve the World’s Most Incompetent Plumber, which is a whole entire series of posts!)  So, easy enough, order the required parts and he’ll put it back together.  Oh, no - not so easy.  Did you know that most manufacturers do NOT mark their faucets with either their name or a model number?? Anywhere??

I thought it was an American Standard Jasmine but wasn’t positive.   Again, easy enough - hop on the web and find it. Oh no.  I could find a similar faucet, but it was only available as a sink faucet, so I couldn’t find the parts that we needed.  Ah ha!  Customer service. Oh no. It was 4:35; they closed at 4.  So, first thing Monday morning I called.  The ‘customer service rep’ was absolutely no help.  ‘Ma’am, I can’t help you if you don’t have the part number.’  ‘How can I give you the part number, IF IT’S NOT MARKED ON THE FAUCET?’  She kept insisting that the faucet would be on the website if they still manufactured it; but if I really couldn’t find it, she referred me to their sanctioned parts company (not actually part of American Standard).  I even asked if I could e-mail a digital picture and they could help me identify it.  The last thing I wanted to do was spend $100 on parts to the wrong faucet or from the wrong company.  Because apparently, ‘Standard’ does not refer to using standard parts - different faucets, even though they are for the same tub, use different works. Huh?  Back to the rep - she couldn’t help me with that.  So, I call this parts guy, he CAN identify it from a digital picture.  WooHoo!  “Nope, I don’t know what it is, but it’s not American Standard.”  Great.

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Twice this week, we’ve had salesmen doing seriously hard sell tactics.  On Monday afternoon, an old guy pulls up and offers to put a new 2″ topping of asphalt on the driveway for $1600.  But, I had to decide there and then.  He had guys in town and they needed the work to fill in that afternoon.  He gave me a lot of “I swear to God” and “Trust me”.  He was really in my face.  Then, when I told him that we would pass because I had no idea if that was a good price (is it?) he got really mad.  Excuse me?  Did I ask you to come all the way out here and give me a quote?  He really seemed to think that this reaction was going to push me over to the positive side.  How was I to know whether he was even a contractor and not some con man?  Anybody can slap a magnetic sign on their truck.

Next, we’ve had this ‘cancer insurance’ salesguy lurking about.  The thing I really hate about these guys, is the fact that they use your neighbors’ names and whether they’ve purchased this insurance to try and get you to buy it.  “Oh, so-and-so just bought a $50K policy from me.  He liked that it provided…..”  If I did buy this stuff, I certainly don’t want my neighbors knowing all my business.  It’s bad enough that they know what they do.  Then they get so pissy when you reject them.  My husband was dealing with this guy, and used my absence the first time as an excuse.  The salesman then makes some snarky comment about the wife being ‘in charge of that stuff’.  Which, we all know, is code for ”Buddy, your whipped.  Who wears the pants in your house?”  Again, did I ask you to come and give me a quote?  Get away from me.

Not the way to make a sale, in my opinion.

I’d like to take a moment to gripe about something.

Now, I know how shocking it would be for anyone who knows me to picture me - me - actually complaining about something (that was sarcasm, by the way) but it must be said.

The people who design maternity clothes are demented. Anyone who would cause (additional) undue suffering upon a pregnant woman is obviously mentally ill. If you read any sort of descriptions or recommendations about maternity clothes, they tell you that you buy your pre-pregnancy size because the maternity clothes are designed to accommodate the extra weight. Yea, maybe on the moon. I’m AT LEAST 2 sizes up in maternity clothes than my pre-pregnancy size and they’re even too tight. Nothing like having to pull your sleeves and pant legs out of your sweaty body crevices during a meeting because they’re too tight and keep creeping up into places that shouldn’t even exist to begin with.
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Last night my husband, son and I were out and about at a function I had to attend for work. After the event, around 6:45 or so, we left starving and decided we would stop to find something to eat. My son kept making wonderful suggestions from McDonalds to White Castle, and I while I appreciated his frugal-ness, we wanted something a little more healthy.

So we drove for awhile, actually about 30 minutes towards home and then beyond looking for something we could all agree on. It was one of those nights…. Anyhow, we happened across an Applebees and although I think they are overpriced, we turned into the lot and made our way inside.

From the get-go it wasn’t quite an ideal experience. We walked in to an empty waiting area only to be passed and ignored by three employees before one finally came up to us and asked us how many. My husband told them, “three and we would like a booth if possible.” My son tends to be a fidgity-gibit and he’s easier to control in a booth. Anyhow, we walked past no less than three empty booths to be taken to a table. My husband said “are there any booths available?” (having seen the same three I did). The hostess said “well, I can clean that one off if you want to wait.” “That would be great” my husband said still being diplomatic.

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