You're Doing It Wrong

Last year I recieved a gift card for a store with a single location in the metro-area and not terribly convenient for me and not a place I love to shop so I’ve been sitting on it. Over the past year this company acquired another company with a couple more stores in the metro-area with some locations slightly more convenient but still, not places I love to shop.

I need a large quantity of an expensive item so I figured I’d drive across town and get it at one of the recently acquired stores and while I was there burn through the entire gift card.

But first I thought I’d check and make sure they would accept the card. I phoned the gift card helpline and had my first experience with outsourced India call center. I explained my question and this very nice and polite person didn’t have the slightest idea what I was talking about.

I planned out all my errands and I phoned the store and asked about the gift card. I was assured without hesitation that there would be no problem. So I drove across town show up at the store and they don’t even have the expensive item I need. An item that I can get at Safeway, about 1 mile from my house. So now I’m there, I want to use the gift card up so I cruise the aisles grabbing random stuff that I’d ordinarily never buy and I get to check out and guess what? The gift card won’t work in their system.

“I called before I came out here.”

“Did you call this store?”

“Yes. I called this store.”

“Do you know who you talked to?”

Really, because how does that help? They were actually nice and apologetic and tried to work around the system to take the card but they couldn’t make it work. Meanwhile, the line is stretching across the store.

So I took one item that I actually wanted. They had to credit back all the other crap. I still have a gift card plus they gave me a gift card for my trouble.

Today I got rid of an entire trunkload (TRUNKLOAD!) of crap. I’m giddy. I keep running out to the garage and looking at the huge empty space where that worthless junk used to be and then rubbing my hands together and giggling. I love getting rid of things.

I’ve had a giant box that was once the home of a brand new eMac (not one of my better computers). I’ve been throwing Goodwill stuff into it plus I had two giant bags of clothes. All this stuff has been sitting here forever. Plus I had a big stack of books for the Friends of the Library (I’d link to it but they still address their mailings by hand, I’m not even going to look for a website) that I dropped off for donation and I had a small stack of books to trade in. So I did bring some books home, but not as many as I got rid of.

Oh. I forgot to tell the part about how the giant box wouldn’t fit into the trunk or the backseat. Not even close and I tried and many bad words were said. I stomped back into the garage and found a giant box cutter that I bought during the whole home improvement project (It starts at May 7 and goes on forever.) Violently cut the box down to size. Tossed the trimmings into recycling. Cut new “handles” into the new box and chucked it into the trunk.

Of course the entire area around Goodwill was a sea of orange cones and people in orange vests with signs that said “Stop” or Slow” and then when it was finally your turn, they waved at your urgently, as though you were competing for fabulous cash and prizes.

But I got it all done. Now I’m apparently going to some sort of art lecture. When I said, “Sure that sounds fun,” I thought I was agreeing to an art exhibit. The driver is waiting … .

I feel like I’m more tired than I ought to be. Huge pile of work is stacked up here. After our meetings yesterday I said, “For everything we did, we have about 100 new things.” That’s not complaining. I like these clients a lot and I like the work we do, it was just funny how so many new things came up.

Last night the plane got in around 7:50pm and I took the shuttle bus out to economy parking. My car was covered in mist (or whatever you call it) and I couldn’t find my little towel I used to keep in there for just such occasions. Knowing me I probably took it out to wash it.

I sat in the car with the engine running, wondering what to do. I don’t enjoy driving when I can’t see anything. I went through a mental check list of what was in my bags that I could use and finally decided to use my pajama bottoms, which need replacing anyway, and I swabbed the windows clear and was on my way.

Last time I was in the economy lot they had just installed self-serve ticket payment that you do with your debit card. That time it was a Sunday night and it was a major clusterfork gridlock and I think it took over a half hour to get out of the lot.

When I pulled in this time I had this in mind so I was looking for a spot: near a bus shelter, near an overhead light and that would be easy to jump into the payment line. And miraculously succeeded. Of course there was no line last night and twenty minutes after I got in my car I was at home with a glass of wine and my Google Reader.

I have 88 posts left. I kept choosing items and thinking, “Hey, I can probably clear through these quickly,” and then there would be something I wanted to comment on or read more closely so plenty left for later.

View from my room, Kootenai River Inn, Bonners Ferry, Idaho

I think the legality of yesterday’s post is in question. Co-worker handed over his laptop and I was logged-in to the wireless network for at least 3 minutes before it spit me out. I assumed this was a random glitch and I could jump back on.

I was wrong.

I wrestled with the thing for about 15 minutes and then typed my post out into WordPad so I could quickly cut, paste and publish once I got on again. I couldn’t get back on the wireless network to save my life. I’m not a Windoze person and my usual wireless connection is at home where I just turn on the computer and it’s there. I don’t know how to troubleshoot (or troubleshat as I was thinking of it) a wireless connection but none of my best guesses would work. My popup window said, “We see tons of wireless connections, pick the one you want.” And I’d pick one and then we’d grind awhile and then it would say, “Oh, we couldn’t connect.” Then the entire process would repeat itself.

The hotel directions were worthless which I could have figured out when I saw that Macintosh looked like “MacIntosh” (serif typeface in italics with capital I?). I read it about 5 times before I figured out what that was supposed to mean. I fought with it another half hour before calling my husband in a snit.

“Log on to blogger. Here, I’ll dictate.” So he was to publish my post which for some reason didn’t work right.

When I got home it was sitting there and I published again and I think it’s up. I don’t care whether it counts or not, my intention was there and I’m not doing this for a prize.

In other news, I have 303 posts in my reader. I hope there’s a bunch of stuff I can easily “mark as read” with minimal guilt.

The trip was fabulous but super busy. My one chunk of non-scheduled time was used up on the wireless problem.

Many more photos to come.

Idaho beautiful.

Co-worker piece of crap Dell laptop and hotel wireless not.

Home tomorrow night.

We don’t have a huge house and I am fine with that. It’s just two of us and we have plenty of room for what we need.

We have two linen closets. One is small and well suited for towels, washcloths and my small collection of holiday linens.

This is the bigger one with both lower and upper section. The lower section has the bed linens. The upper section has two shelves of Bob’s sweaters. We will not be discussing Bob’s sweater collection in this post.

A couple of weeks ago I cleaned out the entire cupboard and I convinced Bob that the bed stuff we had on the top shelf, that we’ve never touched since we moved into this house back in the Eisenhower administration (slight exaggeration), could probably go. When I told him we could donate it to the local women’s shelter, he reluctantly agreed.

Now I have this whole huge empty shelf to use for something else. But I haven’t put anything there, yet, because then I won’t have it anymore.

And I told both Bob and a friend this and they laughed at me. Mocking laughter.

I compared it to when I have some money set aside that I’m saving for something special. Then I can look around at everything I want and think, ooh, maybe I could get that. New shoes. Take a class. Buy software. I’m not one of those people who buys whatever I want anytime I want it and thus, am bad for our nation’s economy. I like to hang on to my fun money and study my options because, once I spend the money, the choice is gone. So I put it off as long as I can.

My friend said, “When you said that I thought, ‘I must be more hungover than I thought because what she’s saying makes no sense.'”

Me and my monklike appreciation for contemplation.

I’m off to Idaho for a couple days for work stuff. I do not travel with advanced technology and will have to depend on the generosity of others for my posts. Photos when I return.

There’s no better way to lose interest in writing a post than to mention the day before that you’re going to do it later. It happens every time. I’m not writing about delayed gratification today. I think there’s a joke in there somewhere but I’m still too brain dead to figure it out.

I got home from work yesterday at 5:30pm and found my absentee ballot for the tribal election. It’s post dated Tuesday 10-30. It’s due in the tribal office by 5pm on Monday. At least they have the candidate statements online. We mailed it at the post office last night anyway and I may or may not write the election committee and suggest this could be improved.

Historically, I always have one big energy weekend around this time. As if biologically I know this decent weather is it until July so better sweep out the garage or whatever. Today was going to be my lazy day and the lazy part was I didn’t get out of bed until I finished my book (#35)

Since then I’ve been doing housework and for some reason, I decided to clean out my spices. I need to put in a Penzey’s order because I desperately need cocoa for the hot cocoa ceremony. And if I’m going to put an order in, might as well stock up on taco seasoning and finally get that Spanish paprika because I am going to become the queen of all things paella this winter.

This week fried my brain. I can’t do anything that involves thinking. I think I’ll go rake some leaves in the sunshine until Bob gets home.

That’s a replica of the Voodoo Donut that hurt me on Wednesday. There was a leftover one and a couple people were coaxing me to try it. “I ate one yesterday,” I said, “And it was good, but for the rest of the day, I felt wrong.”

Yesterday we left the house at about 6:40a and pulled back in at 11pm. And I am about to leave for work today because I am the queen of delayed gratification which I have a story about that I will try to get to tomorrow.

I normally do a 4-day work week with Friday off. I would rather work extra during the week than come in on a Friday. But, I have a couple of major projects that need to be finished and I talked myself into it by thinking that next week I can take Thursday off and have a super long weekend.

Last night we went to Henry Rollins and he was fabulous. He’s funny and smart and crazy. I love Henry. His show is just him talking. No music. No props. All Henry. The show was scheduled to start at 8pm and I figured, how long can a guy talk? I thought I’d be in bed by 10:30p. I was wrong.

I was totally into the show but my butt started to hurt in the seat and my attention wandered a bit and it seemed like we were not even close to wrapping up. Finally I checked the time and it was 10:30! Bob was restless, too and I said, “Do you want to leave?” and he said he was still into it. So I put my purse on my lap and gathered my coat around me and he said, “Oh. Do you want to leave?”

And we were out of there. Bye, Henry. As we drove by it looked like people were in the lobby so I guess we just missed the very end.

Now we’re off for another day and we have Joe and Rosa’s annual Day of the Dead party tonight.

Yesterday various people brought treats to the office.

There were store bought cookies including some orange ones shaped like pumpkins that for some reason I had to try because what would an orange pumpkin-shaped cookie taste like? It’s been decades since I ate crayon, but that’s the flavor that came to mind. There were also cupcakes and Voodoo Doughnuts.

Since we got to this office (starts around Feb 23) I’ve made a point of not getting in the habit of eating the candy and other crap that’s always around so normally I wouldn’t have looked twice except there was a neon orange donut with Cap’n Crunch sprinkled on top. Who could resist that?

I only ate half, and it was fabulous, but it was my annual allowance of refined sugar in about 15 minutes and I felt like my heart was going to explode and I had to keep pushing my eyeballs back in my head. Also I started talking really fast and then I got a bit of a headache and I never really felt normal for the rest of the day. If I could do it over, I’d only eat one bite.

I still feel a tad off this morning and timing couldn’t be better because I have a marathon day. We’re leaving early so I can get to work earlier because I am desperate to get a couple time-sensitive projects finished so I don’t have to go in tomorrow. No randomizer for me today.

After work Bob is going to meet me downtown so we can check out a friend’s art show and then we have tickets to see Henry Rollins. Yay.

Lucky I have my nerd adrenaline to keep me going. Two huge stories: X-Files movie is on AND Joss Weadon is coming back to TV. (Although, I’m not a big Eliza Dushku fan.)