Are there any real people who work at eBay?

I don't think so. If there are, they are a bit dim. And how do you get to talk to a real person at eBay?

Okay, so I've already written about buying a bootleg Star Trek Voyager dvd from a seller I don't believe knew that it was bootleg. And I was going to give the seller neutral feedback, but after talking to a few people it was decided that positive feedback was okay, as long as I still said that item was not as described and probably bootleg.

Here's what I wrote:
probably BOOTLEG, probably NOT seller's fault, offered refund, early shipping

It's hard to write what I'm trying to say in the limited less than one hundred characters we are given to write feedback, but I think that I got it all in this time, and still managed to say something nice about seller and that it really was supposed to be positive feedback.

This is a message that I got from eBay yesterday, after I had already told the seller that I would keep the item, and after I'd already left positive feedback.


MC015 Security notice: eBay listing removed
From: eBay
Sent: Jul-04-11 01:56 PM



eBay sent this message to (buyer).
Your registered name is included to show this message originated from eBay. Learn more.
MC015 Security notice: eBay listing removed




Hello buyer,

We're writing to let you know that this listing for an item you won or bid on is no longer available:

150621737804 - STAR TREK VOYAGER COMPLETE DVD SEASONS 1-7 NEW

We understand this may be disappointing, but occasionally we need to remove listings. In some cases, the item itself is fine, but was listed in a way that didn't follow eBay's guidelines.

Here's what you can do next:

-- If you already paid, received your item, and you're satisfied, please disregard this notice.
-- If you won the item but haven't paid, don't pay. Since eBay removed the listing, you're no longer obligated to go through with the transaction.
-- If you already paid for this item through eBay, and it's past the estimated delivery time, you can open a case in our Resolution Center. Click the link below, and select the "I haven't received it yet" option. This will guide you through the process of opening a case.
http://resolutioncenter.ebay.com

If the seller offers you the item outside of eBay, we strongly discourage you from accepting the offer. These types of transactions are extremely risky and aren't covered by eBay buyer protection programs.

If you didn't pay through eBay or PayPal, and:
-- You paid by Western Union or MoneyGram, contact the company directly (Western Union 800-325-6000 or MoneyGram 800- 926-9400).
-- You paid by check, contact your bank to stop payment.

Thanks,

eBay


To learn more about eBay Buyer Protection, please visit:
http://pages.ebay.com/help/policies/buyer-protection.html



I can only guess that I set some automated thing in motion when I checked a box that said counterfeit item, or whatever it was. But shouldn't there be some real person somewhere reading the feedback before sending out this stuff?

Wonder if I should write seller an apology?

Wasting my time for mom

My mother called last Saturday and asked for a favor. I don't mind doing my mom a favor. I just don't see that I should have to waste the whole day to do it.

My day went something like this:

I get out of bed and do the usual stuff while I wait for my husband to get out of bed. This doesn't take as long as usual, because on Saturday he has to work earlier than most other days. So I read the "news" on Yahoo while he takes a shower. I don't have a bath right then, there isn't time, but that's okay, cause I had a bath just before going to bed the night before. I brush my teeth and get dressed.

He is soon dressed and such, and we go get a McSomething for breakfast. We then come back home, make sure that he has everything he needs for the day, pack his lunch, etc.... He leaves at about 8.

I water the plants and look at a few things on eBay. At almost 9 I still haven't had a bath. I figure that I should get a few more things done outside before I do that. I'm still trying to remove two trees from the backyard, and I've cut down a large bush in the front yard, so I have this almost daily chore of cutting branches down into smaller pieces and tying them up for removal. There's not much point in taking a bath before I get this done, as I would just need another bath after.

I'm thinking that before I do any really hard work (and getting really sweaty and really needing that bath) I should go to Home Depot. In my head I start organizing my day. I'll go to Home Depot first, while I'm still clean, and buy string and check for clearance paint and lumber in the scrap pile. If I find lumber, that will be a lot of work, work results in sweat, things that result in sweat should be done before taking a bath. So Home Depot first. Then the rest of the outdoor work. Then the bath. Then lunch. Then indoor work that will probably not result in sweat. Then at some point I'll probably go to my brother's place. Then after all of that I might need another bath before bed, just because it's June and it's Texas and it's hot, even if you don't do that much stuff that usually results in sweat.

So at just about 9 I have a mental schedule of my day in my head, and I'm getting my keys out so I can go, and just before I leave the phone rings.

My mother doesn't feel well. She hasn't felt well all week and should probably have gone to the doctor earlier. But she didn't do that, she waits till Saturday to decide she needs a doctor, and she can't see her regular doctor on Saturday so she'll have to go to the minor emergency clinic type place.

Seeing someone other than her regular doctor probably isn't going to do much good, but she has decided that she really needs to go, and she has insurance that will pay, so she's going. She wants me to drive her to the clinic.

The clinic is right next to the Home Depot. Not only do I not mind doing my mother a favor, this happens to be where I'm going anyway. And I now feel better about the plan to go there, as earlier I'd wondered if it was a waste of gas just to go looking for clearance stuff. I could probably get the string someplace else.

My mother doesn't want to leave right away. She wants to take a bath first.

My mother is one of those people who always takes a bath first, even before going to the doctor. The is because a.) having a bath almost always feels good, and b.) my mother is one of those people who thinks that when you feel bad you should get up anyway and do all the stuff that you would have done if you felt good, and maybe while you're doing that you'll sort of forget that you feel bad. So maybe having a bath would really make her feel better, and maybe she'd stop feeling bad and not even need to go to the clinic.

But I'm thinking that she's sick and that she really does mean she's just going to take a bath first. I know that on a normal day (when she is not sick and asking for something other than a ride to the doctor) that the delay is going to be two or even three hours, and that I should say no, or that I should agree to whatever she's asking only if we have a set time later in the day and I can get my work done first. Usually, if she wants to do something at 9 she won't really want to go anywhere til 11 or 12. But I'm thinking that she's sick and that she's not going to be putting on makeup and doing her hair and such, or whatever it is that she does for those two or three hours. I'm thinking that she's literally going to take a bath and brush her teeth and get dressed and comb her hair, and that she'll be calling me back at about 9:30.

So I agree. My mother is sick, and I'll do her a favor, but it is early in the day and I'll probably still have time to do some of the stuff I'd planned to do before lunch.

I don't take a bath myself. All of the earlier reasoning and plans still apply, I'm just delaying for half and hour or so. And I don't even know if it's going to take that long. She's sick, she might be in a hurry, and she might call back very soon.

I watch TV for about half an hour.

I remember that there's stuff in the car that can't be in the car if I'm to have a passenger. The bag of clothes that I keep intending to drop off at Goodwill is still in the front seat. The stuff I bought at the garage sale two weeks ago is still in the back seat. Other stuff is in the floor. I've totally forgotten about it. I never have passengers. I just don't think about it anymore.

I run outside and look at the mess. A lot of it is junk that I don't really know what to do with. Some it is actual trash that needs to be thrown away. But I don't have time to sort it out. My mom needs me, and she'll be calling soon. I get a container, shovel everything in that I can, dump everything on the living room floor, and take the container back to the car and shovel in more stuff.

I find some glasses of the prescription before this one. I had wondered where those were. And here they were in a hard case in the front seat of my car, most days inches away from me, unseen. But I don't have time to do anything other than notice what they were and shovel them into the container. Then I take the container into the house and put it on the living room floor.

Okay, that was work. Not a lot of work, but it was starting to get warm outside. So the result of working outside when it is warm is--sweat. I don't like it. It isn't much sweat, but I don't like it. I haven't planned to have a bath this early, but now I want one. I decide that I can't have one, there isn't time. I have a Coke and watch more TV. The sweat dries up and probably isn't noticed by anyone but me. I don't think that I smell bad or anything. I remember to check the answering machine just in case my mom called in those few minutes that I was outside making sweat. Nothing. I go back to watching TV.

Sometime later I notice that it is about 11. I am sort of halfway mad at my mom and halfway wondering if her guts exploded and she's bleeding to death on the bathroom floor. Maybe I should call her.

But, she does finally call me. She is ready. She wanted to call and make sure I was still at home before she called the clinic.

Okay.

She calls back. There's about a two hour wait at the clinic. But, she has heard that before, and she knows that she can "sign in" online, and that she can wait at home for the clinic to call just before it is her turn.

Okay, so I've just wasted two hours of my day because I thought she was really sick and needed to go to the clinic. But she wasn't that sick or she would have wanted to go at 9 or 9:30. And now I find out that she can do something online to reduce the time in the waiting room, but she didn't think that it was important enough to do that earlier, so there's probably going to be another two hours of waiting.

I don't ask her why she didn't do this online thing as soon as she got out of the tub, but that is what I'm wondering.

She says that she'll call back.

I still haven't had that bath. I still haven't done any work, other than getting all that stuff out of my car. And I can't either do my outside work or have a bath, because she thinks that it might be a while before she calls, but she doesn't really know that for sure. And I really don't want to start anything else that I would have to stop in the middle and/or put things away if she called.

I'm thinking that I should eat something. In my earlier mental schedule of the day, I either got things done well before lunch, or if I had taken mom to the clinic when I imagined she might have got done right about lunch time and we might have had lunch together. But now if I have lunch with mom it will be after noon, or even after 1, or even later than that. So I have some soup, and that way I won't starve, but I can still have lunch later with mom if she wants to do that.

While I'm heating up the soup she calls back, and says that she feels better. She still wants to go to the clinic, but she thinks that she feels up to driving by herself. She suggested that I go on and do whatever it was that I was going to do, and then if I get done in time I can drive her after, but if I don't get done in time she'll go by herself.

No, either I am driving her or I'm not. I'm not going to drive to Home Depot, buy stuff, take it home, pick up my mother, drive back to the Home Depot, and then wait for a hour or so. If she isn't sure she can drive, I will just wait some more.

She's sure. I go and eat my soup.

Before I finish my soup, she has changed her mind and calls back to ask if I can still drive her to the clinic. Since I haven't left yet, that's okay.

I go back to watching TV. I can't see getting anything useful done while I'm waiting for her to call. And I still haven't had a bath, cause I don't know for sure when she's going to need me. It will probably be still another hour, but it might not be.

She calls back and asks if I could come to her house and wait with her. Sure.

It is about 1 when I get to her house. The clinic calls not long after that. I drive my mom to the clinic. I know where I'm going, but she complains that I'm taking the wrong street. I'm driving. This is the street I'm driving on. This is the way I drive to Home Depot. The clinic is right next to the Home Depot. They have the same parking lot and everything.

Mother is still explaining how her way is faster when we get to the clinic. I am distracted a bit. Someone else doesn't stop at the four-way stop sign. He didn't hit us. Clearly his fault if he did, but I rather not be hit just the same. And I'd rather not have someone in the passenger seat talking about directions, especially to a place we're already at.

My mom gets out of the car, and I drive a bit closer to Home Depot before parking.

I decide against the scrap lumber and the clearance paint. I wonder if there had been more stuff available at 9.

I wander around the store looking at odd things I have no intention of buying anytime soon. I just need to kill some time while the doctor is talking to mom.

I think an hour passed. That's long enough I think. I head to the clinic.

Mom isn't anywhere I can see. I sit down. Someone puts in The Blind Side dvd. After a while mom calls my cell phone. She's waiting on an X-ray or something. I watch about half of the movie while I wait.

At about 3 my mom is done with her doctor visit. I think that it was a waste of time. She has a stack of papers of tests she should have in the future and such. I don't think that they did anything to make her feel better that day, except to tell her to take some over the counter meds that she already had at home. She does get sick like this a lot. Probably these suggested tests are things that have been done in the past. They probably aren't going to learn anything this time that they didn't already know from last time.

Whatever.

But now that's she's seen a doctor, and they did not rush her to the hospital to have some test that's supposed to be done on an empty stomach, and they told her it was okay to eat something if she felt like it, I thought we'd be either rushing to someplace for lunch or at least rushing to the grocery store. But she doesn't seem in a hurry to do either. There were coupons at the clinic for Chick-fil-A, cause there is one in the same shopping center, so she decides to go there.

After we order our food she remembers that she should take some tablet before eating, and she can't find any in her purse. They sell them at Target, also in the shopping center, and if she'd thought of it she could have bought some earlier. It isn't that far, and I volunteer to go get some.

So I walk to Target and buy her some pills. When I get back she's going on about how she didn't think that I meant to walk. But it isn't that far, and it's less trouble than moving the car again.

So she thanks me and pays for my lunch and I take her home. It is nearly 4 now. There's no point in doing anything before going to my brother's place. Except when I got home I did finally have a bath.

I said something like she couldn't have really been that sick if she felt like waiting two hours to do her hair. She disagreed. Or, she should have at least signed in online before she did her hair. Again, she disagreed.

She just doesn't seem to get it.

When I got home I found that I had dropped the missing glasses and they were on the side of the street. I had run over them. The case is ruined, but it seems like the glasses themselves might be fixed. I think that they just need some adjusting.

The Wicked Witch is dead

Okay, not really. Nobody died. I'm just happy that the election is over, and S didn't win. Not even close.

I ended up voting for A, R, and M. The winners were A, R, and J. J got 69 votes. M only got 26. D, who didn't send me a flyer (or anyone else that I spoke to) got just 7 votes. I can't remember what the others got, but S got less than 50, and I think the other two got about as many. I should check on that later. Of the people who voted, 85 chose A, and 88 wanted R.

I was worried about choosing between J and M. It was hard, and I was afraid that the votes split between them would allow S to remain. J ran last year, and it seems like he got more votes last year when he didn't win, but I guess more people in general voted last year.

M can run again next year, if he wants to. I was surprised that of all the people who didn't win last year, only T and J ran again this year.

Of course, the person I most want gone runs again next year. Or, at least, next year is when his term is up, and I assume that he will run again.

There's a story going around that S was not a good loser, and almost had to be carried away from the voting area. I was in the general area, and I would have thought if there was anything interesting like that going on that I would have heard it a couple of doors down, but I did not. So I don't know if it's true. But it wasn't even close, and a recount wasn't going to help, so I don't know what it was that she supposedly hung around to complain about.

Next year should be interesting.

Confusion and Disappointment

Before anybody gets really excited, this post is mainly about eBay purchases, and mainly purchases of plants.

And to answer an earlier question, the seller in Michigan was not the Michigan Bulb Company. This was someone on eBay, I'm guessing that they only or mainly sell from eBay. They have high positive marks, and have been in business for a while, though I've learned this doesn't always mean what it seems, as sellers can buy their high positive marks and such from someone else.

I don't know why that was such a surprise to me. People can buy and sell eBay businesses. Just as people buy and sell regular businesses.

Anyway, I have no reason to suspect that the business has been sold, and that I didn't buy my plants from the same person who actually received the high marks, just that it is possible.

Okay, so I ordered two Stella cherry trees, a 5-in-1 pear tree, and a 5-in-1 apple tree. I have always wanted a 5-in-1 pear tree, and when I saw one on eBay that no one else was bidding on, I bought it, maybe without really thinking it through. Having bought that tree, I thought I'd take advantage of the discounted postage and also buy the cherry trees (at the time I noticed them no one else was bidding, but I ended up paying five dollars), and then I noticed the 5-in-1 apple tree (people were bidding on them, so it took three tries and about twenty dollars for that). So instead of the one tree for ten dollars plus about twelve dollar postage, I bought four trees for about thirty-five dollars and another sixteen in postage.

Now, I have bought plants online before, mostly recent purchases from eBay, and they arrive in different conditions, mostly I think depending on the type of plant more than care given by the seller. I have had great success with daylilies from three different sellers, but I've had trouble with about half of the other plants I bought this year, mostly from the same people who sold me the daylilies. So I think that it's just that daylilies and other bulbs don't mind the shipping process and other non-bulb type flowers and such aren't too happy about it.

So I think that bare-root trees are one of the things that don't mind being sent through the mail, if it is the right time of year. But May and June probably aren't the right time of year, at least it doesn't sound like a good idea to ship something from here, as we should all be done with most of our planting here and a lot of the plants left in the stores are on clearance. But the seller was from Michigan, and I know that things start growing a lot later in the season there. So the seller claimed that the trees were sent still dormant, and I thought that it might be true, and if so it was probably okay for them to keep sending plants.

I also know that dormant bare root trees pretty much look like dead sticks. This has always been a bit of a problem for me. How do you know if you've bought a healthy plant or a dead stick, if they all equally look like dead sticks? For example, asparagus really looks dead right out of the package, but if you buy it at the right time it rarely is. Usually you follow the directions and plant them at the right time, and they emerge, though this is weeks or even months later. However, this year I bought two packages, maybe a bit too late (though not late enough that they were on clearance), and one package was fine and more than half of the other package was dead. I have no idea if they were dead when I bought them or if I did something wrong when planting or what. They all looked the same.

So the description says that what I will get in the mail will be dormant, and that it will look like a stick, but not to worry because it will sprout leaves after planting and will probably have fruit in two or three years. So I have a picture in my mind that I will be getting four sticks in the mail, and that maybe they will have some greenish buds on them, or that they might really look dead, or that they might have leaves already and that would probably be bad. And I thought that two of the sticks would be five-pronged at the top, because they were supposed to be grafted with five different varieties.

Well, I got a mixed bag (or rather the products in the box were mixed), and nothing was quite what I expected. They came Thursday afternoon, a day later than the predicted "between May 25 and June 1." Not sure why those dates were predicted, since I bought the items on May 17th, but they weren't sent out till May 28th. Obviously the package cannot be delivered on the 25th if it isn't sent out before then.

I was expecting the trees to be one or two feet long, which they were. I just didn't expect them to be so thin. The apple is the thickest, and almost what I expected, but not quite. The pear is much thinner than I expected, and the cherries are just little twigs.

However, the cherry twigs did arrive mostly dormant, and now that I've put them in pots one of them is starting to show signs of life. Or maybe it is just my imagination.

The apple tree has leaves coming out of the top of the tree in three places. Not five places like I would think. I suppose other leaves could appear later, as there are bumps lower where there could be growth, but I wouldn't think so, not if all five varieties are supposed to bloom together to cross-pollinate. I'm wondering if I got a 3-in-1 tree by mistake, but I didn't see any of those advertised.

The pear tree is just the opposite. Unfortunately, it has leaves growing almost the entire length of the tree, in about thirteen places. Not at all the five-pronged stick I was expecting. I suppose each variety could have been tiny little grafts two or three places each, but my first thought is that I got a single variety by mistake. If so I've paid way too much, and I don't even know what variety it is. And of course the leaves are dying, though I don't think the whole thing is dying, maybe just the leaves.

I've got all four in small pots in the living room, thinking that it is too hot for the poor trees to go outside after their traumatic trip.

Well, I don't quite know what to do. First, I think that I've spent my money unwisely. With shipping and everything, I spent less than fifty-five dollars, but I'm thinking I could have done better with it. I might have found something around here on clearance. Or, I might have saved the money til next year and ordered trees in March or something. I am worried that the pear tree was a bad idea. Half of the varieties are good for this area, but the other half will probably get blight. I don't know if the blight will just kill half of the pears or kill the whole tree. And that's if I actually have a 5-in-1 pear tree and not just a mystery one variety tree. The cherry trees are just tiny twigs, and I might have been better off buying one larger tree. And I didn't really need an apple tree, I hadn't originally planned on it, but it just suddenly seemed like a good idea after buying the other stuff and qualifying for the discounted shipping.

So I might just be having some regular buyer's remorse, and not really have a reason to complain. I don't want to complain. I don't want to give someone bad marks if they don't actually deserve bad marks. But I was supposed to get dormant 5-in-1 trees, and they were not dormant, and it now occurs to me that it will be years before I have any idea if they are actually 5-in-1 trees.

Anyway, I haven't yet contacted the seller, and I haven't yet left feedback.

In other news about eBay, I lucked into some dvds, and I'm now looking into buying more. No one was bidding on Surface, which wasn't my favorite show, but no one bidding and the starting bid was two dollars and the shipping was a reasonable three dollars. No one bid against me, so I paid a total of five dollars. After that, I decided to look at other dvds. While looking for Invasion of the Body Snatchers, I found Invasion the series (again not my favorite show, but a good deal) and the same seller had Invasion: Earth, which I did really like when I saw it the first time and I wouldn't mind seeing it again. The dvds were Buy Now under four dollars each, reasonable shipping, with discounts for multiple purchases. So I bought both for just under twelve dollars.

All three are coming media mail, which means that I might have to wait a while, but I noticed that both sellers sent the packages the next day, and there are tracking numbers. I am now worried that Surface is lost. Yesterday it said out for delivery, which could not have been possible, from Missouri. Today is says status not updated. I'm wondering if this is just what happens with media mail, or if maybe the shipping label was lost. If my address is lost and the seller's address is still readable, they should just send the package back to the seller to try again, and it should all be okay. If both addresses are missing, I don't know what happens. Should I try to contact the post office in Missouri, or should I ask the seller to do that, or is just hopeless? I have bought from this seller before, and I'm sure they would do something, but I think they'd just do the easy thing and refund some of my money, if not all. But I don't want the five dollars back (and I certainly don't want just the two dollars back), I want the dvds.

Anyway, is it stupid to think about doing anything so soon?

My other dvds are now being sorting in Greensboro and are probably fine.

Today is the day of our little election. We had some discussions about absentee voting, and we were told that we could not do that. There's an exception for the disabled, sort of, but the disabled still have to be in their homes at the time of the election. I'm told that we cannot have absentee voting because of a by-law that says you cannot vote by proxy or by email, though in some cases if the member is out of town a spouse can vote for him or her if the election officers are told in advance.

I am thinking that does not totally cancel out the possibility of absentee voting, and if arrangements are being made for the disabled a similar arrangement cold be made for other people who are going to be out of town. For the disabled person(s), a form is taken to the home and filled out, and the ballot is placed in a sealed envelope and taken by an office employee to the election officer and put in the ballot box. So it isn't a proxy, and it wasn't by US mail, and technically the disabled person wasn't absent on the day of the election, just unable to leave the home.

I would think that the same sort of thing could be done for people going out of town. Prior to the election, they could go to the office, vote, place the ballot in a sealed envelope, put the envelope in the locked ballot box, and put the ballot box in the safe. And that would not be a proxy or a ballot delivered by mail, and we could have absentee voting without changing the by-laws.

But no one listens to me now, and I doubt that my health is up to being on the board on top of dealing with my personal situation. Besides which, I never know when I might get the chance to go out of town, and would not like to take into account meetings and other board obligations when I go on trips.

I have received flyers from all nominees except D, one strange letter of general complaints about board members and nominees and pizza and too many kids at our one meeting which kids are invited to, and one additional flyer begging people to go out and vote (though the author neglected to mention if he or/she was for any particular nominees). Off the top of my head, I'm saying yes to A, will probably vote for R, and my third vote will probably go to that other guy's son, cause he did later come around and campaign for himself. My brother suggested the third vote go to the other R, who did later send out a small flyer (and with very small print to keep costs down, but at least it was sent out), because he was the least liked person mentioned in the complaint letter, and we don't agree with much said in the complaint letter.

We had a similar complaint letter last year, but we are not sure it was the same author (both were anonymous), because most of the complaints were about different people (unless maybe the author has switched sides?).

So voting for A, probably R, probably the other guy's son, or maybe J. Not D because he didn't send a flyer and I don't know him. Definitely not S, cause she needs to mind her own business. And definitely not T. Even if I liked T, it would probably be a wasted vote. She is odd, and I doubt she will get enough votes to be a serious threat to anyone else.

Really, I wish I could just somehow vote against S three times without having to think too hard about who to vote for.

Next year we get to vote again M.

More problems, not just the plants

I am still waiting on that package of live plants. It is an eBay purchase. When I started bidding on them several weeks ago, it seemed like a good idea. It is really too late in the season to plant such things around here, but the seller is from Michigan, and there the trees I ordered were supposedly still dormant, so I thought that would be okay. And at the time we were having unusually cool weather here too. It sounded like a good idea at the time.

The package was supposed to arrive between the twenty-fifth of last month and the first of this month. They all say stuff like that, but my experience before this has been really good, and the sellers usually either send the stuff the next day after payment, or at the latest maybe Monday of the following week.

Anyway, the first has now past, and I don't have my package. It was supposedly sent on the twenty-eighth. Well, there's a tracking number for the twenty-eighth, but there's no info after the tracking number. It doesn't even say that the package has been picked up yet, much less that it's been moving through the system anywhere.

Anyway, I'm about to miss another short trip, and this one I would have liked to go. I usually go to this place. Not that we do anything really special anymore, but I like the motel where we stay, and we sit in the hot tub and such. And I would have left this morning and got back Sunday. Four days is a bit long to leave the plants already in the ground, but I might have given everything a good soak and tried it anyway. At this point I'm not having trouble with anything already in the ground, just worrying about plants still in transit.

There's another reason that I won't be going out of town this weekend.

It is that time of year again for electing our board of directors. Eight people are running for three seats. The election is Saturday, and Saturday only. We used to have nearly a week to vote, but now it's just the one day. And yesterday I learned that there is no absentee voting.

I suspected as much, but I went and asked for an absentee ballot yesterday. Just in case the package came last night or early this morning, I wanted to be ready to go. No luck either way.

Anyway, I have three votes, and I'm not quite sure who they should go to.

The term is for three years, so my buddy B who was elected last year is not running this year, he's still on the board for another two years. Also, I am starting to wonder if that wasn't a mistake voting for him last time anyway. He is maybe getting too friendly with the dreadful M, and S, and I'm not liking S much now either. S is threatening people who don't paint their sheds white. There's no rule that they should paint their sheds a particular color, just that the sheds be painted and kept up. There is, however, a rule that sheds only be made of wood or metal, and that the size of the shed be limited. I haven't gone to look, but I hear that S has a shed that is too large. So S with her over-sized shed is threatening people who have sheds she doesn't like or that according to her are not the right color.

S is running for re-election. Not that she was ever elected to start with, she was appointed after someone else had to quit. Anyway, S has got to go. I don't quite know who to vote for, just that I don't want S to win.

A is running this year. A is already on the board, and my brother likes him, so I'll vote for him. A has sent out flyers and such. I rarely vote for anyone who does not send out flyers. If they don't care enough to send out a flyer, why should I think that they care enough to show up for meetings or do anything else they are supposed to do as board members.

Other than A, R has also sent me a flyer and gone around shaking hands and such last weekend. So probably R will get my vote.

It is the third vote that I still don't know about.

It might go to J. I think that J has been on the board before. He ran last year, but did not win. Last year he sent out flyers, but I have not received one this year.

Also, someone's son is running for the board this year. I don't know him. Everyone knows his dad, but I don't know him. He hasn't sent me a flyer, yet. I can't vote for someone just because everyone knows his dad. He has to get out and do the work himself, send out flyers and such.

S has sent out flyers, but again I'm not voting for her.

The only other person who has sent me a flyer was T. I am not voting for T. When she moved in across the street, I heard that she went door to door introducing herself as a bitch. Well, we will take her at her word and not vote for her. There is more to that story, but it is too long to get into right now. Just without a damned good reason I'll not be voting for T.

Okay, so that's yes for A, probably for R, and maybes for J and the other guy's son, and no for S and T. That leaves another R and D who I don't know, haven't heard anything about, and haven't sent me a flyer.

I guess that they've got two more days to get my vote.

Anyway, a bit sad that I won't be going anywhere this weekend, but it's probably for the best.

Update on the All-Con Situation

Okay, after months of asking about one-day tickets and being ignored, and then being told that there will be no one-day tickets, and then even some people were told that they were being a problem for only coming to All-Con on the one day and having the bizarre thought that they should only pay for the one day that they attend the convention, All-Con will now be selling Sunday only tickets for $15.

You still can't buy a one-day ticket for Friday or Saturday, when the stuff that most of us want to see is going on.

What the frak???

So I don't know if at the last minute they've figured out that they screwed up and just can't do anything about it because they didn't have any one-day tickets made up and so the only thing that they can do is sell left over badges on Sunday, or if they don't think that they screwed up but they might as well try to make a few extra bucks on Sunday.

The person who told me about the Sunday tickets is really, frakking mad.

Still not going. If somehow there had been a Saturday only ticket, I'd have gone. If somehow there had been a Friday only ticket, maybe. Okay, Friday is tomorrow, and I have stuff to do, and this is short notice, so probably not. But at least there's stuff that I want to do on Friday, so I would have had to seriously think about it, even if I ended up decided against it.

Anyway, if you're out there and you're not totally mad like my friend, and Sunday is the day that you really wanted to go anyway, now you can go for $15. Just thought I'd pass that on.

Don't go to All-Con this weekend

Unless, you have already bought the $40+ ticket, or you were planning to buy the three-day ticket, or you don't mind paying the $40+ for just one or two days. Apparently, this year you can't buy a one-day ticket.

Attempts to find out about one-day ticket prices were at first ignored. Some people persisted, and were finally told that there would be no one-day tickets, and that if you just wanted to come for the one day you would still have to pay $40+ for the whole weekend.

The last people to inquire about one-day tickets reminded All-Con that some of the people wanting one-day tickets could only get one day off from work or other responsibilities, and if one-day tickets were not offered people would stay home rather than purchase $40+ tickets, an amount unfair and charging for events that they mostly would not be attending.

These people were told that "the higher demand put upon us by the people who support us the least (one day)that was the basis for the decision to do away with the discounted tickets."

I'm not sure how to interpret that.

For one thing, I've never thought of the one-day ticket as a discount. You go for one day, you pay for one day, and that's fair enough. That isn't a discount. You go for three days, and if you pay for a weekend pass ahead of time, the three-day pass is usually less than the prices of the individual three days added together. So buying the three-day pass is the discount. Like, maybe a Friday ticket is $10, a Saturday ticket is $20, and a Sunday ticket is $20, but a weekend pass is $40, making either Friday free after paying for Saturday and Sunday, or Sunday half-price after paying for Friday and Saturday.

I'm not sure about this "higher demand" part either. If it's just that they sell more one-day tickets, maybe they should be nicer to people buying one-day tickets instead of acting like they are some sort of burden. If a bunch of people were buying $20 tickets, and you do away with the $20 tickets, that's a lot of twenty dollar bills that will be spent somewhere else. And I can't quite picture what extra work the one-day customer is causing for the convention, unless maybe the customer actually had a good time and decided to come back the next day and pay for another ticket, and the cashier had to do the same job twice for that customer instead of just once for the customer buying a three-day pass.

If read another way, it just sounds like the one-day customer is just somehow more trouble to have at the convention. Like, people who just come for one day to get an autograph and buy a couple of things somehow make trouble for the convention and require more security than the people who stay out partying and such for three days.

Anyway, not much of it makes any sense. Several of us have just decided not to go. A few people are going cause they already bought tickets, but probably wouldn't have bought tickets if they had realized their friends were going to be treated like this. And then of course they will not get good word of mouth advertising, cause people this year either won't go or will go and get really mad cause either they were overcharged or they didn't get to meet with friends who had planned to buy one-day tickets. Bad experience this year means less people next year.

It's sad. I only went the one year, for the one day. I thought it was a good convention, and I missed some things that I would have liked on Friday, and I wished that I'd bought the three day ticket instead. I was planning to go the next year, but life happened, and I didn't go the next year, and so forth. I could have gone this year, probably just Saturday, but I currently have a limit of about $20 for such things, and so I am not going, and my $20 will be spent at another convention later that doesn't sound as interesting.

If All-Con hadn't made this stupid decision, they might have sold some one-day tickets to people who liked the convention enough to make plans to come back. But people who make stupid decisions are usually quite attached to them and usually keep them. So I don't expect that our complaints will do any good.

Next year, when the club is voting to move things around to accommodate All-Con, I'll vote that we not move anything, and that we might not want to bother with it at all.

Stressed out

A while back I went to Planned Parenthood to do the usual embarrassing stuff I have to do once a year. I don't like it, but this year I tried to get it over with as soon as possible. Usually, I pay about a hundred dollars, and I get a pelvic exam, some lab work done to look for cancer and such, a prescription for birth control pills, and a packet of pills, and then maybe make another appointment for a mammogram. Then I go home with my pills and hope that the phone call telling me I have cancer doesn't come.

I have to go back every month or so to pick up more pills. I shouldn't have to go every month, but that is the way it has been for a while, as I do not seem to have enough money in my pocket to pay for more than one packet at a time. It's not so bad. While I'm in the general area I watch a movie and do some shopping or go to the library.

Anyway, this year I got the exam, but I was told that no lab work would be done, cause there was nothing wrong with me last year so there was probably nothing wrong with me this year either. That doesn't seem very scientific. There could be something going on this year that didn't happen last year, or the year before, or didn't get caught the year before, or whatever. Safe last year does not mean safe this year or next year.

I didn't argue. I came to get pills. Trying to talk sense to medical people leads to arguments, and an argument would lead to high blood pressure, and high blood pressure would mean having to wait for my pills, or maybe getting no pills at all.

I'm not sure what the pelvic exam was for, if not to collect samples to send to the lab. It seems like a pointless exercise, sometimes an embarrassing and painful exercise. It would be like going to get a blood sample taken, and going through having a needle stuck in your arm only not having a tube to collect the blood. But medical people seem very fond of giving pelvic exams, any time anything might be wrong with a woman. I don't know what they are looking for. My appendix is not in there. My tonsils are not in there. If I have food poisoning, it is not in there.

So far the dentist has not suggested a pelvic exam. I'm pretty sure we all know that my teeth are not in there.

So, I had the pointless exam, no samples taken for the lab, and did not ask for any blood to be drawn or a pregnancy test or anything else that might be done there. I did get a warning that my blood pressure needed to be good or I wouldn't get anymore pills. My blood pressure was a little high that day. People who work at this place don't seem to grasp that it has something to do with being there for an exam, and that blood pressure goes up if the patient is upset, and telling her that she might not get her pills might upset her. And this has come up before, and I have told them that this is the wrong thing to do, and that if they leave me alone it will go back down. I have something called "white coat syndrome" and I've had it for at least five years and I've told everyone about it. Still, they hover around and make it worse.

For some reason, the bill for the exam was almost a hundred dollars. I can't see why. It is usually just about that, with the lab work and a packet of pills. This was the same amount of money for no lab work and no pills. I didn't have another thirty dollars, so I left without my pills.

A bit later my husband and I went to run some errands before going out of town. We went to the library and some other places, and then my husband turned the car to go home, forgetting the most important thing. I still needed my pills. I didn't have thirty dollars, so he would have to go to the bank. He didn't want to do that, and he talked me into waiting til after the trip. We were only going to be gone a week, so that shouldn't be a problem, just that it worried me a bit.

Anyway, we stayed longer than that one week, and I worried that we wouldn't get back in time to get my pills. That, and the long drives, and the caffeine and some other things probably weren't good for my health. So when I went to get my pills I felt a bit nervous. I didn't feel bad physically, I just worried that the blood pressure would be a little high and that I would be stuck there a bit while I waited for it to go done. And then when I got there the woman who went to get my pills was gone a long time, and I worried about the delay.

By the time someone took my blood pressure it was 170 over something. They would not give me my pills. That upset me. So they took it again. I was so upset that it jumped to 190 over something. They still wouldn't give me my pills. Now they want me to go to the emergency room.

I have not spent a lot of time in emergency rooms, but I know that they don't do anything good for my blood pressure.

I can't believe that the nurse didn't just come out and apologize and give me my pills. If someone really thought that I was in danger, surely they would have done something to calm me down instead of suggesting I drive someplace.

That really made me feel bad. I told them I wasn't going to the hospital, that I was going to the movies instead. I had to do something to feel better, and I usually go to the movies anyway. Playing with a dog would have been better, or maybe a cat, but neither was available. I didn't feel much better after the first movie, but some was better than nothing, so I stayed for a second movie. I can't say that I felt good even then, just not as bad. So I thought that I would go somewhere else to see what my blood pressure was without the hovering people refusing to give me my pills.

Only the first place didn't have the machine, and the second place didn't have the machine, and the third place had the machine but when I tried it something seemed to be wrong with it. I tried it three more times and finally got it to work. By that time I felt even worse than before, and it was 185 over something. It was then too late to get pills anyway, so I gave up and went home. I'd probably feel better after some rest.

Looking online I found out that I'm not supposed to be using benedryl with the high blood pressure. So, I got some sleep, just not as much as I'd like. Still I felt so much better.

Until Planned Parenthood called, and apparently not to apologize and tell me my pills were ready. They just aren't going to part with those pills, even though that is why I'm getting the really bad high blood pressure. So I guess they just called to make themselves feel better, making me sick in the process.

After I calmed down some my blood pressure was measured at 163 over something. On a normal day, when there are not hovering people and idiots telling me that I can't have my pills, my blood pressure is 120 over 80. When I was on blood pressure medication a few years ago, it was 150 over something. I quit taking the stuff I gradually felt better, and a year later it was back to 120 over 80. So this is not something that I imagined. It is my body and I know what I'm talking about.

Funny that when you go to Planned Parenthood they totally buy that whole "it's my body" thing if you want to kill a baby, but if I want pills when I have high blood pressure it somehow isn't my choice to make.

Anyway, since my choice was taken away from me this month, I'm probably going to stay upset for a very long time, possibly get sick, etc.... And of course I don't have any birth control pills, so that's going to cause me a lot of other problems. People don't seem to understand that birth control pills are a medication that I need just like other people might need antibiotics or pain meds or anything else. People just think that you stop taking birth control pills and start using some other birth control method and that it's no big deal. It is a big deal. It's mood swings and physical pain and other problems, and for me it is also sometimes staying in the house and being afraid and depressed.

I'm going to have to get a new doctor. I'm going to have to go through this whole messy business with someone else, and I'm going to have to start from the beginning and say a lot of stuff that I don't like talking about, which probably will not help with the blood pressure. And I will have to pay for all this, after having already paid for Planned Parenthood to do this stuff, only I guess they think I just paid them a hundred dollars cause I wanted someone to look at my a**.

And then of course, there's no way of knowing if I will get a new doctor with half a brain, so I still might not get the pills, which means I will have to go through it all again.

Seems to me that I know a few bloggers who are in Mexico now. Maybe they could just buy some birth control pills for me.

It's called women's work cause men aren't bright enough to do it

I think that I've mentioned before about the difference between how most men cook and how most women cook. It isn't that men literally can't cook. They can cook most things that do not require mixing ingredients, like, they can fry bacon and sausage, etc.... And they often can do some big production thing like barbecue. And maybe they can fix about three things if they had to cook dinner once in a while.

This is different from the day to day cooking that most women learn to do. Women figure that they'll have to make breakfast, lunch, and dinner, day in and day out, often for themselves and for their men and for their children (who complain about everything put in front of them). No big production stuff here. Just figure out how to get everyone fed in a reasonable about of time. Most women probably know how to cook lots of different things, depending on the occasion and how much money they have and how much time it takes to prepare, etc....

It seems like my dad knew how to cook about three things. I forget what one of them was. The thing that he cooked most often was pancakes. Mom usually didn't have to cook on Saturday mornings, cause dad made pancakes. If ever mom wasn't there or mom didn't feel well, dad could make a few other things. I don't remember this ever happening, but if mom had been sick for more than two days and unable to cook dinner, I'm pretty sure that on the third night we would have had pancakes, probably with a side of bacon or sausage.

So it isn't that men can't cook. We've seen plenty of men cook things that are perfectly edible. We've even seen them cook things that we look forward to eating. It's just that most of the time they aren't motivated to do much of it. My husband can cook. My husband can open a cookbook and follow a recipe and cook something nice. Recently, my husband made fudge and divinity. And not just desserts, he can cook regular food too. It's the mundane kitchen stuff that causes him to drag his feet, like making Hamburger Helper, or even opening a can of soup to put in a bowl and microwave.

And of course before one does any cooking, one has to go to the store and buy groceries. If this isn't their regular thing, men can be pretty clueless. They don't know where things are, they don't know how much things are supposed to cost, etc.... But the really baffling thing is that when they can't figure out when/if you've run out of something and to go buy more of it. I don't drink coffee, I don't make coffee, and I usually don't put limes on everything I drink except coffee and so forth. My husband likes coffee, and he really likes limes, while I rarely touch either of those things. So I would think that he would know when we've run out of those things rather than me. Also, he seems to be under the impression that I buy groceries so that I can hide them from him. I'm like "I bought this for you, and when you get hungry, eat it" and then I put it in the frig and it rots because he never eats it cause he never looked for it.

Sorry, the frig didn't come with neon signs. You have to look around for stuff.

Anyway, we've both decided that we need to go on diets, though we are not doing the same diet for the same reason. His has something to do with getting rid of wheat and dairy. Mine will be about trying to eat smaller portions and lowering fat and calories, etc.... To get started with this, I've cleaned out the frig and we've thrown away a lot of stuff, and I'm trying to even divide the frig so that stuff he mostly uses is on one side and my stuff is on the other side.

I haven't paid much attention to his diet, I'm still trying to figure out what I want to do about mine. I bought a diet cookbook. I didn't really need another cookbook, and I even didn't really need another diet cookbook. But, briefly, I had it in my head that I was going to follow the six-week plan in the front of the book. The plan has a daily calorie intake of between 1300 and 1400 calories, plus there are a lot of veggies and some fruits that you can have extra of and not count. I'm guessing that the six-week plan would take you through most or maybe all of the recipes in the book and that after that you would pick your favorites and keep eating those. Or, maybe, someone went through and decided that this six-week plan would have a near perfect mix of everything. But I'm not going to follow the plan, cause I found a couple of problems with it.

Well, the calories aren't the problem. I'm thinking if I could get down to 1200 that would be better, but this stuff is not that far off. If I'm going to go on a diet, I think that it needs three servings of dairy a day, and that at least one of those servings has to be yogurt. I see that the plan has one or two dairy a day, and maybe if I really looked and added everything up it would be three a day, but rarely is one of the three yogurt. So, I would either have to take out one of the dairy to replace it with yogurt or else I would have to add a yogurt which would add around a hundred calories a day.

The other problem is the shopping. I'll give you an easy example that is not in the book or in my planned diet or his. Let's say that on day one of the plan you are supposed to eat half a grapefruit and a piece of toast. Breakfast on day two is different, and day three is different again, etc.... By the time you're supposed to eat another half of a grapefruit, the one you had has gone bad and you've tossed it out. And what about that piece of toast? You have to buy a whole loaf of bread to make that one piece of toast, and even if you had a piece of toast everyday for breakfast that would only add up to seven pieces of bread by the end of the week, and then the rest of the loaf is moldy and you have to throw it out. And I have tried freezing bread, and it usually doesn't work very well. So, if I did this, for day one and meal one, I would have bought a grapefruit and a loaf of bread, at least half of which will be thrown away. And then most of the recipes in the book aren't for one serving, but usually more like four to six. So if I followed the plan I'd be throwing away several servings of food with most lunches and dinners, as well as a couple of servings for breakfast.

I feel bad enough about the food I already waste without intentionally buying tons of groceries that I know I won't eat. But I'm probably not the target audience for the book, and probably they weren't thinking of single people either. Probably most people who buy this book have a spouse that will eat the other half of the grapefruit and at least seven slices of bread per week, plus they have children or other family members who will eat the three or more servings of leftover pasta.

But I don't have that, and for the most part all the food cooked will be eaten by me and just me. So for lunch and dinner I'll be making maybe mac and cheese and some other pasta thing and maybe a soup and then maybe a sort of Chinese thing or maybe Mexican, and then I'll rotate leftovers until it's time to cook something else.

Okay, no six week plan for me.

I guess my husband didn't think all of this stuff out the way I did.

So, he has a book (which I didn't really look at after I found out it wasn't what I wanted), and the idea is to get rid of wheat and dairy and a few other things and see if you feel better because maybe you have an undiagnosed allergy. And then you are supposed to add healthy Omega 3s and stuff like that. It isn't much about calorie reduction and it isn't much about weight-loss, other than what would come about just because you've stopped going out for ice cream.

Anyway, in this book, there's another six week plan. And there's a shopping list for the first two weeks. So my husband prints out the shopping list, and we head for several stores and spend lots of money, mostly at Central Market, cause we went there to get a few things that I'm not sure are easily found at the places we would normally shop at. Some of what we purchased were whole grains and other dry goods, and that's fine, but we also bought fruits and vegetables and fresh herbs, etc....

We're not Martha Stewart. We don't usually buy fresh herbs, except for a lot of cilantro, which is cheap at Mexican markets, and the rare bunch of parsley, which tends to cost about twice as much as the cilantro. That day we bought cilantro and two kinds of parsley and basil and bay leaves and watercress and a couple of other things and fennel.

I have never before bought fennel. Fennel seeds, yes, but not fresh fennel. I have no idea what one does with fennel.

After having bought fresh herbs and vegetables and fruits and dry goods and fancy cooking oil and tofu and a number of other things and filled the frig so that I cannot tell that I just cleaned it out, we were about to go shopping again for meat and fish, and it seemed to me that we really had a lot of stuff already, and that it seemed like he was planning to buy a lot of meat and fish for just a week or two.

And it was then that I saw the recipes that he was going to make, which were mostly recipes for four servings, and that we did not need anywhere near that much food.

Lets do the math again.

If you are one person, and you need breakfast and lunch and dinner, that's three meals a day, which would be twenty-one meals per week, or forty-two meals for two weeks. If you make recipes that are four servings, and you make a different one each meal, that's twelve servings a day, and if you make different things everyday, that's eighty-four servings per week.

So he was buying everything on the two week list, which would have made about one hundred and sixty-eight servings.

And he wasn't even going to be home for the second week, so I don't know why he was buying that food at all.

And in addition to the extra servings there's that whole thing about the wasted half grapefruit and most of the loaf of bread. Not that he bought either of those things, but he did buy that fennel, which cost four dollars, and you only use a fifth of it in one recipe.

At least I caught on in time to not have a frig full of rotting meat. But we do have watercress going limp, and pears going mushy, and then he bought sprouts and other things to take with him, which he forgot and left in the frig.

It was a big hassle getting him off to work for the week. It is always a bit of a hassle, but we've gotten used to it. And if you forget anything you can always buy something while you're away. Except, if you're on a diet, you aren't supposed to eat out and on this diet he isn't supposed to eat wheat or dairy, so no stopping at fast food places, not even Subway, and he can't even buy a loaf of bread. So I'm trying to get him to think about what he needs to take with him, to cook things ahead of time and such, and he just drags his feet. This isn't the fun cooking that he likes to do, and he waits til the last minute to do it.

I'm still finding food in the house that I think I should get rid of, but I don't want to until I know if he's only going to do this for six weeks or if this is going to be a long-term thing. I hate to throw out food that we could eat after the six weeks are up, cause we'll just have to go out and buy more stuff anyway. If I stick to my little project, I think it would be a minimum of five months, but probably longer. We'll just have to wait and see if I can handle that.

Monday Morons: Those pants are supposed to cover your butt

I am not dead, I just haven't posted in a while. I will have to do a catch-up post soon.

Anyway, I had to go to the bank. Actually, I had to go to two different banks. The first one has limited parking, but a Taco Bell has just opened next door, and at three in the afternoon it has a lot of empty parking spaces. So I figured that I would park at the Taco Bell, run into the bank, and then go to the Taco Bell and have a snack.

So I got some money from the bank and went to the Taco Bell. I hadn't realized til then that I was even hungry. I ordered a drink and a taco and while I'm waiting for them to make the taco I get a couple of napkins and some hot sauce and a straw and all of that sort of thing. And there is this guy doing pretty much the same thing, and I don't much look at him or pay any attention to him.

This is a bad habit, but I'm sure that most women understand. You don't look at people, and you for sure do not make eye contact with people. You especially do not make eye contact with guys. And you really, really do not make eye contact with random guys while you are alone. If you make eye contact with people, then they might start talking to you, and I don't want to talk to anyone. And I really, really do not want to talk to random guys while I'm alone. I just want to have a soda and eat my taco in peace and then leave and get on with my errands.

So, I know that this is a bad habit. I don't look at people, and I especially don't look at random guys while I'm alone. So, if two minutes later, the police come in looking for someone, even if they have a picture of the random guy that was just there, I wouldn't be able to say that I had seen him. While I was up getting my food and such, I took no notice of him at all, other than to register that someone else was there and move around him.

Now, once I had sat down with my food, and the other people in the restaurant had also sat down at other tables with their food, then maybe it is a little bit safer to look around. Cause, unless someone recognizes me from someplace else, they probably won't get up from their table and leave their food just to come talk to me. So I'm looking around a bit, though still not making eye contact with anyone.

The random guy that I didn't look at earlier is sitting at a table with his back to me. This is one of those newer tables that is really tall with bar stools around it. And he is in the middle of the room, so regardless of where you are sitting, if you aren't facing the other direction, you can see him.

And it is starting to get a bit cool around here, but this guy apparently didn't get the memo, so while he's put on a jacket he's still wearing summer clothing, so the rest of his outfit was sandals and thin knee-length shorts. And I guess the elastic in the shorts is not so elastic anymore, cause he's doing the plumber imitation without even bending over. The quarter-slot is exposed to the rest of the restaurant.

And then I notice that the quarter-slot is for a really big quarter. Pretty much most of his butt is hanging out.

I'm glad that I didn't notice that last bit until I was mostly finished eating. I decide that I need to leave soon. I think that he's kind of creepy looking, and that he doesn't care that he's showing everyone his hairy butt. In fact, I think that he must be doing it on purpose. Some of his skin is actually touching the chair, so there's no way that he doesn't know what he's doing.

I suppose that you're supposed to call the police or something, but the police probably have better things to do. I have better things to do. I still had to go to another bank and run to Walmart and a few other places. I left.

Let the people working at the Taco Bell call the police. Besides, the creepy guy was probably just wanting attention, and he wasn't going to get more of that from me.

The Dallas Cowboys are ruining my life

Okay, the Cowboys are not literally ruining my life. Like, I have not been kicked out of my home to make way for a bigger stadium and/or parking lot. That happened to a lot of other people, but it did not happen to me personally. They are just making life annoying at times.

The Rangers were annoying enough. Then the Rangers got a bigger ballpark and got more annoying. The Cowboys were in Irving, in a part of Irving right next to Dallas, and I hate Dallas, so I was rarely there. The Cowboys were still annoying, just not in the same way as the Rangers, as long as they were staying near Dallas were I would probably not have to deal with them or their fans or the traffic problems involved with games.

But then they moved to Arlington. They moved to Arlington right next to stores that I shop at and restaurants I eat at and so forth. So they are now a problem for me. And as I care nothing for sports, I don't remember which days they plan to be a bother, until it is too late to do anything about it.

So today was one of those days. But it was early in the day, and we safely escaped from it all (though it would have been nice to eat an early dinner in the area, but we decided against it). But they are still annoying, as right now I am not watching The Event and such on TV, cause my husband is watching the game. Yet another lie that he told me, so on top of all the other things I have to put up with from him, he now watches football games, even when there is something else to do or something better to watch.

Anyway, the main reason for the football fans being a problem that had to be dealt with earlier in the day is that on top of whatever ridiculous price the fans paid for their tickets, they are expected to pay yet another $67 to $82 for parking their cars (this amount will go up another twenty dollars for next year's dreaded Super Bowl Game). And, while they have somehow been persuaded to give up whatever amount they paid for the tickets, they don't really want to pay $67-$82 just to park their cars. And it is a really big parking lot, so even after paying the $67-$82 for parking the car, that doesn't guarantee that your car will end up being parked near where you want to be, and you might still be in for a long walk even after paying that much. So many of the local stores and restaurants were charging $35-$40 dollars to park in their parking lots, and from their you might have an even longer walk, but since you're going to have a long walk anyway you might as well get a parking space for half-price.

The best deal seemed to be that of Half-Price Books. If you spend $40 dollars or more that day, you got to park in front of the bookstore for free if you taped the dated receipt onto your windshield. And, to make things even easier, instead of looking all through the store for something that you want to spend $40 on, you can just buy a $40 gift card and spend the money later. So that almost makes the parking free, if you are someone who buys a lot of books, and if you are willing to walk the extra couple of blocks to get there.

Not that I picture many of these people being readers, but perhaps these people have friends who are readers, and they can give these bookstore gift cards to their reading friends for Christmas.

Then there were also people walking from really far away places on the other side of the freeway. I have no idea where they were coming from or how much they paid to park their cars, but I can't imagine that they got a better deal than what the bookstore was offering. And even if you really just do not like the bookstore and don't have any friends who read and therefore have absolutely no reason to go to Half-Price Books, most of the other stores and some restaurants had a similar deal, and you might find something that you would want to spend $40 on.

Anyway, now I'm going to find something to watch on Hulu or Youtube, because I can't watch The Event like I'm supposed to, because the Cowboys are still on.

A catch up post

I am home, while my husband is off in middle of nowhere Oklahoma. I was briefly very excited about nowhere Oklahoma and wanted to go too, as I wanted to go back to the Castle of Muskogee for their Halloween stuff. But as I looked more closely at the schedule, I saw that a trip to the Castle could not work, because the Castle is not open on Sunday night, and that would have been the best opportunity to go, as he is scheduled an hour and a half away on Friday and Saturday, the only nights that they are open.

So I quit trying to figure out how I might get to the place and just stayed home to work.

Of course I am not working, as my back still hurts. Maybe not as much as it did. Sometimes I think that whatever it is maybe getting better. Other times I just think that I am having a few good days, and then I'll have a few bad ones. It is best to sit just a certain way in this chair (so there has been a lot of Hulu and Youtube and such), or to stand up straight (which does not happen very often cause how boring is it to just stand still somewhere), or to maybe walk around a bit at a mall or something, or to stay in bed in a certain positions. Those positions in bed are not good for watching TV or reading, so I'm trying to stay out of bed, but eventually I am there watching TV or using the heating pad anyway. And of course I am trying to sleep some, which does not seem to want to happen at the right times.

The first thing that happened after I decided to stay here is that I seem to have lost my marbles and forgot to pay rent. I could have sworn that was done before I left, but there was no money taken out of the account for it. And I thought that I had given it to the "temporary manager", but as I got out of there fast and did not ask for a receipt, that might have been an earlier month. Anyway, paying that late means a lot of late fees, and I ended up paying eighty dollars for my mistake. She at first said a hundred, and I know that she could have even said a hundred and twenty, but "temporary manager" wasn't around, so she didn't charge me for the first day and she didn't charge me for the day that I wrote the check. (I later heard that "temporary manager" had quit, but as that was after I went to the office I did not get that confirmed.) I just can't imagine having forgotten to pay that check, as I went so far as to make sure that my brother had an emergency check before I went out of town. So how did I remember the emergency check but not the regular rent check?

The next odd thing was I learned that mail delivery for our street had stopped. There was an incident with a dog and some man at the beginning of the street (technically his address is on the cross street), and so everyone else would have to go get their mail from the Post Office until further notice. That started Friday afternoon while I was away. The mail service just stopped, and you only heard about it through the rumour mill, not buy a note on the door or phone call or anything official from either the Post Office or the office here. I didn't hear about it until Tuesday. Wednesday, the man who lives in the apartment in question came around to apologize in person to everyone on the street, saying that it was not him and not his dog, but his daughter's boyfriend and his dog. The boyfriend and dog have left, and the man has apologized and made arrangements to have a box at the post office, and the mail service was restored on Thursday.

Tuesday I got my TDaP shot. I don't know the difference between the TDaP and the DTaP (maybe one is for adults and one for children?), but I ended up getting it from the Kroger's pharmacy for $50. That is considerably less that the prices I'd been told at other places ($80 and $129), so I wonder if they made a mistake. I got the shot before they could change their minds. So now I won't infect the baby with whooping cough, and I'll remember that my tetanus shots are due on years ending in 0. So that's all good, and I'm glad to get that over with.

The bug guy is coming next next Wednesday. I suspected that, and that is the main reason I asked to come home instead of going straight on to Oklahoma with my husband, but now I have that confirmed. So I should be doing a lot of cleaning, which I am not, because of my back. But I should at least try to clear him a path through the junk.

Tomorrow I should have my picture taken, but I really don't want to. I don't know what to wear. I don't feel like getting dressed up anyway. Maybe I'll wear Harry Potter stuff.

Something interesting happened on the way to the store

Well, I've been away for most of three weeks, and then this last week I was home, except that I didn't spend much of my time actually at home, and I was busy, and I didn't much of anything useful done around here. And after you have been away for most of three weeks, and then spend little of the fourth week at home and end up eating out, then you have to throw most of the stuff in the refrigerator away and buy groceries.

So I was on my way to do that, except that I wanted to have a look at my luffa plant, and while I was in the backyard I stopped to talk to my neighbor for a bit. And then I waved bye and was headed to my car, and I noticed one of the other neighbors with her baby. She was knocking at my neighbor's front door, and of course no one heard the knocking, because they were all in the backyard. So I said to the lady that they were in back. I don't know this neighbor as well as the one I'd just spoken to, in fact I mainly just wave at her and rarely talk to her other than at the annual meetings, and I don't even remember her name. But I've seen that this neighbor seems friendly enough with the other one, so I thought that she would just go on to the backyard. But either she didn't hear what I'd said, or going around to the backyard was too much for her to do, and she says that she has to run after her escaping dog, and could I hold the baby.

Sure.

And the lady got in her car and drove down the street, and I took the baby to my other neighbor's backyard.

Well, I don't have a dog, but if I did have a dog and she got out, this would upset me and I would immediately run after her. I don't have a baby either, but I guess if I did I would care a lot about her.

Now, if I had both a dog and a baby, and if for some reason I could only look after one of them, I'm assuming that I would favor the baby over the dog.

Not that I wasn't happy to help out and watch the baby, or at least watch the baby for a while til my other neighbor could watch the baby, as the other neighbor was the first choice for watching the baby instead of me. But I just don't think that I would have given my baby to someone who just waves at me from across the street, someone I rarely speak to, someone whose name I can't remember.

For all she knows I could eat babies for breakfast or be dating someone that Law and Order: SVU modeled one of their bad guys after.

All is well. She very quickly recovered the runaway dog and came back to the other neighbor's backyard, and then we all tried to get the baby to throw a ball to us. (She's very happy picking up the ball, but she hasn't quite got the throwing part figured out.) The lady took her baby home, the other neighbors went back to whatever they had been doing, and I went to the grocery store.

Wednesday through Saturday was spent in the middle of nowhere. Not as middle of nowhere as some places I have been, but not anyplace particularly wonderful, and not a tourist destination. There were two things there that I would want to do, and one of them was only open to visitors after lunch on certain days, so we were not able to do that at all due to scheduling problems. The other thing we did Thursday morning. The rest of our time off was either spent eating (mostly Mexican food) or doing nothing.

The motel mostly sucked (though I have been in much worse), but we knew what we would probably be getting, just that in our budget there weren't any other options (or the other options looked worse). But at least I had Syfy on cable, and other things on cable. (Now that I am in the nice motel, there is no Syfy, and most of the rest of the cable sucks).

At some point I tried to get some help from my cell phone company. I wanted the most basic of information, and they wouldn't give it to me. I wanted to know which chargers work with which phones. I had my phone, but I'd left my charger at home. I could use a different charger from the same company, but I just wanted to make sure they were compatible, cause I had been warned earlier that using the wrong charger would damage the phone (and also I had prior experience damaging a tape recorder by leaving it charging for more than a week).

So there should be lists somewhere of all the chargers that go with which phones, and which phones that can use what chargers, and there should be a master list of all the phones and all the chargers and which ones work together. But they refused to send me the list, because I could not give them some number off of my phone, which I could not read because my phone had no power.

My phone had no power. That was the whole reason for asking about the chargers.

There were suggestions of which buttons to push on the phone to get the number, or that I should call and talk to a real person, etc.... It took many exchanges before they seemed to understand the words NO POWER. Eventually, they called my home, but I'm pretty sure that in my first message I told them that I was out of town, and that was why I couldn't use my own charger.

Eventually a friend talked me through the process of Googling enough things that I found the information without their help. The charger I had worked with eight phones, and after Googling some images of phones I found that mine was one of the eight. At least, I hoped that was right, as Googling images is not always the best way of finding the name of something.

Three hours after I charged my phone, I got yet another email from them, that they were still trying to help me. Except that they still didn't send me the list, so they weren't trying very hard. I wrote back that someone else had already done their job for them, and that I would file a complaint when I got home.

They still didn't get it. They finally answered my first question, that not all chargers work with all phones, and that I might be able to get some of the numbers that they need to help me by removing the phone's battery....

I guess they missed the whole part that I didn't need their help anymore because someone else did their job for them. I haven't emailed them back. And they still didn't send me a list. This is just the most basic thing to know when you have a cell phone, and the company is telling me that they can't send me a list of all the phones that work with all the chargers because I didn't give them the number of my phone. They don't need my number to send me a master list, they're just lazy or something.

It's hard to believe that anyone is this stupid.

I'm really mad. I'm thinking about making a lot of trouble for them. I'm even wondering if I should find a really annoying lawyer.

It's sad, because right before this happened, I was thinking that I should start using this phone more. I originally got it as an emergency phone, but there really aren't a lot of emergencies, and over time I collected over a thousand minutes that I wasn't using. And my phone at home doesn't get much use either, mainly bill collectors leave messages. By the time anyone that I know wants to leave me a message, the machine is full. If not for the possibility that I might need to call 911, I probably could just get rid of it.

So now I don't know what to do. I was going to spend about a hundred and fifty dollars on new minutes for next year, but since they were less than helpful, maybe this isn't even the best for an emergency phone.

And we did have an emergency of a sort, though I ended up not needing the phone. We had a flat tire Sunday morning, but my husband managed to change it himself, even though we were on the freeway at the time and had to pull over onto the grass and work with other cars speeding past us.

If we had been stuck there with the flat tire and no phone, I'd definitely be getting a lawyer.

So we lost about two hours of our only full day off while we waited at the tire place. But now we are all worn out from our one day off and our attempts at squeezing in tourist stuff before lunch. Unfortunately, we will not have Sunday or Monday here like I thought. We have to drive back Sunday, and while my husband usually has Monday off, this time he has to work in Oklahoma again. So there will be this rush to get me home before he has to head out again.

Anyway, this morning was nice. A bit rushed, but nice.

Monday Morons--What kind of paint is this?

Okay, if you've been reading, the kitchen wall that was half removed years ago to deal with a plumbing problem and never replaced was reported again about a month ago, was supposed to be repaired last Monday, no one came until Tuesday, a four hour break was taken to go do repairs at someone else's house, repairs at my place were not finished Tuesday and not resumed until after three on Wednesday, and then it still wasn't painted and so someone came to do that on Thursday.

Okay, so the paint he used was white. I think the can said pure white. But I'm pretty sure that the old paint was not pure white. It doesn't exactly match.

Besides the old paint not exactly matching the new paint, I have been here a while, and there are places that need touch-up paint. Or maybe it is just time to paint again.

Where I live, when you leave you have to paint the place either white or off-white, so that the place is all nice and new looking for the new person. If the new person doesn't like white, they can paint it again, as long as when they leave they paint it white again. If you use expensive paint, it probably doesn't matter what color you paint over, but usually it is easier to paint white over white than white over a darker color.

Anyway, I'm guessing that the people in the small apartments probably aren't planning to stay long, and they probably keep the white. The people in the houses stay longer, or at least probably plan to stay longer, and I'm guessing that more of them paint over the white with different colors or add wallpaper and such.

I just kept the white both times. I like white.

Okay, but trying to match a white or off-white paint is hard to do, unless maybe someone was nice and left you a bit of the paint in the can, or left you a note saying which white paint you used. If I remember correctly, I left almost a gallon of some sort of off-white paint for the apartment's new renters. It wasn't going to do me any good anyway, since the paint I used in the apartment was a few shades darker than what was used in the new place.

No one left me any paint at the new place, or the name of the paint, or anything. But I didn't think that getting the name of the paint would be a problem, since this place was not painted by the person leaving, but by the maintenance guys. I just thought that whenever I needed to know, I'd just ask the guys what paint they used when they had to paint a place themselves.

Well, I don't seem to have made myself understood. I don't think that the old paint was pure white, and the guy won't tell me the name of the old paint.

I've thought of four possible reasons that I am not being told specifically what kind of paint was used on my house six years ago.

Possibility #1--They are deliberately being annoying.

Possibility #2--I suppose that they might have used a different color back then, and then there was some financial gain for switching to a different color or a different brand, and they just don't remember the name of the paint they used before. I don't think this is really what happened, just wanted to show that I was smart enough to figure out that it might have happened. And even if there were some financial reason for switching paints, you would think that they'd still have records of what the old paint was and when they switched paints and such.

Possibility #3--They had to switch paints because the old paint either isn't made anymore, or isn't sold at the local store. Again, they should have records of this and should be able to tell me about it.

Possibility #4--They are just stupid. They use different color paints whenever they have to paint something. The paint is selected on a whim. They have a little bit of paint left over from several projects, and it goes to waste, because the next time they need paint they buy yet a different color.

I am thinking that if it isn't just the first explanation then it is the fourth one, cause the other two make sense, and they should have no trouble telling someone an explanation if it made sense like that. They are annoying and/or just stupid.

Okay, so now that I've had that problem with the paint from the people who supposedly work for me, I have more fun at Home Depot.

I'm thinking that the guys just went to Home Depot and bought whatever paint was cheapest. I seem to recall doing that myself (though I might have gone to Lowe's instead). If you just want white or off-white, and you aren't trying to match something, there are a few that don't cost too much that come in 5 gallon buckets. So probably, if I find the cheapest 5 gallon bucket, the lightest color that isn't pure white is probably the one that they used.

So I see at the end there's 5 gallon buckets for about fifty dollars, and they say something like professional grade. And I think that one of those would be it, if they were the same kind of paint sold six years ago. But I can't find any paint chips or a color chart or anything for them. I see that they come in at least three colors--white, aspen white, and antique white.

Aspen white sounds nice, but I don't want to buy any without at least a paint chip (and I would prefer an actual sample of paint to take home and try before buying five gallons of the stuff). I ask someone for help, but they don't have either samples or paint chips or a color chart or anything. And I can't get help from anyone else who knows anything about the paint. I can complain to this girl's boss, but that doesn't help me with the paint. She keeps saying that the paint is mostly used by professionals, so that they don't have samples and paint chips.

I don't see how being professional equals not needing to know what color paint is in the bucket.

Are the professionals psychic or something? Is there some secret handshake you have to know before being shown what color paint is in the container?

Another girl comes and wants to color match the paint for me. The first girl had wanted to do that too, but I didn't want to. Having the color matched doesn't tell me what color is in the 5 gallon container. It is a different kind of paint from a different company that can be color matched. But somehow I'm talking to this second girl, and she's doing the color match thing and telling me it will be eight dollars for a quart. I'm agreeing to it (I don't know why), but then she says the paint is ten dollars a quart, not eight.

Okay, I went thinking that I was going to spend two dollars on a paint sample for something that I could later buy in a gallon can and a five gallon bucket. Then it goes up to eight dollars for a quart, and then it turns out that the paint is ten dollars for a quart. And that still doesn't tell me what color paint is in the 5 gallon bucket for fifty dollars, so if I use a lot of the color matched paint instead of whatever is in the 5 gallon bucket, I will be spending thirty dollars a gallon. That's about three times what I had planned to spend.

At that point I leave and decide to go to Lowe's the next day.

I find some paint in five gallon buckets for sixty dollars, and there is at least a color chart for that. There are no samples, but by now I'm ready to give up and start with a new color paint if necessary to avoid spending thirty dollars a gallon on color matching.

I end up spending fourteen dollars on a gallon of plain white paint. Maybe it will match, and maybe it won't. If it doesn't, well, it's probably time to repaint anyway, and I will repaint it something that doesn't need color matching. I'm testing a bit of it right now. In an hour it will either dry too light or a shade darker and be exactly what I want, but I think I'm okay with it either way. I'm ready to just start painting and be done with it.

Repairs still aren't done

Okay, they were supposed to come and fix the wall on Monday. They didn't come at all on Monday. Tuesday, they came before nine, so I had to send them away for a bit. They came back at about ten, did some work, said they were going to get some supplies, didn't come back for a bit so I assumed that they were on lunch break.

After being gone about four hours, I called and complained. They'd been sent to fix another problem somewhere else, without finishing at my house.

That's what caused the problem in the first place, but here they're doing it again.

They came back a bit after four, but having less than an hour to work, they didn't finish.

Wednesday, they didn't show up until after three. It doesn't look too bad, considering what crap they were given to work with. The new paneling doesn't match up with the old, but half of that will be hidden once the stove is put back in place, and I'm planning to do something with the rest of the wall, either magnets or hooks or something, so that I can store cookie sheets there.

But even if I don't do anything, and just have mismatched panelling, it is nice to have a solid wall again.

Now it is Thursday, and the wall still needs to be painted. And they don't know when or if they might get to that today or tomorrow.

You just would not believe the junk they used to fix this wall. And there's no order to it at all. No real plan. The studs are not evenly spaced. It all looks good from the outside, but inside it's all crap.

I could do crap by myself.

Anyway, if they do not come and finish the work today, I will have to put everything back the way it was Friday. I have to bake cookies or something for a social thing Saturday, and I can't do that with the stove out from the wall and my only counter space in another room. They will have to make an appointment for next week and do all the moving and such themselves when they get here to do the painting.