About sixteen years ago, I met him for the first time. My trainwreck sibling brought home this adorable puppy he had no business adopting because he had not one thing in his life that wasn’t a mess. I was furious at my sibling – he didn’t even take care of himself, how could he drag
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March 20, 2008
I’m not allowed to buy shoes, especially not $60 on sale shoes, but it’s fun to look, now and again. When I was on the Nine West website, I got sucked into the *SALE* link. I may be hesitant to buy from them again, though.
These look like a nice solid pair of work shoes, with a solid heel and cute front with buckles to poke out from under long pants.
I find I’m more into red these days, and have this odd conviction that these shoes will be cuter in person. *shrug* Not $59.99 cute, but cute.
March 19, 2008
Remember the birthday shoes? I cannot emphasize enough how much I love flats, and how much I loved these flats in particular because they conformed perfectly to my feet and didn’t make my knees hurt like some flats do.
Sadly, Boy Coworker pointed out that the heel had come off the right shoe on Friday morning, and then the left heel fell off that night!
They’re a shade under six months old, so I checked NineWest.com to see if they have any sort of quality guarantee, but came up dry. This stinks, I thought their quality was supposed to be better than your average shoe. I’ve never lost heels off any shoes, even my cheapie shoes from Payless! It’s times like these I understand the love of stores like Nordstrom with their insanely good return policies, or Levenger with their satisfaction guarantee.
March 18, 2008
It turns out that my case has already been sent on to arbitration and is scheduled to be heard on May 6th. I know that worrying won’t do a whit of good, but I’m still a little nervous about it because I’ve never gone through this before and am unsure what to expect.
Reminds me that I need to print those photos of the car as well, and send those out just in case, I would hate to lose this case for lack of prep.
Edit: I just realized that this kicks the deductible back up to $1000. Holy mackeral.
March 16, 2008
I just found out that, in addition to the $500 deductible I’ve already put on a credit card for the sedan’s repairs, I need to come up with another $500 for getting my car fixed, AND MaDucky went out and destroyed another tire to the tune of $80. Unfortunately, the first deductible, and multiple other tire-related accidents, have already drained the car fund that was for this very purpose. *sigh*
In the spirit of not letting bad news drag me down, I’m looking for creative ways to recoup the losses, since I’m now limited in the hours I can put in at the job.
Where has Oxiclean been all my life?? It’s a $3 miracle!
Hypothesis:
On C1’s recommendation, I’d bought a jar of Oxiclean last week, but only got the tiniest size on the shelf because, even though the 6 lb. tub was much more economical per ounce, it didn’t make sense to be left with 5.9 lbs of product if it didn’t work like I’d expected.
Materials and Methods:
My white sweater from the New York trip succumbed to a combination of spilling half the juices from my leftover pork chops down my front, making a lovely brown puddle underneath the ruching, and a weird pattern of blue-ish gray spots that I’m convinced was from washing or drying the shirt in the same load of laundry as my new blue jeans. (I have since seen the wisdom in separating my single large load of wash into two small loads of lights and darks.)
I borrowed Boy Coworker’s white socks to go running around the tennis courts for an hour. Ab-so-lute-ly filthy.
My own socks were slowing turning blue from, again, being washed in the same load as jeans.
All victims of my hard-living lifestyle were soaked in a tub of Oxiclean and water solution for about three hours yesterday, and then washed in cold water with another scoop of Oxiclean added to the detergent, and voila!
Results:
The white sweater only has the faintest of blue-ish circles left, in a couple spots, and the brown pork chop stain is entirely gone! The boy socks are almost as good as new (they really were quite dirty to begin with) and my own socks are white once again!
Conclusion:
I’ve already used most of the wee tub, so I’ll need to add the 6 lb-er to my shopping list. I should probably stick to using it for laundry, and not try to clean every other thing with it to keep costs down.
March 14, 2008
It’s Friday. I got to work almost an hour earlier because I had to drive in, which means leaving before predawn. You know how predawn is a murky sort of light? Before that it’s just DARK.
Randomly during the drive, I started seeing black spots in the center of all the lights in the distance. The gals at work tell me that my brain was still asleep and couldn’t be bothered to fill in the outlines of what I was seeing.
Saw a car on fire on the freeway. Seriously, ON FIRE. I’ve never looked at accidents driving before, but there were real flames coming off what remained of that car. Yikes!!
Don’t know what I was thinking: Planned to call the insurance agent today, and don’t have my claim number, insurance agent’s phone number, or anything with me. Duh.
Still haven’t called the city … and it doesn’t matter because they’re closed on Fridays. *sigh*
Planning to go out with the girls from work tonight as part of my current drive to get out and try out this nightlife business. Am really zonked, so I’d better get a nap in before we go out.
Big and Little Bosses committed us to the nearly impossible for the next week and a half, and the onus is on me to organize the heck out of my colleagues, without burning anyone out on any single task and compromising their quality of work, and make sure that it all runs like clockwork. Also, the onus is on me to check everyone’s work, and put in tons of hours this weekend to make that Sunday night deadline. *grrrrr* If we miss a single beat, and screw this up, we’re not going to get paid for all the overtime we’ve put in. Oh wait, if I screw up. *more grrrrr* But you know what? We can do this. And they’re going to pay us all. And that’s going to revive my e-fund. All good. And even better, this means I definitely don’t need to or can’t take on a second job right now – no time, and OT will be coming in! Yay! (I must be punch drunk already, I’m looking on the bright side now? Heh.)
We have leftover pizza and chicken wings in the fridge. Wanna guess what I’m going to do on my 15 minute break? It won’t be working out in that cold! 🙂
March 12, 2008
There are so many reasons to pf-hate on the iPhone, from the outrageous price tag on the phone itself, to the mandatory data component of the rate plan, to the horrible customer service that only operates during mostly regular business hours. (Whaaaat? I pay you HOW much a month for you to give me an automated message about calling back on Monday?? Please! T-mobile had 24 hour customer service and I mean, they had customer service!) And they charge me in advance for each billing cycle! I mean, T-mobile didn’t send me a bill for the month of February until February was over. Don’t bill me for service you haven’t given yet!
Hands down, the worst of it is the basic plan, with only 200 text messages and 450 minutes for $60/month. (I’m using the internet as much as possible to get my $20/month out of it, dangit, so much so that I’m charging once or twice a day! Hah! Force unlimited internet service on me, will you? Though, really, checking your email as often as I do can’t be healthy.)
After exploring a few options, there didn’t seem like there was anything I could do but pay the extortionists. My company has a corporate relationship with AT&T, but when I searched the AT&T site before, any information available was fairly vague, and implied that iPhones weren’t eligible. Maybe I was just misreading. I certainly didn’t encounter the link that I found today: the Discount Registration link that teases you with the possibility of a discount, but never tells you how much the discount is, or what rate plans qualify. The site just takes some personal information to process a validation, and then says:
Please note that to the extent you are eligible for a service discount*, it may take up to two billing cycles (up to two months) for your service discount to appear on your bill. During the first month your service discount is applied, you might receive a pro-rated bill for the days of that month before the discount was applied, and a new bill for the days at the discounted rate.
* Service discounts are available only with qualified rate plans. Service discount is provided solely as a result of the business agreement with your organization and is subject to change or termination without notice to you. Other restrictions may apply.
They sure are cagey about whether or not I qualify, and what exactly I’m qualifying for! Anyway, my fingers are crossed that it’s a decent discount, and I could just kick myself for not finding this the first time around because my first bill was easily the most expensive ever at a shade over $100.
Cross your fingers for me that I see something on the very next billing cycle! Er, is it too much to hope that they’ll apply it to the billing cycle that’s already calculated? Yeah, no. They’re too cheap for that. They won’t even apply it to a full cycle if they can help it, what with that pro-rated ish going on up there. Hmph.
