Fresh, Hot Wastes of Time

Today after school we cleaned up the kids and packed them up for 3 days at Grandma’s house. Hub got them all in the car with their stuff, we hugged goodbye, and they drove down the street with me waving from the driveway. I was looking forward to a nice 4-5 hours of solitude; should I nap or play Wii Fit? Or both?

It’s about 100 degrees outside. Bluh, I think, it’s hot. I call the dog to go back inside. Turn the knob.

Hub had accidentally locked me out of the house when he left.

Good thing I had my phone in my pocket.

Trying to figure out which way she’s spinning? Cheat.

I’m trying to overcome my self-imposed title of “Black Thumb.” Yes, I have had a tendency to kill plants in the past, but mainly because I forgot to water them. Shame.

But there’s nothing like a home-grown tomato, is there? And now since the tree got blown down a couple of years ago, we have lots of sunlight in that corner of the yard. So we decided to give square foot gardening a shot, and see if we can keep anything unscathed between the deer, armadillos, squirrels, and blue jays that frequent the neighborhood. We have a fig tree and in 7 years of living here, have NEVER managed to beat the scavengers to the fruit.

It’s a late start, but here is what I planted today in the boxes that hubby built this weekend. In the herb pots I have mint, oregano, basil, parsley, chives. In the boxes live several varieties of tomatoes, eggplant, leeks, watermelon, spinach, serranos, and a chili petin.

Wish us luck!

Doctor’s call center: “Thank you for calling, may I help you?”
Me: “Yes, I need to make an appointment.”
Call center: “And what is it for?”
Me: “I have a cervical strain.”
Call center: “…You sure you didn’t mean to call the OB/Gyn?”
Me: *sigh* “The neck cervical, not the other cervical.”
Call center: “Oh.”

GENERATION SLAP: They’re naive, self-important, and perpetually plugged in. This is a call to arms against Millennials.

Sure, Generation X survived AIDS, Reagan, the Cold War, Tipper Gore, and A Flock of Seagulls, but those adversities, suggest Strauss and Howe, pale in comparison to what Millennials face today. Consider the stress of having to juggle a 30-hour work week while simultaneously maintaining Facebook, MySpace, and Flickr accounts. It’s enough to make your head spin! And maybe the Millennials never faced Hitler’s forces on the beaches of Normandy, but had they been around in 1944 (and had the technology existed), you can bet they would have blogged about it.

All that hate gonna keep him warm at night.

Two recent experiences I’ve had with customer service:

1. Woot.com had a fake Wootoff on April Fool’s Day. Interspersed with the mundane battery sales were bags of Random Crap. For Woot neophytes, the Random Crap is like a holy grail: usually it really is crap, but some lucky folks get jackpots like Wiis, Xbox 360s, or 60″ televisions for their $8. I tried to order when it came up but my order was stuck in the “Processing” screen for hours. While it was still stuck, another bag of crap came up. I tried to order that one and it said I couldn’t because I’d already placed an order for that item. Basically, a bug. It happened to 2500 people. Woot said the next day that they would make it right and give bags of crap to the people who really would have gotten them, and give a $5 gift certificate to everyone else affected by the bug.

I never heard from them. I emailed them and asked about it; they curtly told me they had addressed it on their forum (in a 200 page thread) and that I got no crap. I emailed back and basically said hey, fellas, that was a little snippy – didn’t I even get a gift certificate? No answer. A couple of weeks later I emailed again reminding them about my case and expressing disappointment that one of my favorite websites did me wrong. Nothing. Hell, they could even have said “We have no record of your attempt and so we’re sorry that we can’t extend you a lousy $5 gift certificate,” but instead, they were grumpy and then ignored me.

I haven’t totally sworn off Woot, but I honestly feel betrayed. I evangelized their damned website to everyone I knew. I wasn’t even asking for something for nothing; I was just trying to clarify. Whatever.

2. I ordered a Salton Jewelry Spa from Improvements Catalog, because I like sparkly things that, well, sparkle. When it came today, I noticed it was missing some random stuff like the tweezers and scoop, and Hub noticed that part of the housing was broken. Their invoice already has a return label attached to it, which I dig, but I was confused by part of the form so I called their 800 number to clear it up. The nice lady on the other end of the phone said not to worry about sending it back in; she would just ship me out a new one. Wow!

THAT’S the way to do it.

I just found a mixtape from summer ’89.

Side A:
Evil Ways – Santana
Hey You – Pink Floyd
Satisfy My Soul – Bob Marley
Lemon Song – Led Zeppelin
Fly Like an Eagle – Steve Miller Band
Threshold – Steve Miller Band
Slow and Easy – Whitesnake
All We Ever Wanted Was Everything – Bauhaus
Great Gig in the Sky – Pink Floyd
Ripple – The Grateful Dead
Can’t Get Enough of Your Love – Bad Company
Leaving Wallbrook – Rain Man OST

Side B:
One Slip – Pink Floyd
She Said She Was a Dancer – Jethro Tull
Never Comes the Day – Moody Blues
I Want You/She’s So Heavy – The Beatles
Sit on My Face – Monty Python
Cry Little Sister – Gerald McMann
Friend of the Devil – The Grateful Dead
Still Crazy After All These Years – Paul Simon
Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For – U2
Helplessly Hoping – Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young
Every Breath You Take – The Police
Various selections – George Winston