a latin thang

This afternoon my cold went to my head. You know, the whole pressure thing - headache, slightly off balance thing. So, I wimpered and asked Timmy to make me some soup. I smiled and told him "I feel pathetic." He smiled and agreed, "You're not a good sick person." He goes to make my soup and I feel so icky, I start crying. Yes, I know, for you latin people reading this blog, I agree, "changa." It's true. The true test of that was when Timmy left for work, I checked my temperature - 101.1. I want to call Timmy but I know he won't sympathize with me. So what do I do - I call mami. Because mami cares that her little girl is sick. Even though, she will laugh at me and call me changa too. While in the shower, I realize what this night really needs - Little Women. I haven't watched my happy movie since last December. I guess I have been pretty happy until tonight that is - tonight, I just Timmy to put his nice cold hands on my forehead and I want my mama to make me some sopa de fideos

Color Me Surprised

So a few weeks ago, we switched from T-mobile to Cingular. There were several reasons for doing so, not the least of which being that Crozer (my employer) has a corporate contract with them which provides me with an employee discount. This discount affords 24% off our monthly bill as well as 45% off new equipment purchases.

The phones we got were priced at $199 with a 2 year contract, and that price came down to $149 after a $50 mail-in rebate. So with my 45% off, I figure that brings it down into the range of "reasonable".

Our bill in the store that day was still rather high, being sans-rebate firstly, but also sans-corporate discount. The salesperson at the store said that our discount savings would show up on our monthly bill.

Imagine my surprise when the bill came yesterday and was missing both the monthly discount as well as the refund from the phone purchase that I was expecting. So I called Cingular customer service post-haste.

Right off the bat, the guy was able to tell me that the monthly discount could take until the next month to show up on the bill. I can buy that, fine. But he was unsure about the hardware discount, so he put me on hold for a while so he could find somebody who did know what the deal was. Some ten minutes later, he was back on the line connecting me to someone in the billing department. That gentleman tells me that the price of $199 was actually a discounted price, that the "street price" of the phone is actually $350. If we were to use the discount, it would be off of that price. He then goes off on a short tangent about how salespeople in the stores sometimes do a poor job of explaining the discount or talk to fast or whatnot.

So I'm basically expecting, at this point, that I'm about to get a corporate sounding nicety like, "Sorry about the misunderstanding," and being left out of luck. But no, to my shock he tells me that since the salesperson didn't explain the discount properly, he was going to go ahead and give me the 45% off of the $199 price of each of the phones anyway. That means $178 refunded to my account, plus the $100 in rebates that will be processed in 10-12 short weeks. For serious.

That was basically what I thought the deal was in the first place, but hey, if it took another 20 minutes on the phone to solidify the details, then hey, it's cool.

Ickiness

I'm sick. I worked 70 hours last week and most of that time I was on my feet. My body ached. I had blisters on my feet. I could hardly think or speak straight because of the exhaustion. I was so looking forward to Monday when I could just rest and hang out with Timmy. Instead, I woke up sick and spent the day lying on the couch with a box of tissues beside me. NyQuil worked for part of last night, but I had to wake up in the middle of the night to take some more. Unfortunately, that little lapse of time was enough to drive my poor husband out of the bed and onto the couch - dito. Thankfully, Tindall said I could take a few days off to recover from the conference. So, I'm not going to go in today. We'll see how I am feeling tomorrow.

Oh, yeah, and Marti ate mold.

Coming Soon: Wasted Afternoons

So a morning of internet surfing helped me to find out that this was released yesterday:












It's basically another one of the X-men Legends games, only with about 150 different playable characters from the entire Marvel Universe. Seriously.

Sure, the games are basically mindless - walking around and punching things. But few video games have entranced me quite as much as the Legends games have.

Man. My pipe fund will never grow if I keep finding nerdery to spend the money on, but in this case, it is surely worth the sacrifice.

Oh, Right

An addendum to my previous post about laptop woes:

I forgot all about the "system restore" option. My music lives. Woohoo.

More Goodness From My Friends At DELL

So a couple weeks ago, I went to sign onto my laptop here and it informed me that my profile had been deleted or some such nonsense. I was slightly annoyed, but after rearranging my desktop and repopulating my bookmark list on Firefox, I felt like I was back in service. Fast forward to this morning and I went to look up a song on my iTunes that I'd been thinking about last night. All of my music is gone. Probably about 30 songs that I'd purchased, but also all of my CD's that I spent who knows how long ripping into iTunes over the course of the past year. Snarl. I don't suppose I need to say anything more about how aggravating this revelation is. So, once again, dude.... don't get a Dell.

Amazing

This woman in Chester yesterday got jumped by a few guys who then stole her crack cocaine. She called the police to report the robbery. I kid you not. The officer who was there suggested that she fill out a stolen property form, that way if they recovered her crack they could return it to her. I bet she actually would do it, too. The city never ceases to amaze me.

Re: All I have to say is....

I am pleased with today's Project Runway finale. Jeffrey showed at Bryant Park and the skanky ho Laura did not win. Okay, maybe, skanky ho is a little harsh. I was just scared that she would get Jeffrey kicked off. Not that he was my first choice. Michael was my first choice. It was unfortunate that Michael's show was disappointing. But if Michael couldn't win, I think Jeffrey is the next most deserving. So, congratulations to Jeffrey. Now onto Top Chef :)

Come again?

Normally I would be against a monopoly. Microsoft is a good example. But a nice byproduct of this trend of one company owning everything comes from my good friends at NBC. It seems that one of their executives decided it would be a good idea to rerun their primetime shows on some of their cable channels. This means that last night, I got to watch the first episode of "30 Rock" (that I missed on account of kinship) on Bravo. And it also means that at this very moment I'm getting to watch "Heroes" (which I missed this week because my partner at work wanted to watch Monday Night Football) on the SciFi channel. Shot - score! Thanks for actually thinking, NBC.

All I have to say is....

if Jeffrey doesn't show at Bryant Park, I will be pissed, and I will refer to Laura as a skanky ho and not in a good way. In fact, I'm already pissed and Laura's already a skanky ho.

what's melissa doing???

exploring myspace while her neighbors scream, curse, and slam doors....good times.




......an addendum to my post......

I can hear her crying. I don't understand how a man and a woman can claim to love each other and treat each other so harshly and violently. She's sobbing, downstairs. Now, Timmy and I have hurt each others' feelings and made each other cry; that's just a part of our broken nature. But when I hurt Timmy, I feel like my insides break, so much more than if anyone else hurt me. And I know that nothing hurts Timmy more than the thought of hurting me. So, what I hear downstairs makes me so sad and so confused.

myspace.com

Tonight, I gave in and created a myspace account. I didn't really want to. I was quite content logging in as Timmy and spying on my friends' pages. But then I would want to make a comment and think, "this might be inappropriate coming from Timmy." So I wouldn't leave the comment. So, tonight I made my own account, and it's kind of exciting. I even found an old friend, Roy Moore - some of you might remember him. It was so nice to see his profile. But now comes the scary part. I have invited a few of my friends to check out my profile. They're all people who have myspace. But what if no one responds? It's an unsettling thought the possibility that no one will say hi. I remember talking to a friend who never wanted to throw a party because he was scared no one would come. I didn't want to have my own blog because I was scared no one would read it. I remember how depressing it was when I got my first email address, which was in college, because no one emailed me. Even now, it's kind of sad when I go a few weeks without a real email. That's probably the main reason I have avoided myspace. Why put myself in a position to be ignored? Which doesn't really make sense. I'm happy with my nice little life and small group of friends and my husband and my family. Why do I care if people comment on emails/blogs/myspace? I have real relationships. I hang out with people. I actually talk to people face to face. Then why do I care?

Mystique

I was just on Wikipedia, reading some information on Mystique. I am sure that this is hardly the place to find the best information on comic characters, but it's the first place I hit when I have a question. Last night Timmy told me there was speculation that Mystique might be the mother to Nightcrawler. I found that intriguing. But tonight, I saw on Wikipedia that not only was she the mother to Nightcrawler but she was the foster mother to Rogue. In fact, for ten years, Rogue was raised by Mystique and her lesbian lover Destiny. It amazes me how complex the comic book characters can be. I suppose those there is no real difference than a soap opera character. But, Mystigue as Rogue's mother? That might be as bad as when we found out that Carly was Bobby's daughter on General Hospital.

Mutants

Just could not go to bed without mentioning what Timmy and I saw tonight on tv. After kinship, I went to visit Timmy at the station. We were flipping through the channels and we saw the Power Rangers. Not uncommon. They are on tv a lot. However, what was unusual that made us actually watch for a few minutes was with whom the Rangers were fighting alongside. Against the evil forces of I don't who were the Power Rangers and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Yes! It's true. The Power Rangers and the Ninja Turtles were fighting against a bad guy together. That in and of itself was so weird, but wait something is off: Leonardo is 1. Michaelangelo is 2. Donatello is 3. Raphael is 4. Who then is the fifth turtle kicking some alien like creature's butt? And why does it have breasts? There's a fifth Ninja Turtle and she's a girl?!?! And her shell has female curves on it!?!?!? I just don't understand.

Speaking of mutants, X-3 came out on Tuesday and was purchased on Tuesday. Very exciting. We resaw X-1 on Monday and then 2 and 3 last night. Unfortunately, Timmy fell asleep last night, but that was okay; I fell asleep while he watched it this afternoon. I really enjoyed that movie a lot. And I think Mystique is just the coolest mutant ever. I probably shouldn't make such a statement since the extent of my mutant knowledge are these three movies and a few things Timmy has told me. But I will still say of my limited experience with the X-Men and the brotherhood, Mystique is the coolest.

Ongoing News of Things That Annoy Me

I went to Kohl's yesterday in search of some new long pants for the upcoming cooler weather.
Sizes in young mens' pants are completely out of whack.
I tried on a pair of jeans with a supposed 30" inseam that were perhaps a half inch longer than my work uniform pants which are hemmed, by a tailor, to a 33.5" inseam.
I blame this trend in oversizing on the baggy pant phenomenon.
But now instead of buying pants that are too big for you, you can buy pants that are your size but made to look like they're too big for you.
And this is not a particular company's design theory, it applied to basically every pair of jeans I tried on.
I can understand if one manufacturer's size "Large" differs slightly from another manufacturer's.
But this is not an abstract size measurement.
"34 inch inseam" shouldn't really be a ballpark estimate. It should mean that the inseam is 34 bloody inches in long!

In other news of pants;
I wear a 33" waist in jeans.
32" waists are too snug.
34" waists are so big that they bunch up like a sack of potatoes when I tighten my belt.
Old Navy is about the only place I know of that regularly offers 33" waists on their jeans.

Today in the mail, I received another offer from AARP.
The first line reads, "Our records show that you haven't yet registered for the benefits of AARP members, even though you are fully eligible."
Last time I checked, being born in 1977 doesn't make me fully eligible.
It makes me just over halfway close to being eligible.
Yet they assure me in at least one mailing a month that I'm missing out on tremendous savings, whether I'm retired or not.

B.O.H.I.C.A.

We went to T-mobile to re-up our cellular contract and get new phones today.
The phone I had my eye on had a sign saying that after a $50 mail-in rebate I could have it for $49.99.
That's more than the free Nokia phone I got last year, but hey, I have a good job, so I thought I'd splurge.
The kind man at the store, however, soon broke to me the news that I could only have the phone for $49.99 if we signed a 2 year contract.
I'm not into 2 year contracts. It's just a matter of crappy phones not lasting that long, and me not wanting to pay for "phone insurance" just incase I break the cheap piece of plastic before 22 months is up and I'm eligible to replace it - providing I sign another 2 year contract.
So the kind man at the store told me that if I wanted a 1 year contact I'd have to pay $99.99 (After rebate) for the phone I'd selected.
After some deliberation, we decided that was going to be the best thing to do.
But then another kind (even if incompetent) man told me that the phone would actually be $149.99.
I said, nicely, "No. It's not. It says $99.99 right over there."
He said we weren't eligible to replace our phones.
I told him that yes, we are. We're on a 1 year contract and it ends at the end of the month, clearly placing us in the "after 11 months" percentile that is specified on the T-mobile website.
After several minutes of waffling (indeed, he was incompetent) he told us that we didn't qualify because our monthly plan is only $59.99.
In order to qualify to replace our phones, we would have to have a contract for $70 or more.
That is why the phone would cost $149.99. We didn't qualify to replace our phones and so would not get the rebate.
Neat.
I thanked him for his time and walked out of the store.
We will be changing over to Cingular after all.
Crozer offers a 24% discount on the monthly bill and a 49% discount on phones through Cingular.
T-mobile can bite me.
Even if their spokesperson is Catherine Zeta Jones.