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Dell can kiss my ass!

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We have a $50 Dell Gift Card that came with a previous purchase. It doesn’t expire for another eight months and is branded by AmEx. I tried to use it online last week to purchase an APC surge protector, but there was no place to enter a gift card—only coupons. I tried entering it as a coupon, but it said it was invalid.

So I tried the website listed on the card and the site isn’t there.

So I call the 800 “call to order” number and… the rep can’t use the card, either (he only has a coupon entry spot and he also gets the invalid error). He has NO idea what to do and suggests I call the other 800 # on the card.

So I call the ‘other’ American Express 800 Customer service number, explain what happened, and the rep says something to the effect of “you need to talk to Dell regarding this card, here is the sales number.” She doesn’t care I was just talking to them and they sent me to her.

So I call the Dell 800 # she gave me and am routed to sales, where I get another Dell rep that has no clue. She suggests I call back again to hopefully get a rep who will know how to deal with it! Of course, each call requires me to go through the phone number/name/address confirmation.

So I call again and…you guessed it, another Dell rep that has no clue about the gift card (“Are you sure it’s not a coupon?”). This rep suggests I need to talk to Dell’s customer service and NOT sales. She forwards me.

So now I’m waiting to talk to customer service and I’m very irritated at this point. And guess what? The customer service person says I need to talk to Sales. NOOOOOO! I told her “I’ve been with sales (home and business) multiple times and they are clueless and gave me to you!” Okay, she says, let me put you on hold and I will get a new number for you to call. Fine, whatever. Minutes later, she calls and gives me the number… to the AmEx customer service line that I called in the beginning!

How can NO ONE at Dell or American Express have any idea how to redeem a gift card?

On Monday, I decided to try my luck ordering online again. Imagine my surprise when there was now a spot to enter a gift card! Interestingly, there was apparently $100 credit on my “$50” gift card (my purchase was approximately $90, giving me a $10 remaining balance). Because this paid for the entire order, I did not have to enter a credit card.

When my boss received the confirmation email, it showed we had ordered THREE Back-UPS units for a total of $290 (although the gift card was still listed as the only payment). Of course, this was one of the only times I hadn’t printed out the final order confirmation screen… so I had to call Dell and they say “Why yes you ordered three” and I say “I did not” and I was told that since they hadn’t been invoiced yet (or wherever we actually are in the ordering/billing/shipping process), it was possible to alter the order. By the end of the call, the rep said it was too late to alter the order so we would be receiving three items and we should send back two. She gave me a case number and said she would call to check up on the items’ arrival and return.

I then learned that someone from Dell called my boss last night to say the shipping address didn’t match the billing address… Interesting, since we didn’t technically have/use/need a billing address due to the gift card. But even so, we’ve ordered from Dell multiple times with the same shipping/billing information, so why the problem now? Anyway, the rep said something to the effect of “You have ordered three items for a total of $290” and my boss said “No, we didn’t, plus we used a gift card.” He said “Do you want to use your preferred account for this?” No, we wanted to use the gift card. So he was clueless and was supposed to call back, which he never did.

Then we get an email saying that “While processing your order, we were unable to obtain credit card authorization from your bank or credit card company for this purchase.” Well, it wasn’t a credit card transaction, but I called the CC processing center to try and fix it. Of course, since it wasn’t a CC transaction, she transfers me to the gift card section. Of course, the gift card rep can’t help me (since I apparently have to redo the order, only ordering ONE unit), so she transfers me to sales—except somehow I can’t get sales or get put on hold and I hear this (after 10 minutes):

We’re sorry, we cannot continue to process your call. Goodbye.

Of course, each transfer requires me to go through the name/address/billing information. And when I called the regular 800 number back to get sales, I had to go through everything again. I told the rep I wanted to change the order to one unit. Fine. I want to use the gift card. Fine. Except that—are you ready?—he can’t get the gift card to work. He tells me he can place the order, but I will have to call the gift card people to get it working/figured out, and then I will have to call him back. And he tried to give me a case number.

At that point, I lost it. I told him to cancel the entire order and I would not be ordering.

Is it too much to ask that Dell teach their customer service reps how to use gift cards? Or to ask that reps could handle all issues, instead of being transferred eight times—and still not getting a resolution? What is the point of handing out Dell Valued Customer gift cards if it’s impossible to use them online and no one knows how to use them?

My boss (whom I was trying to order from) loves Dell, but after this experience, we will no longer be ordering from Dell. We certainly don’t feel like a valued customer after this experience.

Our poor little Maggie!

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So we noticed this weekend (while we were at a friend’s house) that every so often, she was limping—holding her back right paw off the ground. We thought maybe she somehow injured it while playing with their dog, but the next time we looked at her, she was fine—running around and playing with no problems.

We forgot about it until yesterday afternoon, when the limp was REALLY pronounced and she was hopping on three legs. We propped her up on the couch and inspected her entire leg and paw, gently touching every inch, waiting to see if she would wince or whimper (or anything to let us know that was the spot). Nothing.

Her skin looks fine, her pads look fine, her nails look fine, her ‘knuckles’ (are they knuckles in dogs?) were fine—there were no cuts, bumps, or anything that would confirm something might hurt. We inspected between her toes/pads thinking she might have a picker or something in there, but we didn’t see anything. We let her up and she was running around with no issues—the limp was gone.

This continued throughout the night—limping one minute and fine the next. I let her out of the crate this morning and she was fine. I turn around and she’s limping again. I inspected her again—and nothing.We thought maybe she broke a nail tip or something, as she’s started this new jumping thing (when she’s outside and wants to come in, she jumps about 3-4′ in the air against the sliding glass door). But you would think if she broke something, it would be painful all the time, or at the very least, when we touched the affected area. But there’s nothing.

Well…one trip to the vet and, ladies and gentlemen, we have a Luxating Patella.

In some dogs, because of malformation or trauma, the ridges forming the patellar groove are not prominent, and a too-shallow groove is created. In a dog with shallow grooves, the patella will luxate (jump out of the groove) sideways, especially toward the inside. This causes the leg to ‘lock up’ with the foot held off the ground.

In other words, a messed up kneecap and tendons. The vet popped it in and out a few times, and each time he popped it out, she cringed…then he popped it back in and it was fine. Poor girl.

We’re supposed to keep her from jumping and from using the stairs. That’s going to be fun, as she’s crated upstairs but obviously needs to go out…and typicallly has free reign of the house (and LOVES flying up and down the stairs). She is crated during the day (8-5) and I asked if we shouldn’t keep her crated more, but the vet said no, not if you can help it. He said running is fine—just no jumping or stairs. The vet also said that it really shouldn’t be a painful issue, so not to worry too much about her—she just looks really pathetic when she’s limping.

If it gets worse (or doesn’t get better), there are two surgical options—one which cuts the bone in order to keep the tendon in place and one which stiches the tendon together to make it tighter. Here’s hoping we don’t need either.

Chinese for five years in a row!

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So, as I’m sure I’ve mentioned before… after our wedding, we crashed at the hotel and then took a four-hour nap. When we woke up at 9pm, we were starving and didn’t want to eat at the Trillium (we would have had to get dressed up), so we went into town and Chinese sounded good, so we ate there.

Fast forward to our one year anniversary and without thinking we said “Let’s order from our favorite chinese place” — and only afterwards did we realize/remember we ate chinese the night of our wedding as well.

Ironically, about the same thing happened the third year — we couldn’t decide where to eat, so we picked our favorite chinese place — and again said “OH MY GOD! We did it again!”

The fourth year was planned, to keep with tradition.

This year, Tom planned to take me somewhere else we would LOVE to go, but I decided we really shouldn’t spend that much (it would have been probably $100—well worth it, but just so much money) so I said “Well, we might as well make it chinese!” and went to a chinese buffet place in town we’ve wanted to go to since we’ve lived here but haven’t made it.

So, after five years in a row, I’m pretty sure we have to do it now until we die. It’s a good thing we like chinese!

Harris Teeter rocked our world!!

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We live in a fairly small town. Yes, there’s a major military installation here, but still, it’s a small town—as evidenced by the fact that we have CRAP for grocery stores around here. We’d kill for a Meijers—or hell, even a Krogers. Here, we have Food Lion, Piggly Wiggly, and the commissary.

Um, blech.

Today, we went to Wilmington (big city an hour south) and decided to stop by Harris Teeter to grab some sushi. And oh…my…goodness. We fell in love with everything—there was so much selection of everything…an entire organic section, about 5 varieties each of nectarines and apples, two types of asparagus (they have white asparagus?), a whole section (!) of fresh mushrooms (not that I want any of them, but just the fact that they have a whole secion!), fresh herbs, homemade breads, an enormous deli, fancy schmancy bakery items, pre-made ice cream cakes, and fresh meat and seafood to die for…

We felt like we were hicks from the country ‘oohing’ and ‘ahhing’ over everything, like we’d never been to the big city before!

We filled our cart with stuff like alaskan salmon, smelt (!), jalapeno monterey jack hamburgers, crabmeat, and fresh shrimp (stuff no one in Jacksonville even carries), as well as two of the varieties of nectarines. 🙂

If you can believe it, we are actually discussing the possibility of driving the two-hour round trip to shop at this store for our groceries… as it is MILES (okay, more like LIGHT YEARS) ahead of what we have available to us locally. (Oh, and gas is cheaper there, as well!) We probably won’t end up doing it, but we will surely make it a point to go at least once a month.

Wherever we move next better have a KILLER grocery store. KILLER.

Evil Lemonade

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Oh my god.

So we had some “diet” Tropicana lemonade in the work refrigerator. I was there when it was purchased, so I knew it was diet (i.e. low-carb) so I could drink it. We actually bought two kinds, including Minute Maid 2-liters, but the Tropicana is BY FAR the better of the two. So I’ve been drinking the Tropicana all along and today, just out of coincidence, I happened to set the bottle down with the nutritional information facing me and…27 carbs per serving. WTF??? WTF??? WTF???

Turns out another employee bought some more Tropicana that WASN’T diet—and didn’t mention it—so with one lemonade I’ve been drinking TWICE THE AMOUNT OF MY ENTIRE DAILY LIMIT of carbs!!! Yes, I should have paid more attention, but if that was all that was in there, why would I even think the bottles would suddenly be something else?

The girl who bought them said “I saw you drinking one the other day and I was going to ask you if you were still on the diet but didn’t want you to get mad.” I told her she definitely should have said something!!! So, it’s been one per day each day this week. That’s 54 carbs a day x 4 days… and my limit is 30/day.

This is soooooo disheartening…

We are small dog people.

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I have always been a cat person at heart, but ever since my dad had Golden Retrievers I’ve had a soft spot in my heart for them as well. When Tom wanted to get a dog, we both agreed that a golden would be great—except for all the hair! After all, we have four cats that shed—we didn’t really want a dog that shed that much. So, we ended up with Maggie…and she’s perfect.

But I digress.

Our friends Tom and Karen have a lab/boxer mix that Maggie just LOVES to play with. We often take her over for a play date, and they’ve also babysat Maggie twice now when we had to leave town. Well, this past weekend it was our turn to babysit Venus at our house.

We have just one word to say: WOW.

Where to begin?

Those two had SO much fun and played SO hard that, other than putting them in the crate to sleep at night, the first time they took a nap was Saturday at 3! Unfortunately, it only lasted until 3:30 when Tom opened the garage door and they both woke up and started playing again. And I should mention that Maggie generally is a pest—she is constantly bugging Venus, either by biting her legs, trying to bite her tongue, or just generally pawing at her to get her attention (in short, a true little sister). Venus is very good with her and takes all that she dishes out, although a few times she tried to get away by laying between me and Tom. (We also put Maggie in her crate once when Venus seemed to be getting annoyed.) They are just so totally cute to watch…

Maggie and Venue with rings

These interlocking rings are the best!! Venus actually had them and Maggie loved them so much we bought her a set of her own…just in time for Venus to come over and play! For awhile Sunday afternoon, they were racing around the living room, down the hall, downstairs, then back upstairs, around the ottoman, then back down the hall…repeat ad nauseum. If Venus wasn’t on Maggie’s heels, Maggie would stop, turn around with the rings hanging from her mouth, and wait for Venus to follow…which she inevitably did!

Unfortunately, Maggie was sooooo sad when Venus went home. She spent the first 10 minutes looking for her (looking in the room where her crate had been, looking in the other rooms, looking out the window) and then grabbed their favorite play toy (the two interlocked rings) and crashed on the couch, looking the most sad and dejected I’ve ever seen her:

Maggie sad

Poooooor little Maggie. Seeing her that sad and pathetic almost made US cry! Of course, we’d love to get another Boston Terrier, but six animals??? Egads.

All that aside, Venus is a handful. Tom would know how much she weighs, but I can barely keep hold of her, and if she wants to come inside there’s really no stopping her (I don’t know how Karen does it). And big dogs slobber. A lot. And maybe Venus is just messier than other dogs, but when she drinks, she manages to drip all over the floor as she walks away. I about broke my neck one time as I walked across the kitchen floor, hit a puddle of water, and my feet slipped out from under me and I came crashing down onto the tile. And this was just after I had dried of the floor two minutes before.

We love Venus and welcome her back…but babysitting her has definitely (DEFINITELY!) taught us that we are small dog people…

YouTube uploading email addresses rant

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Either I wasn’t paying close attention, or they were not upfront…. I just joined YouTube (because I wanted to be able to vote on videos) and I saw where you could upload emails from your address book and I thought “Hey, that’s cool” so I did it and lo and behold—they send a freakin’ invite to everyone! WTF? I definitely would not have authorized that!!!

GRRRRRRRRR

I hate that I had a momentary lapse of judgment. I hate that, for a brief moment, I thought it would be cool to be able to easily send links to videos right from the site.

I am usually much smarter than that.

WOOHOO! Best news this year!

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Tom just called to say “Do you want some good news?” Um, hell yes… He told me that he is no longer scheduled to go to Iraq for a year! It will now be six months!!! WOO HOO!!!

Long story short, technically you can only stay at a duty station X amount of time, and he would reach that amount of time during that deployment. So, he can’t really go over if he could technically be moved. Of course, it’s not guaranteed he’ll be moving (i.e. we could be forced to move to the west coast, in which case we’d be getting out for sure) but it’s a possibility.

But anyway, I’m not thinking about all the detail right now…I’m just concerned with the fact that it won’t be a year!

News you don’t want to hear.

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Tom has about a 98% chance of heading to Iraq in February.

He just switched jobs on base (something you have to do every X number of years) and now he’s considered deployable again. At first it was “between him and another Captain” but he just called to tell me it’s for sure.

Of course, I say “I will believe it when I see the paperwork” — because the last time he was supposed to get deployed, details changed every other week. But we’re pretty sure it’s really going to happen.

The worst thing? It’s supposed to be for a year this time. Again, I say “I will believe it when I see the paperwork” but I have a sinking feeling already…

Whew! Finally!

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Another entire day without the internet at work…it’s amazing how much we rely on computers! (And it’s amazing how little we can do around the office without the internet.)

Not only was our modem blown, but we discovered that the router was ruined with the power surge as well. Tom came in and reset everything (including buying the new router) and got us back up and running around 4pm. Then it was a mad rush to get some stuff done before the end of the day/the end of the week.

An entire workday without the internet.

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Wow, a whole day without the internet at work. THAT SUCKED. There was a cable outage in the area, and then we never got back online. After 45 minutes with tech support, they determined that it’s a bad ethernet port in the modem…and of course they couldn’t manage to get a replacement to us by the end of business. So, my coworker and I literally played computer games all day—everything we do in our office is internet-based so we couldn’t do anything but answer phones.

No matter what you may think, it’s hard to waste a day playing Freecell. Trust me.

Wow! Someone bought a photo of mine!

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http://www.fotolia.com/id/816376/partner/94600

So for those of you who have visited Hudson Ink lately, you can see that I’m redesigning the site—and I have a new “eye” logo. Well, the site I purchased the photo from is Fotolia…and I also uploaded two of my own photos, just for the heck of it basically. I never expected anything to come of it…but I just got an email that someone purchased my photo! And it wasn’t even my favorite one! 😉

lilypad with floating candles

We’re home.

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I will most likely post more later, but suffice it to say we’re home. It was an emotionally draining (I hesitate to say vacation…) time, but we did have some great times with family.

Late night calls are never good.

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I didn’t have my cell phone by the bed last night so we missed a call at 1am. We both assumed it was a wrong number, because who would be calling us at 1am? (We’ve had a few wrong numbers lately.) Unfortunately, someone WAS calling us…with bad news.

My grandmother passed away sometime last night, and my dad and stepmom were driving home from the U.P. (where they were on vacation) when they called. So, we actually found out about 7:30 this morning.

There was a mad rush to make travel arrangements, trying to find plane tickets that weren’t $800 a piece (damn small town airport). We are flying home tomorrow…not quite the way we wanted to get to see everyone.

I think hell just froze over.

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So I was downstairs and all the cats were congregating around the food bowl, whining (not entirely sure why, as they had plenty of food). Surprisingly, Boots was right in the middle of them all…and there was NO hissing, NO swatting, NO stalking—NOTHING. An amazing feat in itself, as they typically hate each other. Or so I thought…

Because then I saw something that made me rub my eyes and shake my head in disbelief.

Charlie was…are you ready?

Charlie was LICKING Boots on the head. And Boots was letting her. And this went on for a good 20 seconds. Then Boots rubbed up against Fuzzy and wandered off.

Oh my.

I think they’re finally friends. And it only took seven months.

We should have named her Shadow.

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Maggie is our new shadow (and actually has been for some time). She can be laying/sleeping/resting peacefully in her window seat or on the couch or in our bed, and unless she’s SLEEPING and dead to the world, she gets up and follows us if we leave the room. It’s cute, of course, but when you can tell she’s tired and wants to sleep, it’s sort of pathetic looking (with those tired little eyes trotting after you) so we end up putting her in her crate if we’re busy about the house, just so she can sit still for a bit. (Most times she falls right asleep and other times she just sits there and looks at you. If that’s the case, we let her out again.)

This morning she surprised me…usually you have to tell her to get in her crate when it’s time to leave for work… but after she ate her breakfast and did her business this morning, she ran upstairs and went right into her crate! Without me telling her to! Wow! So I took advantage and locked her in. She’s already sleeping again…and soooo cute!!

Wow. Just, wow!

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So awhile back, my dad asked me where he should send something to make sure I get it. I assumed it was something of value, as he apparently didn’t want it sitting on our porch, so I said my office. This morning, I received a cryptic email saying “expect the package, you must wait to open it with Tom, and check out the numbers.”

Huh?

What?

Let me tell you, I was going NUTS waiting for it—and hoping it would arrive today instead of having to wait until Monday! I had no idea at all what it could be. NONE! So I was thrilled when the UPS guy brought it in. It was probably 2′ x 3′ x 3″ — and I still had no idea (it wasn’t that heavy and it shook a little bit).

I called Tom to tell him it had arrived and he had better stop on his way home!! Both Jane and Dick (my bosses) offered to open it for me, since there appeared to be no restrictions on anyone else opening it. I politely declined.

So Tom walked in about 3:00 and we tore into it. Imagine our total and utter surprise/shock/amazement to find this….

Kinkade print

A 12×16 signed and numbered canvas (32/1450—to commemorate my age when I received it!), Autumn on Mackinac Island, by Thomas Kinkade.

Turns out Linda was the driving force behind the purchase… she went into a local gallery and saw the sketch of the soon-to-be-completed piece and thought it would be perfect. Dad actually describes it much better:

Originally, we were in Petoskey for one of my appointments. When Linda picked me up after my appointment she said she wanted to show me something. Well we went to the T.K. gallery and she showed me a sketch of it. There were no prints even produced yet. She said what do you think of it and I said It would probably be very pretty when done but where were we going to hang it. She said, “It’s not for us silly, I want to give it to Jen for her birthday.” I immediately got up off the floor and said if it means that much to you, then it is a done deal. Needless to say, we still have the sketch (personally signed-maybe copied. I am not sure) and you “may” someday inherit it. T.K. was actually in Pestoskey but because of schedules we could not go meet him. But he had been to Mac. Island to make the sketch!

I am still floored. We are going to go get it framed this weekend and then find the perfect place to hang it (I have my ideas, but it means rearranging some things).

Our first bike ride in 5 years!

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So Tom and I both got our bikes in working order (mine took quite a bit more work than his did)…but that’s what you get when you don’t use the bike and let it sit outside or in the garage for five years. The lady at the bike shop was thrilled, though, saying “I don’t get to work on these old bikes that often!” But, the consensus was it was better to fix the better quality/older bike than to buy a cheaper quality/newer bike.

So tonight, it finally stopped raining long enough to go for a bike ride. And… oh my. It sucked!! I mean, it felt great to be riding again, but first the seat was to high. Then it was too low. Then it was okay, but not perfect. And then I remembered that I hated the handlebars because you have to lean way over (even with the seat where it’s supposed to be) and it puts a lot of pressure on your hands/wrists…actually painful! We rode around the neighborhood (probably about two miles) and it was all my hands could take. I hope it’s something that my body adjusts to, otherwise it was a big waste of money getting it fixed… (I remember wanting to switch out the handlebars before, but it was going to be fairly expensive…and since we just spent a bucketful to get it ridable, I don’t want to spend any more on handlebars.)

Stay tuned!

This was SO not a good morning.

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Yes, I cheated on my diet for three days, but it was a vacation weekend you know? But how the $%*@ did I gain 14# in one week? That is insane. I know my weight fluctuates anyway, but there is no way in hell I gained 14#. I have never ever gained 14# in one week IN MY LIFE.

And Tom? He took Maggie in for a vet appointment at 7:15 this morning. Except that, oh, they meant 7:15 *PM* and never once #%$&@# mentioned that fact. How the hell were we supposed to know they were open this one day until 8pm? That’s not their normal schedule, ever, and 7:15am made a lot more sense than 7:15pm. So Tom waited, in the parking lot, from 7am-8am until they got there, only to have their attitude be “Oh.” No apology or anything.

Our wedding weekend in DC

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There was too much riding in the car (about 7 hours each way).

There was too much traffic (I will NEVER live in or near a large city—you couldn’t pay me enough to live in or near DC—it took us 1:30 to drive the last 20 miles).

There was not nearly enough visiting… Of course you never get to spend any time with the bride and groom, but….the other friends that were going to be there (that we haven’t seen in three years) never showed up!!!!! (To be honest, we were really ticked off, although of course we hope nothing serious happened.)

The wedding was nice, but nothing out of the ordinary—although we were a little surprised by the DANCERS during the wedding. It was announced there was going to be a “musical interlude” and out of nowhere, these six dancers came zooming down the aisle, dressed in white leotards and shimmery white tops with scarves attached to their fingers. Oh. My. We looked on in utter disbelief. We are still trying to figure out why anyone would do that….and we found out at the reception that it was a surprise by the bride to the groom. Hoo boy.

The reception was a reception. Since our friends didn’t show up, we knew exactly two people at the wedding—the groom and the best man (my old manager and my old regional manager). So you can imagine how little talking and visiting we did. Oh, and did I mention we were two of the five white people there? Not that it matters, of course, but it was just funny. So we were looking forward to drinking and dancing and whatnot, but the reception was over by 7:30 and we never even got to dance—pretty much every song they played was some line-dancing “hustle” type song. Blech. Even the groom said “This is NOT my kind of music.” The best part of the reception, however, was when the groom sang to the bride—he has a GREAT voice and it was a total surprise to her—and I love to hear him sing so that was cool.

The best part of the whole thing, though, was how tickled the groom was that we had come. We were never FRIENDS, per se, as he was MY MANAGER, but he is one of my favorite people ever and he is just such a great guy that I would go to the ends of the earth for him. And that’s saying a lot.

Tracey Wedding DC

So, we left the reception and went to Chevy’s where I had THE BEST DAMN MARGARITAS OF MY LIFE (we had dined there the previous night and I fell in love with the margaritas, so we had to go back), plus hubby and I each did a $9 double-shot of Don Julio tequila just to see what good tequila tastes like. (I say it was a double shot because the bartender’s shots were GENEROUS.) Well, going down it wasn’t so bad, it was actually quite smooth, but the aftertaste was still pretty much tequila.

We got to stop at Ikea on the way home and spent money on stuff we certainly could have lived without, but you know how that goes. I had to drive part way while Tom napped, and I am reminded just how much I hate driving—there are so many stupid drivers I had a headache within minutes. I was doing 10 over in the slow lane getting passed by people doing at least 20 over, then those same people slow down and I pass them, then they’re on my ass and trying to pass me on the right and cutting people off because they refuse to slow down, and then people cutting me off from passing because god forbid I get in front of them. I get sooo frustrated. I have to live somewhere without that nonsense.

And now we’re back at home and we got Maggie back from friends and all is right with the world.

Web design just sucks me in.

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Today at work, I was updating our website, and before I knew it, it was 5:30. Whoa! I am always out the door at 4:59—I totally couldn’t believe it when I looked up and it was 5:25 (I thought it was 4:25!).

Then after dinner I started working on a client’s site and before I know it, about two hours have passed.

I really should have gone to bed then, when Tom did, but I thought “I really want to mess around with my new site a bit” and one little project leads to another and I’m just gonna fix this one last thing and oh wait, I see something else I can change quick and before you know it, it’s 1:29am and I’m still up!

OH MY GOD! I am going to be dead tomorrow!!

Our new phone situation, part 2.

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WOW! The transfer is complete!! I know, we were surprised as well…so much for the 2-4 week turnaround time—it was one week! Now I just have to remember to keep my phone on and charged!! It might take some getting used to, so if you ever don’t get me, remember to try Tom!!!

Our new phone situation

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Long story short, we are getting rid of our landline and we now are just using cell phones (like Jim and Beth!). Fortunately, we were able to port our landline to one of the cell phones, so it’s one less number to remember and/or reprogram!

It will take 2-4 weeks for our home number to transfer, so in the meantime, all calls to that number will be answered through our regular phones…so there’s really no change on your end. Tom has a new number, though—and the nice lady let us choose from a screen of potential numbers, so it’s somewhat easier to remember than it could have been.

Hiding Boots

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She loves to play in and/or hide in any sort of box or container or packaging that we leave on the floor. Today it was a case of water. Yesterday it was an empty 12-pack. It’s so adorable!

hiding boots

Our faux garden!

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For the first time ever, we have plants (and herbs!) growing!! (I call it a faux garden, because it’s not really a garden, but rather a hanging planter and a pot.) Anyway, I have always wanted to grow basil and tomatoes, but I’ve never been successful—until now! It’s all Aunt Marge’s fault—for Christmas, she got us these cool hanging planter things, and since we were already planning on planting tomatoes, we figured we might as well plant some other stuff!! So, we have a few different varieties of tomatoes, as well as some sweet peppers and I think even one hot pepper.

tomatoestomatoes

On the deck, we have basil and chives. The basil just amazes me. I’ve cut a bunch off for pesto a few times (yummmmm!), but it keeps coming back (I know it’s supposed to do this, but it’s still neat to watch!). Today I plan on making some basil butter and basil oil. I can’t wait to have fresh tomatoes with fresh basil—and get some real mozzarella from Sams Club!

basilbasil

Our first day at the beach!

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Maggie beach

After being here three years, we finally decided to go to the beach (other than to take out-of-state visitors there to show them the ocean)! We went with a friend of ours (Jen) and her daughter (Isabelle)…and we took Maggie! We had a great time—Jen was thrilled because she actually got to swim (while either Tom or I watched Isabelle), Maggie had fun snarfing in the sand and playing in the water (plus, as a bonus, she got really tuckered out so she slept really well last night), and we all enjoyed an absolutely picture-perfect day with the most perfect weather (I think it may have been 85 at the most). The only downsides are that I lost my sunglasses (I’ve always worn them in the water, but a big wave caught me off guard) and we all got a little red. But, we had a good enough time that we definitely want to go back again!!