i am from...

i am from loving family
cat stevens songs at bedtime
reading books at the bus stop

i am from time with my grandparents
overnights and weeks in sweet valley
day trips to sunny rest

i am from summers with my best friend
poolside and video games,
hot dogs next to the (buttered) rolls, cheezballs

i am from grapefruit soda
macaroni and "yeasty cheese"
sneaking my brother all my beans and broccoli

i am from long drives through the country
getting "lost" on purpose
more trees and horses than people

i am from clarinet lessons
then, for longer, choir practices
always music around

i am from "freaky" friends
black eye makeup and clothes
fierce loyalty and affection

i am from celtic roots
irish, scottish, welsh
so damn proud in my kilt

i am from hippie parents
open hearts, open minds
i am so damn proud of where i am from...

fridge frustrations...

(Sorry I need to vent/complain.)

So, ordered my fridge from Lowe's on Wednesday. No problems there, ordering online was easy. I get my confirmation email in a timely manner:

Yesterday, I wait for my call "within 24 hours" to schedule my delivery. This is important since we will be gone all next week, and I can't stay home from work on Monday, but don't want to wait any longer then Tuesday to get it! So I really really needed to schedule that delivery for Tuesday the 26th.

I don't get a call. So at 4:00, I give the store a call. I'm told that the delivery scheduling people are gone for the day, but "don't worry, you'll get a call tomorrow." So, I wait. Today, no call. So 3:30 rolls around and I try calling the store again. The woman was very nice, but try as she might, should could not get one person from any of the 3 departments that might have been able to help me on the phone. Then I get disconnected.

So, I went up. I called the national Lowe's number instead of the specific store. I got a lovely, very helpful woman on the line who finally got me connected to someone from the store who could (through her sneering irritation) help me. And I find out that:

1) The 7/20 estimated arrival time in my email, is in their system as a 7/18 scheduled delivery date! (Um, how do you figure that one?!)

2) Apparently that date was in the computer as having been chosen by me, when I was never given the opportunity to chose a delivery date during check out. (Not a problem since I was going to be called in 24 hours to figure that out, right...)

3) That the "we'll call you within 24 hours of your order to schedule" was actually being treated as a "we'll call you 24-hours before we plan to show up to your house to let you know the time." (You know, because no one has to work.)


Thankful I got the delivery date changed to the 26th, but I cannot tell you how frustrated I was when I hung up. I'm not anti-Lowe's now, but I can tell you that I'm certainly not going to be using that particular Lowe's anymore. You know, the mistakes/miscommunications/break downs in Lowe's technology (whatever they are) above would have been annoying but not completely frustrating. However, being delivered by a woman (the one from the store, not the one from national who was lovely) who's voice clearly stated that I was being a pain in the ass since it was all clearly my fault, well that's a bit much to handle. Though thank goodness I did go through the hassle, because how much of a hoot would it have been if they had shown up to deliver our fridge on  Monday when we were 5 states away?!


Grrr...
(leaving for Cape Cod in about 2.5 hours, but who's counting?!)

what i've been holding inside...

The final Harry Potter movie opened last night... I didn't see it then (baby and work made that not so feasible), and won't for a few days while we get settled into our vacation, but I am beyond excited for it. And beyond sad that it is the last one.  :-(  No more books to look forward to. No more movies. I'll definitely be checking out Pottermore and hopefully going to the Wizarding World of Harry Potter, but I'm still sad.

In interest of the movie though, here's some HP stuff I've been enjoying lately:



(All 8 movies in just over 5 minutes.)

Amusing article about Why Harry Potter should be all about Hermione Granger.

(Click to embiggen.)


Any other big HP nerds out there?

is it friday yet?

Thing #1: We've known for a while that we were going to send our computer in this week to be fixed. They said it takes 8-10 days, so we figured we'd send it in this week, so that it would be gone while we were on vacation... minimizing the amount of time we were actively missing it. We still have our old laptop (which I'm blogging from, as I'm home from work today), so we figured it wouldn't be a big deal. A little slow and annoying, but not a huge deal.

Well, Trav called in Monday night to put in the order, so they would be awaiting our computer's arrival. "Lets try some things first..." says helpful guy on the computer. Fine with us! Except that nothing he suggested ended up working, including the last thing he had Trav try, which was basically completely restoring our computer to factor-new condition... aka. deleting all our stuff. Now, we were planning to back everything up again before sending the computer in, since it had been a few weeks; but we weren't planning on a frantic "hold on for 10 minutes while I do this" backup scenario.

Meegs: So, you got everything...

::computer works in background, deleting everything::

Trav: Yup, I got it!

Meegs: Music? [Trav nods]
Documents? [Nods]
Pictures? [Freezes... Errrr....]

Damn.
Luckily its only a few weeks worth, but still... bummed.

Not to mention, I can't tell you how many times I've started typing away on the computer keyboard and wondered why the hell it wasn't working. Opps.


Thing #2:  The good news, I ordered a new fridge today! I think you can guess the bad news?
For now we have just a few things down in the mini-fridge in the basement, and a big container of stuff is being stored in the freezer at Trav's work. Most of our fridge's contents are a loss, though the freezer is holding out for now. Fridge should be here two days after we return from vacation.

Annoying for now, definitely... though I am getting a bit excited for our new black fridge!! Managed to find almost everything we wanted and stay about $300 under the top end of our budget.


Thing #3:  My Gram has cancer. She's going in today for a biopsy to find out whether is contained in her liver (where they found it), or if its spread there from somewhere else. We're obviously hoping for the former, which still means a grueling surgery, but a optimistic outlook. The latter, well... we're just really hoping for the former. We'll take any prayers you can spare.

I'm choosing to remain optimistic! She is a strong woman.



Thank goodness for vacation in just two days. I'm ready to get away for a little.