Effortless Effervescence

Take 1: A big huge THANK YOU to everyone that’s offered encouragement and support in response to my decision to quit smoking. Right now I’m at 58 hours smoke-free and I’m feeling great. Yes, I still have cravings, but I’m doing a great job of telling my inner addict, “You do NOT need a cigarette to feel good. K?”

I’ve also sworn off sodas and started drinking a TON of water all day long. I used to be a no-soda kind of gal, but when my nicotine and tar habit gave me terrible dry mouth and a perpetual sore throat I eventually found myself drinking 4 or 5 20-oz sodas EVERY DAY. There’s just no need for that much sugar to go into my body every day, right? And I figure that switching from soda to water will offset any post-quitting weight gain. The only downside to drinking all this water is that I’m actually going to the bathroom twice as often now… and the people that know me will tell you it’s darn impressive that I’ve managed to squeeze EVEN MORE potty time into my life!

Take 2: PAMPERED CHEF PARTY TONIGHT! I am very, very excited. I cleaned house & went grocery shopping last night. All I have to do tonight is pick up the, um, beverages, ifyouknowwhatImean. I’ll bet the cooking demonstrations are even more fun when you’re intoxicated

And once again, I want to ask you to visit my friend Bethany’s Pampered Chef website for all your nifty cooking needs!

Take 3: We’ve been letting the kittens wander around the house for a little bit every night. So far, the reactions of our established animal residents are quite varied: Fluffy, our tortoiseshell, tells the kittens in NO UNCERTAIN TERMS that they better stay the hell away; Squeaker, our tailless tuxedo cat, is curious but standoffish; Indy, our fat orange tabby, is confused and scared; and Milo, our hyper beagle-mix is DANGEROUSLY excited about his newchew toys buddies. He wants to romp and wrestle and snuggle with them, which is super cute, but he is SOOOO much bigger than the kitties and doesn’t realize it. On more than one occasion, he’s sent Randall (the BABY orange tabby) flying with an over-enthusiastic nose-nudge. Luckily, Randall is pretty fearless and will pick fights with Milo; the other night he bit Milo HARD on the ear, and I think our dog was mystified that these chew toys actually chewed back!

Take 4: I have to tell y’all about my new favoritest wine, Twisted. So far I’ve tried the Old Vine Zinfandel and Merlot, and I have to say that this brand is a wonderful treat for sipping in the evenings while cooking, reading, or chatting with friends. I’m not good at pairing - the only rough guideline I follow is red wines with red meat or red sauces, and even that rule gets broken fairly regularly - and that’s what’s great about Twisted. They’re making wine that’s good with, well, anything. I found the Merlot fruity and sassy, the Zinfandel dry and refined. And at less than $15 for a 1.5L bottle, Twisted is a damn good deal, too. (Image courtey of the Twisted Wines website.)

Take 5: One of my (many, it seems!) pregnant girlfriends just found out she’s having a little girl. This is perfect because I have been insisting that she name her child after me ever since she found out she was pregnant. You may think this is mere vanity on my part, but you would be WRONG. I am just very sad to see that after years of being the #1 name for baby girls in America, Emily recently slipped to 3rd place. Oh, sadness! Oh, woe!

Take 6: My front flower bed is hideous. No, I am not exaggerating. When we planted this spring, we could only afford plants - no good soil, no mulch - and I thought we could skate by with out the investment of compost and landscape cover. I was WRONG. The little topsoil we had washed away in the heavy rains of late spring, and then all the plants baked in the summer sun. Oh, and the weeds went NUTS over that past month or so - when I’d walk in the front door, I could only avert my eyes in shame. I knew when we attempted to up our “curb appeal” that such an endeavor would require hard work and consistency. I’m a fairly hard worker, but I am not long on consistency, letmetellyou. And as a result, I’m pretty sure our yard is the laughing stock of the cul-de-sac. Thankfully, my kind husband spent a few minutes tearing up the weeds with his parent’s Mantis, so the beds look marginally better. It’s not a wide margin, though.

Hey, there’s always next year, right? As long as my gardening heart is pure, I know I will someday have success.

Take 7 - Audience Participation: What talent or skill do you really wish you had? I ask this because I’ve always wished that gardening came easily to me, but it just doesn’t. I find it intimidating and perplexing, though I’m getting better at overcoming my fears. I’m also not great at being organized in my housekeeping, I’m scared to death of sewing, and I’ve given up learning to knit several times because all the counting and paying attention and deciphering coded patterns was just too much work for me, LOL. I’m not as accomplished a baker as I’d like to be, but I am a damn fine cook, thank goodness. I guess, overall, I just wish I was more domestic. I know I don’t HAVE to be domestic to be a good wife/mom/woman/person, but I WANT to be.

In the same vein, I WANT to be smarter and more well-read on current events, but I honestly (this is embarrassing) find the news sooooo boooooring. Same thing with history - I have a hard time giving a crap. But I feel like I SHOULD know more stuff about the world I live in - if for no other reason than it sounds terrible to admit that I’m so ignorant!

This letter is going out in the mail today. Tell me, folks, wouldn’t you be a little upset, too?

Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.
702 SW 8th Street
Bentonville, Arkansas 72716-8611

To Whom It May Concern:

I shop at Store # XXXX in Virginia Beach on a weekly (sometimes daily!) basis. The frequency of my trips is only partly due to the convenient location of the store. In the hundreds of shopping trips I’ve made to Store # XXXX, I’ve never had an unpleasant experience. All of the associates there are friendly and helpful and the store is always clean and tidy. I appreciate the hard work that the employees do to make it easy for me to find what I need and check out quickly.

Wal-Mart’s low prices and hassle-free returns are another reason I shop there so often. There are times when I get home with my purchases and realize that the jeans don’t fit quite as well as I’d hoped or that the light bulbs I bought for the bathroom are the wrong wattage. I always return merchandise in the condition in which I received it, and I’m careful to save my receipts! So you can imagine my frustration when I was told today that Wal-Mart’s new policy (which was NOT posted at Customer Service or printed on the receipt, and which differs significantly from the policy posted on online) is to refuse any books returned more than 24 hours after purchase.

Thankfully, the CSM I spoke with accepted my return when I voiced a complaint, but I felt compelled to write to Wal-Mart’s Corporate Headquarters to call attention to how unfair (not to mention contradictory and unclear) this policy is. I love to read and I buy lots of books. Sometimes I get a book home and read a chapter or two and decide it’s just not for me, so I return it. I have NEVER had a store tell me they would not accept the return. I also purchase lots of books as gifts, and I’d hate to think of a friend being stuck with a book he or she didn’t care for because of such an unreasonable return policy!

I hope that you will reconsider this policy, or at least post a clear and complete return policy in all of your stores as a “buyer beware.” Now that I know that every novel I purchase at Wal-Mart is unreturnable, I’ll likely take my bookworm business elsewhere.

Thank you for your time and consideration,

Emily H. King

I included a printed copy of the policy from www.walmartstores.com (which I linked to above), to drive home the point. Yeah, I’m one of those letter-writing people. Just accept it, it’s part of my mental illness charm.

When my husband and I moved into a new home in February, I made a radical decision regarding our cable and internet service: after doing business with Cox Communications for five years, I switched to Verizon FiOS. I realized that I would get a few more channels with FiOS for a slightly lower price, and Verizon was running a $100 cash back promotion for new customers. The main reason I switched, though, was one too many unsatisfactory experiences with Cox’s “customer service.”

After working in a call center for three years, I have little patience for rude customer service agents. I understand that customers often take out their frustrations (about the product they’re paying for and everything else in their life) on the agent who randomly answers their phone calls, and too many unkind customers can wear an agent’s patience thin. Having been on the other end of the phone, I try to clarify that I’m not angry at the agent, but at the company they represent (when I’m calling with a complaint) and I always make liberal use of “please” and “thank you” (when calling with a routine inquiry or billing concern). You’ll get a lot more mileage out of a customer service agent if you just treat them like a human being. However, when I approach an agent with courtesy and am rewarded with a bad attitude - which is what happened over and over again when I contacted Cox - that will sour me to the entire company, and FAST.

When I called to set up my Verizon FiOS service, I was thrilled with their agent’s upbeat, friendly attitude and thorough attention to detail. In the days before our services were scheduled to be installed, I received not one, not two, but THREE calls confirming the installation appointment. The technician arrived at our house at the very beginning of the 8-hour service window Verizon had assigned me. (In contrast, Cox often gave me a two-hour service window and the technician would often show up late. The only upside to this is that Cox is kind enough to offer monetary compensation when their tech misses an appointment.) The only snag to the install itself was that the technician who’d been assigned to lay fiber optic cable in our yard apparently had better things to do that day, and so we had to deal with a temporary cable stretched across our backyard for a few days before the permanent cable was buried.

As far as the service itself goes, I’m pleased, but not blown away. The internet can be a little slow depending on how far I am from the wireless router, but for the most part it’s comparable to Cox’s speeds. The television channels are laid out differently than Cox’s, so it’s taken me awhile to figure out where my favorite TV shows are hiding, but that’s not too big a deal. If you can navigate Cox’s Digital Cable remote control & menu, you can figure out Verizon’s fairly quickly.

What has transformed a delightfully pleasant experience into grumpy blog fodder is that on both of the bills I’ve received from Verizon so far, I’ve had charges for services I did NOT order. When I call to discuss this billing problem, I am frustrated by endless levels of a phone tree that seems intent on keeping me from talking to a real person for as long as possible. (I have resorted to pressing “0″ repeatedly just to get an agent on the line. At least with Cox I could get in touch with one of their surly representatives quickly and easily.) Once I DO make contact with a real person, they’re friendly, chipper and eager to resolve my billing issue. My problem is that I shouldn’t HAVE a billing issue - all I’ve ordered in their internet and cable bundle, and THAT’S ALL I’M GOING TO PAY FOR. It’s a good thing that I’m the sort of customer who scrutinizes my bill and takes the time to make a phone call when I’m being overcharged; I have a feeling Verizon relies on the fact that many customers are NOT like me, and will pay fees for services they did not order and do not use.

So the bottom line is this: both Verizon and Cox have customer service issues, and if you’re deliberating between the two, pick the one you’ll find least annoying as well as the one with the best current promotion. I’m certainly enjoying the actual product that Verizon FiOS offers, but every time I have to weed through the options on their endless phone tree, I wonder why I thought Cox wasn’t good enough.

First, read this.

And if you are so inclined, contact Amazon to tell them you’re not interested in doing business with a company that chooses to hide GLBTQ literature.

ETA: Googlebombing FTW! Amazon Rank

ETA 2: Amazon’s response to my complaint.

Hello,

Customer Service Department
Amazon.com

Mmmmmmmm… close, but not quite there. It seems they’re still trying to say that this was a glitch, which is rather hard to believe considering reports (from rather reliable sources) to the contrary. Hey, I like to Think Kind Thoughts About Everyone, but at the same time I’ve seen a little too much asshattery in my life to buy the “oops, did we do that???” line. Yakno?