when two old women go shopping together

Today was another nutso day at work, and Sunny had been away for business last week so had nothing in her fridge. And so we decided to pick up some groceries at lunch. This led one colleague to crack that we were two old women who go out shopping together. I'm not sure how said colleague got from "they both need groceries" to "they are clearly old and lonely," but then he never claimed to have passed the logic section on the LSAT.

At any rate, the store we went to was one that prides itself on its self-serve check-outs. I, painfully self-aware as always, refused to use self-serve as I know I have the patience of a mule worm some animal with no patience. Sunny, ever the technology optimist, went the self check-out route with the reusable, cloth bags she'd brought along. I got through the check-out in two minutes with a few more bags to add to the landfill. When I got to Sunny's side, she was swearing under her breath. Apparently, the self-serve check-out operates on a complicated system of weights and measures and anything other than plastic bags sets it into a tailspin, much like me trying to do the conversion between imperial and metric. She called the woman in charge over to help fix the problem more than once. The woman not only fixed the problem, but also deleted the food item Sunny had scanned just before the problem struck, more than once. Self-serve turned into extremely slow-serve, and not the good kind that means yummy ice cream. Or is that soft-serve?

Forget the patience; today I may have the brains of a mule worm some animal with few brains. Perhaps that's what you get when you're old and decide to go shopping with your equally old friends.

Rainy

we've got you covered

I need to rant about insurance for a minute.

I am beginning to think it's the biggest scam going. Really, is playing the lottery any different? I pay both my car and house premium every single month and what does it get me? Nothing, that's what.

My first complaint is about my car insurance premium. I am accident free. I am ticket free. My car is 3 years old. I do not drive a sports car. My car has not been modified. I do not street race. I am not a 20 year old boy; in fact, I now qualify for an age discount because I am over 35 (sheesh). I would assume that given all of these factors, my premium would go down, or at least stay the same as it was last year. Nope. It went up by $120. Explain this to me please. Does this make sense to you?

Second complaint - house insurance. I spoke to the adjuster this morning about my roof problem. You remember, it's leaking like a sieve. It's so bad, I don't even want to go into the bathroom at all. This presents a problem because I don't have another bathroom; I'm sure I have kidney stones in my future.

Anyway, the guy was an ass. Of course he was, 'cause I have a problem that might require them to lay out some cash. This guy went on and on about how I probably wasn't covered for this reason and that reason - the roofing guy hasn't even come to look at the roof yet, so how would he know. During the course of this conversation, I started wondering what circumstance they would cover and I'm beginning to think there isn't one. I'm sure they are going to come up with every excuse they can not to cover my roof. We'll see what happens; they don't know who they're dealing with.

At the very least, I can afford to get my roof fixed without insurance money. Some people aren't so lucky. I'm sure there are plenty of Katrina victims who have something to say about the insurance premiums they paid regularly. Is it too much to ask the insurance companies to live up to their end of the bargain since they expect us to live up to our end?

Sunny

price check, cash 3

I think I may have mentioned that I have a leak in the roof above my bathroom. Don't let the word 'leak' fool you; it is pretty much raining in my bathroom. It's not in one place either, it's in many places. Anyway, I needed to get some cheap towels to put on the floor to soak up all the water, so I went to the dollar store.

This particular dollar store is part of a national chain. The name of the store has the word 'dollar' in it and the tagline for the store - on all of their signs - is 'everything for a dollar'. I don't go to dollar stores that often, but I get the general idea; whatever I buy is going to cost me a dollar. Ok.

I picked up about 10 towels and headed to the cash. When I got to the front of the line, the cashier looked at me and said, 'you know each of these is a dollar, right?' Ummm. Really??? Can I think about this for a minute? Sheesh. wtf. I don't know if I look particularly stupid or not, but why on earth would she ask me that? I have no idea.

Sunny

i can see my food through the smoke... check.

Last night Sunny and I went out to a nice little bistro with another friend. I said bistro, so it wasn't a crappy $5 meal. Well, before any of us had arrived there was some sort of massive kitchen incident. I'm not sure if the restaurant lacked a ventilation system or whether nobody thought to deploy it, but by the time we arrived, the smoke was heavy. Part way through the meal my eyes were dry and itchy. By the end of the meal, I couldn't wait to get back to the cold outside. Sunny actually turned down some intensely yummy-sounding desserts in her haste to leave the premises. I told the waiter we had to go because we just couldn't take it anymore, and he said, "Yeah, I don't know what happened in the kitchen, I guess something."

Everything on my body reeked. It all went straight into the laundry basket when I got home. Our friend said her hair still smelled this morning.

This evening I had a lovely dinner out with other friends. After the smoke-filled experience last night though, the crappiest of food would probably have made cordon blue status with me tonight.

It left a bad taste in my mouth that nobody offered an apology.

RainyBow


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SunnyShine note: Ugh. Was so disgusting. The dogs had their noses suctioned to me when I got home; I'm sure they thought I had leftovers in my pocket. Next day I had a gigantic smoky-restaurant headache too. So crappy.

at the car wash

The salt from the city's winter clean-up is killing my car and I've been trying to run through a car wash. Every time I try, something goes horribly wrong.

In the latest attempt, I pulled up to the pump, filled up with gas and chose to pay for a car wash at the pump. When I finished filling the tank, no receipt came out with the code for the wash. I went into the kiosk.

Me: Hi, I bought a car wash at the pump and no receipt came out, so I don't have a code. Can you please give me one?

Employee: Well, it didn't give you a receipt because the car wash is broken.

Me: Oh, OK. But I paid for a car wash. You should probably disable that function.

Employee [completely disinterested]: Yeah.

Me: OK, well, can you refund me the cost of the car wash?

Employee: No, I can't, but I can give you a code. [Jots something down on a piece of paper and hands it over.]

Me: This doesn't even look like a code, and I will definitely lose it. Can I please just have a refund?

Employee: Well, you bought it on your credit card and I can't refund to your credit card.

Me: Ummm... why not?

Employee: I don't know how and there's nobody else here.

Me [laughing]: OK, well, can you just give me the amount back in cash then?

Employee: I'm not supposed to.

Me: OK, but now I'm getting no car wash and I'm not getting any money back. That seems a tad unfair. I suggest you refund my money in cash.

Employee [big sigh, counting cash laboriously]: Oh, OK.

Is it really this hard?

RainyBow

i'm a ralph nader wanna be

I'd like to recap the major themes of my week's menu:
Monday: fried food
Tuesday: cake
Wednesday: a delightful combination of Hallowe'en candy and alcohol
Thursday: an even more delightful combination of Hallowe'en candy and fried food

Everything has been brown except some of the many M&M's and maybe the icing on the cake.

Today is Friday and my body has been aching for brown again, so I went down the street to a brand new little take-out joint. I walked by earlier this week and was intrigued by the aroma a la McDonalds. Plus the name of the place is something like "El Crapolatorium," which is not only intriguing but intriguing in an ethnic way. Hola, amigos!

There was a very large and sweaty man working today and he was super excited to see me. I ordered my food for take out and then this conversation ensued:

Amigo: And we have a special opening month promotion! Here is your ticket for our draw for $500! You put one side of the ticket in this box and keep the other one for yourself.

Me: How come there's no place for me to put my name and phone number? How are you going to contact the winner?

Amigo [puzzled]: Contact the winner?!

Me: You know, to tell him or her the good news.

Amigo: Oh, no, we're not going to do that. We're going to pick the winner, then post the number of the ticket and the person can come back and show us the ticket and we'll give them the money.

Me: So when is the draw? When do people have to come back to see if they've won?

Amigo: Sometime next month.

Me: So you don't even have a date for the draw? So what are you telling people, to just come back sometime? That doesn't make any sense. What if the winner doesn't know when to come back and never claims the prize?

Amigo: Well, then we just pick a new prize winner.

Me: But then how long are you giving people to claim the prize?

Amigo: I don't know, some time.

Me: Do you have any contest rules and regulations that you can give people when they ask?

Amigo [sweating a little bit more now]: Um, no.

Me: But, you know, legally, you need to offer people somewhere they can go to get the contest rules, like when the draw is and how to claim the prize and what happens if the first winner doesn't claim.

Amigo: But people can just come to me.

Me: You know this comes across as a scam, right? You should probably check in on what you need to do to make this contest legit. I can give you some resources online that will tell you what you need to do. Until then you might want to stop handing out these tickets.

Amigo [eyeing the people who've come in through the door behind me nervously]: OK, well, enjoy your food.

Thankfully the food kinda sucked because I get the feeling I won't be welcome back there. I wouldn't be surprised if that guy's currently pulling my photo off their surveillance camera and putting it into a notice behind the counter. This feels like the fortune cookie letter fiasco. Boo.

RainyBow

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SunnyShine note: How did I miss cake?