I have determined that there is an additional level of Hell that Dante neglected to mention, and this is located at the Market Basket in Burlington.
I have never seen such long lines, so few parking spots, so many old people, as in that Market Basket today. One determined old man tried to knock me over with his shopping cart. I saved myself at the last minute by speeding up and whipping around the corner to an available 4 feet of floor space.
And the pasta aisle! The only reason I came out of the pasta aisle alive was because I parked my cart in front of the Market Basket brand pasta and then wormed my way through the six or seven carts in the aisle to find my items. I passed one tiny old lady who was muttering to herself, “Can I turn around here?” I think she became frightened of the long line of carts heading toward her, and so she opted to back out rather than attempt her turn.
Be good in this life, because you do not want to end up here, searching eternally for the Guarana soda pop which they have moved to yet another aisle (”Is it in ethnic? Or soda?”) without telling any of the employees.
Dear Carter,
I was so excited to get your letter. Last week, I was feeling miserable. I mean, Chase Bank had just rejected me. Chase didn’t even want my credit, my money, or my business. I really tried to get over this rejection, but honestly, I was beginning to wonder if any credit card would ever want me again.
And yet, despite my status as a leprosy-ridden undesirable, you, Carter Franke, Chief Marketing Officer for Chase Card Services, have actually defied the wishes of your superiors and contacted me today! I finally know how Juliet must have felt that first time when Romeo stood underneath her window, yelling, “Hey, hottie, let’s you and me meet by the tombs, a’ight?”
Don’t try to deny your love for me, Carter. I know you want me. I know you want me bad. You want me so bad that you even spent a “PRSRT STD U.S. Postage PAID” envelope on me.
Even the front of your envelope was so shockingly enticing: “Earn triple points automatically!” “20,000 Bonus Points after your first purchase!” “No late, overlimit, or annual fees!”
By golly, could there have been a clearer sign that yours was the card for me? You even sounded better than the card Chase had just ripped away from my arms.
I don’t mind telling you that I could barely control myself. I had to tear open the envelope right away. I skimmed the sentences (because, as much as we love each other, even you have to admit that sometimes your prose could use a little tightening-up).
You were so wonderful to pre-approve me, and give me three points for every dollar I spend in any three of 15 categories. (Truthfully, darling, I’m not quite sure what these 15 categories are since you neglected to mention them, but I’m sure you will clarify it all in that tiny, tiny print on the back of your letter. No matter, these categories will probably be exactly the ones I want to use my “Chase Freedom World MasterCard” on. Even the name of your card just dances off my tongue!)
I especially appreciate how much sympathy you have for my status, Carter. Surely you must have known that I would be so distraught that I would have trouble focusing, because I can’t think of any other reason why you would tell me that I would earn three points on every dollar of eligible purchases seven times, just on the first page of your letter.
I am eagerly anticipating meeting my new card, since you know that one of the reasons Chase and I fell out was over the 2614 Amazon points which he brutally took from me without warning. And you’ve been so kind to emphasize that I will never lose points with you, and that there are “no complicated rules”! (Wait, did you write the entire letter by yourself, Carter? Because I still don’t know about those 15 categories.)
Anyway, Carter, I have to run now. If I hurry, I’ll be able to catch the mailman before he loses more of my bills in his truck. I’m going to stick this letter in the reply envelope you thoughtfully included for me, with “No Postage Necessary If Mailed in the United States.” (How thrillingly naughty you are, Carter! “No Postage Necessary” — pardon me while I fan myself!)
Your new BFF,
Jane
xxooxxooxxo
I woke up at 8:30 this morning for a conference call in which I understood very little, and when the call finished in less than an hour, I had more time than usual. So I decided that the dogs needed a bath.
We’re used to the reek that emanates from our Bean, but usually the other two dogs smell just fine to us. (Keep in mind, though, that we don’t have many visitors so it’s very likely that our own smell is canceling out any dog odor.) For the last month, though, all of the dogs have developed a noticeable dirt smell, and Chris and I had been trying to find a warm day to bathe them.
Chris usually washes the dogs in the stand-up shower, but this requires that Chris strip down and get in the shower with them. I’m not a fan of this method, which is why Chris is the official dog-washer and I am the official post-bath-treater and dog-laundry-doer.
Today I had time and the weather was relatively warm, so I thought I should try to bathe the dogs even though Chris was at work. I started with the easiest and smelliest dog, and grabbed Mina.
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Last night the power went out.
The power went out at about 10:45pm, which is about when we should be heading up to bed, anyway. My first thought was “Good lord, will the TiVo be safe?” and then my second thought was “I better hold on to the dogs because if they jump off the couch to the floor, we could step on them and kill them.”
While I held Mina back and kept the other two dogs on my lap, Chris walked upstairs to find my emergency pink flashlight. This flashlight is always kept in my nightstand drawer, with the two D batteries it uses carefully placed in the same drawer but not in the actual flashlight because otherwise the battery power will drain too fast (or so I like to believe). The flashlight is about twenty years old, and although I can’t remember when or how I got it, I’m guessing it was during my Ironic Pink Phase in which I frequently wore pink Converse sneakers.
I’ve never had a traumatic childhood experience involving a flashlight that couldn’t be found, so I can’t explain why I feel the need to leave that flashlight in my nightstand drawer. But moments like these are when my paranoia and messiness finally pay off, because otherwise we would have had to use the glare from our cellphones to navigate the many, many stairs in our house.
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At 5 am this morning, I apparently woke Chris up by bellowing, “It’s MY fucking PDA!” and then elbowing him very hard in the back.
At 5:01 am, Chris had finished telling me what had happened, and I was deeply apologetic. I clearly remembered dreaming about telling him that it was my fucking PDA, but the next thing I knew, Chris was yelling and I was awake, and I didn’t know anything about hitting him.
“What’s yours, anyway?” he asked. “Public displays of affection?”
“No,” I said. “Personal digital assistant…my Visor.” In the dream, Chris had used my PDA and then couldn’t remember where he put it, and I had gotten really mad because I felt he should have taken better care of my stuff.
Chris went back to sleep and I tried to let go of the anger I still felt from my dream. But just in case, I moved over to the far edge of the bed so that my flailing fists of fury wouldn’t be able to reach him.
This makes me sick, and wish even more that science was at the point where everyone was automatically born sterile, and couldn’t get it turned off to procreate until they passed some kind of test and successfully kept an animal alive and happy for several years first.
I honestly can’t think of a punishment bad enough for the parents. Giving them the death penalty, if it were possible, would be just too gentle a death for them.
After all the problems we’ve had with Amazon and Chase Bank, detailed here and here, I have come to several conclusions.
- Amazon.com customer service reps are generally polite, and willing to err on the side of the customer.
- Amazon.com-affiliated businesses have customer service reps who are generally rude, give conflicting information, and do not care much one way or the other if they lose your business. In addition to the Chase Bank issues, I previously had a problem with a magazine subscription that my sister purchased from Amazon to give to me. I spent months trying to figure out what had happened to the subscription. The people managing the subscription services were not Amazon.com employees. My other sister also bought the same magazine subscription for me, but from a cheaper online place. I had no problems with her subscription for me.
- In the future, I will only purchase directly from Amazon.com. To avoid any confusion, this means I will limit myself to purchasing books and CDs from them because it’s not worth my sanity to pore over the fine print on the Amazon website in an effort to figure out what Amazon actually handles and what they merely offer on behalf of a different merchant.
- If you are a good person and pay up what you owe as soon as you find out you owe, say, $400, Chase Bank will still permanently close your account. If you are a college student who has trouble paying in full every month, and falls more and more behind in payments, Chase Bank will not only keep your account open, but increase your credit limit.
- We will be getting rid of all credit cards we have, other than the American Express card (we get a cash rebate) and our bank’s Visa card (for the many places that don’t take Amex). Or rather, we will be getting rid of them once my husband reads this and understands that this is the only way I can keep myself from asking him, every day, to buy Chase Bank and shut it down. After this realization, we will then go through our credit reports and close any open account outside of those two cards.
Click “Read More” to find out about credit reports.
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Worse and worse.
When I last left off, I had just made a payment online to Chase Bank. The rep had told me that regardless of whether I paid through them or my own bank, as long as I set it up before 4pm, it would post on their system by midnight. I had heard from the Post Office consumer affairs department, who sent me a letter for the creditors explaining the missed mail issues we’ve had.
I called Chase on March 23, which is when the rep of the day before had said everything would post.
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By Scott Westerfeld
ONE LINE SUMMARY: A carrier of a strain of vampirism, Cal hunts peeps (parasite-positive people) and learns why he is different from them.
I must have been hiding under a rock or something, because I had never heard of Scott Westerfeld until this year. Two of his books are nominated for the Andre Norton Award given by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers who also give out the Nebula Awards. (Interestingly, Westerfeld’s wife, Justine Larbalestier is also nominated for the Andre Norton Award.)
I’ve now read Westerfeld’s Midnighters trilogy, and have been waiting (and waiting) for my library to get the first book of another of his trilogies, Uglies, which is constantly checked out.
So far, Peeps is by far the best book. Although I felt like I never knew Cal at all, the book has so much going on that I didn’t really miss him. And the book is about Cal discovering himself so it seemed normal that I didn’t know him either.
Now that I think about it, this would make a great movie. I’m not sure why it hasn’t been optioned yet, given that the Midnighters series has been optioned as a TV show by the WB, and a few others optioned as films.
Westerfeld’s also won a bunch of awards for his adult and YA fiction. This dude is prolific.
We applied for and received an Amazon.com Visa card a while ago. We used it only to buy purchases on Amazon, and we got it because Amazon.com offered points, gift certificates and $30 free for signing up. In other words, we got it because Amazon offered it to us.
This credit card, it turns out, is managed by Chase Bank and not Amazon.com.
Because we were having problems with our mail, we switched our Amazon.com Visa bill so that we would receive online-only notifications of it. And then we proceeded not to use it for 8 months.
Around Christmastime, we used it to buy presents. This, it turns out, was a very, very, bad idea.
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