chatter

My room is almost complete (yeah!). The bed/chair is still in the living room waiting for the new rug to come in. I picked a contemporary rug that had all the colors in my room. I ordered two rugs from Overstock.com. One was a runner to go between the two desks. For that one i picked warm tones with stripes. I wanted these rugs really quick so I was prepared to pay extra for quick shipping. Only I could get the runner rug for quick shipping but not the rug that I was really looking forward to and was holding up the completion of my room. it cost $1 to ship a 5’x7′ rug and $16 for the small one.

According to the tracking numbers (Fed Ex for one, UPS for the other). The big slow rug was scheduled for delivery on Wednesday and the rug with quick shipping for Thursday. Really?

When all is said and done they both came on Wednesday with the smaller rug beating the big rug by a few hours.

I was excited, I could finally finish my room. I went and layed out the non slip rug thing and went to get my new rug, yippee! However, I could tell without unrolling the big rug that it was NOT the rug I was waiting for. What I got was really ugly. I went and folded up my non-stick pad and contacted Overstock.

I convinced them that they should spring for the UPS pickup which I found out many times would of cost me $8 to have UPS to come to me to get it. Sure I could of just dropped the thing off at UPS but it was the principal of the thing and it was a rolled up 5×8′ rug which is a bit unruly. They had no problem with this only they couldn’t tell me when UPS would come. For that I had to call and schedule it with UPS. The problem was every time (and I tried 4 times!) I called UPS with the shipping code, they said I had to pay $8.

I would get back on chat with Overstock and they reassured me that it was covered. By the end of the night I was frazzled. Since Overstock said it would take 2-3 days and we were going out of town on Friday, it had to be Thursday. I finally just gave up and decided to wait for UPS to come whenever they would.

That said I didn’t get the rug packed back up and of course UPS did come on Thursday but RAW missed them anyway.

Ok good, now I have proof that they were coming for free so I call UPS one more time to try and schedule but now they won’t schedule (unless I paid $8) they will come for 2 more consecutive tried and then give up. I would have to contact Overstock to have them initiate a new label. Ugggg.

Now it is Friday and we are in Fort Wayne for the Easter weekend but before we left we hung out waiting for the damm UPS guy who finally came and he brought me a big box that was the other component to completing the room, the thingy that hides the cords from the wall mounted TV.

Now the correct rug better get there fast, like on Monday.

(sorry for such a boring post, not sure why I am compelled to share this ever so exciting story)

why do I feel like such a dork when ever I visit or get visited by my sisters? Yesterday Pam and Cindy and youngins came for a belated birthday celebration for Hollace.

We made brioche (Hollace’s only requirement for a party in her honor), had cake and ice cream, I ordered Gioradano’s stuffed pizza. Hollace and Emma went off to do art, the youngest two kept themselves amused and played outside a bit. Phillip played on the Wii and was bored. He also wasn’t too thrilled that the cake or ice cream wasn’t chocolate. He is at that everything is disappointing age (10).

Had a nice visit with Pam and Cindy but I always leave the visit feeling disappointed or embarrassed or something. I have this illusion (or not) that I am a dork. I feel awkward and they are family! We spent most of the visit at the kitchen table with our iPads (or theirs at least because I let Michael play on mine) playing games and trying to get iMessage to work between us.

At a loss to what to do to keep everyone entertained, I put on a movie no one has seen yet that is family friendly and an Academy award winner– Hugo.

I shared with my sisters my neuroses on my impending room remodel. Normally I keep that in but for some reason I have been sharing that with everyone. How the hell am I going to empty this room of all the big stuff? Where am I going to put it all? And how am I going to cope with all the disorder! Oh, I know, get over myself LOL. Hey, I generally don’t get hung up on this kind of thing. Probably because I don’t do it much.

Which brings me to my next topic. I live life too safely. I avoid turmoil and stress by living in a tiny house instead of moving to a more adequate house. By having only one kid. By having only one cat. Everything stays under control and low stress. Add another kid or two, a dog and a bigger house payment and we have more chaos, less money and no time (which I am ultra protective of, today we moved the clocks up an hour and it sucks). On the flip side, a boring existence, a crappy little house with no room and a kid with no big childhood memories.

It’s been this way for 15 years and now at 48, it is bugging me. In five years the crappy little house is paid off. The thing is I am not unhappy or I know I would of done something about this by now. I think I am projecting what others might think. Deb at work mentioned last week when I put my room remodel neuroses out there that she is surprised we haven’t ever moved from that tiny house. All I really want is a place that makes sense for the treadmill and I can go on as usual. Or do I shake things up? Lets just get through the room remodels and go from there.

I got a Flickr mail this week saying Getty has picked 17 of your photos for their collection. Most of those they picked were at least 5 years old. What did they do, go one by one through 5,300 photos and 7 years?

There were a few popular ones including Toby the beer drinking cat (I had to decline that one because of its previous commitment), Jillian’s first birthday which was featured on a bag of coffee, and fried egg on green plate which was Utata Front Page and earned me $25 Blick gift card after winning honorable mention at CLC’s member show.

The ones that are scratching my head are the multicolored streamers and toothpicks. And I wonder if they know that there is a baby cow coming out of that cow in the background of the cow picture? Whatever, if any of those can make me some moolah, all the merrier.

After posting about the Getty thing on Facebook, a friend who works for a frame company emailed me that they might be interested in some of my fine art. We will see if anything comes out of that. Probably not, I have no idea what I would charge if it comes down to that.

Not sure why I titled this post with magnetic business cards. Sure I just made a few with my new magnetic laminating machine but not really a big deal.

Yesterday we went out to Barnes and Nobel (proceeded by eating out at Red Robin). Hollace had a GC to spend and some manga to fill her bookcase with. We all went our separate ways. I seen Stephen Colbert’s book and then remembered I had some gift money myself to spend so I bought it and a book on photo craft and cookbook. Even RAW came home  with a book on boats or something or other.

Speaking of RAW, poor guy, I just won’t cut him a break. He can’t do anything right and everything he does is bugging the shit out of me. It all started (well it really has been going on for a while) when he was looking for a new toothbrush and picked the one in storage that is so different that it is always mine. I am still pissed about this. I can only get this unique toothbrush in November during the work benefit’s fair at the dental insurance table. This year I finally had the forethought to pick up an extra and that idiot just used it! I am now convinced that he is clueless and doesn’t notice detail. Like the fact he keeps calling Verizon, Horizon. Really? And that he calls Vitamin D, Calcium. When filling the butter dish, he grabbed the unsalted stick I was saving for our next batch of Brioche, which is different then the regular stick–never noticed. I know, I know, get over it bitch. Maybe I will, maybe I won’t.

I picked me up a beautiful and clean Polaroid SX-70 on Amazon.com. It worked but the Impossible film I had didn’t (I knowingly bought their bad packs for a discount). With the film, normally, you have to keep light from it the first minute. But I never would do that. I finally bought a frog tongue that would help with that but right before I put it on the camera broke. It just whirrs and whirrs until I take the film out. A quick internet search found my problem and fix. Very common problem for these 30 year old problems. In order to fix it I have to rip off the bottom leather skin which was bumming me out since it was in good shape. I eventually found a guy out of Japan who sells new skins for a reasonable price (I am getting red cowhide) so now I am waiting on that.

My weekend is wrapping up and I am sad because I always overextend my to-do list and feel unachieved. I did clean off my desk and am about to update my password list so that might make me feel better. Tonight is Oscar night.