It was suppose to be this past weekend, but since everyone here was sick, we postponed it until the 14th. And I was thinking of moving it to earlier in the day (from 3p to 11:30a) since that would work with everyones previous engagements.

I had all the plans set in my head. My sister was going to come up on Friday to help with the prep and we were going to take Ian swimming after Jesse got out of work.  Then my sister reminded me that I had a PC show that night.  In Marshall.  Where mom was going to babysit Ian.

Shit, I forgot about THOSE plans.  Ian and I were going to hit the in-laws during the day on that Friday since they couldn’t make his party.  Mom was going to watch Ian for the show and keep him over night.  I was going to come back home, sleep in my own bed, and prep for the party the next day.  Mom would bring him home in time for the party.

There is no way we could have done the party earlier on Saturday if I was going to be gone pretty much the entire day before.  So the party gets moved back to the original time slot.  Then that doesn’t help the issues of my sister having to drive the 4 hours home after the party and my mother having to be BACK in Marshall by 6pm.  Plus the in-law should wouldn’t be able to make it.  Damnit.

So I started thinking about moving it to this Sunday, and that brought up a bunch of the same issues.  Seriously, why is it this hard to have a party for a 2 year old?  All I wanted to do was celebrate his birthday with family and make up for the lousy birthDAY he actually had (with all of us being sick) and for some reason, fate isn’t letting me do it.

Basically, this is kind of a good thing for Ian.  Instead of having the one party, he’s getting three now.  One with each grandparent.  Something I have been trying to avoid, but what do you do?  We’re going to get together with the in-laws for Easter and he’ll get presents then.  We were already celebrating March birthdays at my moms in a couple of weeks, so we can include his then.  The only odd ball out was my father, but he’s going to come up this weekend, along with my sister (who is going to at a hotel with a pool) and we’ll celebrate by the pool.

This plan actually works out better for us since we won’t have to get up at the butt crack of dawn on the 21st to be in BC by 8am during a weekend where I have A LOT going on and I won’t have to provide all the food for any of the celebrations.  Doing it this way makes it simplier and cheaper, but it wasn’t what I wanted.  I’m annoyed on many levels right now.  I wanted to give Ian a birthday party.  Oh well, I’ll throw in a half-birthday party in August.  He can invite friends over for that one.

In November, when my razr had a heart attack and stopped working, I called them to see if we couldn’t switch service to the blackberry we had laying around so we could wait until after Christmas to get me a new phone.  They said sure, no problem and we went ahead with the switch.  Before I agreed for them to do that, I made sure and asked (multiple times) that we wouldn’t have to add the data package (since it’s an additional $50 a month) since I don’t use my phone for anything other than being a phone.  They still said sure, no problem, you don’t need the data package with the blackberry if you don’t want it.  Great, so we had them make the switch.

Fast forward to January when Jesse and I took a closer look at my charges ($100 for the last 2 months) and realized that I wasn’t going over my minutes (which is what I thought I was doing) and found out that we were indeed getting charged for the data package and my phone had been doing system updates every day for 10 minutes.  I call Alltel again and asked what’s up?  I found out that I can’t have a blackberry without the data package, it’s mandatory.  I will admit, we had heard this prior when Jesse initially bought the blackberry in 2006, that’s why we asked multiple times in November if we needed it or not.  When I asked why the guy in November told me I could do it, she had no clue. I was pissed.  If I had known this, I wouldn’t have had them switch the phone over and I told her that.  Of course, this all came up right after I had spent the entire afternoon trying to get into my account via their website.

Yeah, did I mention that clusterf*ck?  Ever since they upgraded their system sometime last fall, I had not been able to get into my account.  Every time I went to log in, I would get an error saying my password wasn’t correct and then get locked out of the system.  It would take me four different calls to four different departments to get it unlocked and allow me access.  The first time this happened, I was okay with it; however, after the second, third, and fourth time, I started getting annoyed.

Unfortunately for the lady who I had talked to in early January about my account, I had just finished dealing with this and was in no mood for oops, his bad, but that’s the way it was.  Needless to say, we canceled the phone on the spot.  Thankfully, the person I finally ended up talking to was really helpful.  They said they would adjust the account as much as they could and send me a final bill.

Fast forward to today and Jesse getting a call on his blackberry saying that I had until tomorrow to contact Alltel regarding said final bill.  I haven’t received one at this point and I thought they needed some clarification as to where to send it.  I go to their website to find the customer center number and find out that I since there isn’t service in my area, I get redirected to Verizon (Alltel just merged with Verizon).  I talk with a guy at Verizon and he works helps me get connected with Alltel.  Once I’m with Alltel, I get switched to three different departments before they finally tell me we can’t send you a bill, you don’t have an active account, would you like to pay it now? No I don’t want to pay it now.  I’m not going to pay for something when I haven’t received a bill for it.  They keep saying we can’t print out a new bill for you because there isn’t an account to charge for it.  Are you telling me, that if I was a customer and I hadn’t received a bill, you would charge my account for it!?  WTF.  I’m pissed (yet again).  I ask to talk with a supervisor because I find it ludicrous that there is no way to print off a bill for a customer who wants to pay it but doesn’t want to pay without seeing a bill first.  I mean, is that an unreasonable request?  I finally asked the supervisor who I need to talk with to tell them I’m not paying the bill since they refuse to send me a bill and she had the audacity to tell me she was trying to help me.  The best part about it all, they were able to print one out because she asked if there was a fax number they could send it to.  I don’t have a fax number and told her that and all she could say was that’s the best we can do. Seriously?  I figured, if they could fax it, why not email it, right?  I told her that she could email me a copy and that would work, but I’m sorry, we don’t have that capability.  Are you seriously telling me that you can fax a bill, but you can’t email one?  A fax requires you to print something off; email doesn’t.  Finally, she said she would try and email something, but she couldn’t guarantee anything.  I told her fine, try and email it, but I’m not going to pay for a service when that service can’t send me a bill for it.  I also told her that if I didn’t have a bill by tomorrow, then I would be calling the Michigan Better Business Bureau and filing a formal compliant (that they were trying to charge me without sending me a bill first).

Guess what, not 10 minutes after hanging up with her, she miraculous was able to email me a copy of my bill.  Oh my god, they found a way to print off a bill and it didn’t take them 24 hours to do it!

Seriously, I am done with Alltel.

I’ve become somewhat of a techie thanks to Jesse.  I use the internet for everything.  Whether it’s looking up restaurants, getting directions to someplace, looking for suggestions & recommendations, or reading a newspaper – I am hooked into my laptop way more than I am to any print or televised media.  So when I joined up as a consultant for the Pampered Chef in December, I couldn’t wait until I was able to have a personal PC website once I qualified.  Everyone is using the internet these days and it would have been stupid of me not to get one.  So, okay, I have to pay $100 a year to have it, but once I get rolling, it’ll so pay for itself.

I’m sure everyone knows about my recipe sharing site – Open Source Cook (OSC).  Recently I got the idea of compacting the two ideas together.  There were a few things I wanted to do that the PC personal website wasn’t allowing me to do (i.e. creating a newsletter and sending it out – I can send out emails, but they have character limits).  So I started adding links on OSC from my personal PC website and various products.  The site was also completely redesigned so it would look a bit more professional rather than just another blog.  It looks great.

Then I got a few comments/emails regarding my linkage.  I was told I was violating PC policy by linking to my personal website.  I was flabbergasted.  I’m used to working with authors and publisher for Literary Escapism and they are generally eager for me to plaster their products all over the place.  The idea that the Pampered Chef frowns on that was mind boggling.  So I contacted my director and she sent me a portion of the policy regarding this.  Straight from the policy and procedures:

Consultants of every level are prohibited from linking to their Pampered Chef® Personal Web Sites. This includes both sponsored links and banner ads that you pay for, as well as non-sponsored links that you don’t pay for. For instance, if a friend posts a link on their family’s Web site to your Personal Web Site, you would be in violation of this policy. Additionally, any other form of advertising on the Web is prohibited.

So basically, I am not allowed to promote my own PC business on the web; the only way I can spread the word about it is through word of mouth communication or print media. Seriously? Are they really that far behind the innovation of the internet that they don’t see what a great marketing tool they are prohibiting their consultants from utilizing?  More and more people are walking away from traditional print services in lieu of the internet.  Newspapers are downsizing their productions; magazines are going out of business.  Word of mouth is pretty much the only way to advertise my business and even that isn’t all that reliable.

Granted, my director says that’s the best form of advertising, word of mouth, but that only works if you have the network to work with.  Unfortunately for me, my network IS the internet.  I’m told I can still advertise my business online, I just can’t link to my website.  I don’t know about anyone else, but if someone is telling me about this great new product or service and tells me I should check it out, then give me a link.  Don’t make me hunt for it. I’ll be less likely to find out more info without a link than I am with one.  For instance, I bet anything that I would get a higher response to a craigslist posting if I included my personal PC website link compared to only listing my phone number or email address.  People want to see what a company has to offer before they start talking to someone about it.

I’ve also been told this is for my protection.  Bullshit.  Yes I said that.  An example that was given to me (regarding this) was what happened to the Tupperware consultants when their company started selling the products at Target.  How is that situation the same as this one?  Of course the consultants were going to see a decline in their bookings.  Why would anyone have a show when they can just go to Target and get what they want?  If I link to my own website, I’m going to get the credit if someone buys something from it.  It’s not going to go straight to the company and bypass me.  That’s the point of having the website.  It’s a tool for people to purchase Pampered Chef items and possibly book shows with me.  I mean, seriously, if I was able to link to my personal PC website, I would probably end up with more bookings, which in turn would mean people would buy more items.  That makes it better for me, not worse.

I think the thing that frustrates me the most is how much I hear about how the company is constantly trying to improve their products and their service, and yet they are completely behind on using the internet to it’s fullest. I understand they want to copyright their images and logo – that’s their right – but to prohibit an employee from spreading the word about her business in any way she can, that seems ridiculus to me.

We decided to buy a house instead of renewing our apartment lease. We’re both ready to have someplace be ours. Someplace we can build upon, live, and get comfortable with. I know Jesse is getting tired of moving and we really need to get Ian into his own room. With this in mind, we started looking for houses back in February and we found one in March. We put an offer in on March 19th and we’re still waiting to hear whether or not the bank accepted our offer. You heard me write, it’s been 3 months since we put in the offer and they still haven’t given us an answer in writing. When we put the offer in, we asked for an answer within 72 hours and a close date of May 15th. The owners accepted the offer right away, but because it was lower than what they still owed on the house, they had to get it approved by their bank. So we knew we had a good chance of getting the house, so we stopped looking until we heard yes or no.

Three weeks go by and we still haven’t heard anything from the bank, so we call and find out what’s going on. We’re finally told that the offer has gone to a negotiator who will have the final sale, but it’s not going there until the 26th. So we have to wait another two weeks before another guy will even look at it. Fine, whatever, at least we know something is going on.

At this point, we’re in May already and we still haven’t heard anything from the negotiator. He’s supposedly has had the offer on his desk for two weeks and our close date is coming up. We still haven’t heard anything. Finally, we hear that the negotiator has requested a Buyers Purchase Opinoin. Basically, he’s asking other realty agencies to assess the house to see if our asking price is reasonable. This makes sense to me. The BPO is set up and has been done and we’re told that the negotiator will have the report within 3 business days. We’re getting closer to my frustration level at this point. The negotiator has 7-10 business days to look at a sheet of paper(s) to determine whether it is good or not and he takes every one of those days. The 10th day is a Thursday and we still don’t hear anything until the next day, the 11th day.

We’re finally told that everything looks good and we should get a lender set up (which we had already done three months ago), but now the negotiator has to have someone else sign off on it. The guy who was suppose to have the final say is now saying he has to give the file to someone else and that we should have an answer by the following Monday. Finally, we’re getting some where.

At this point, I should mention that both the sellers and the seller’s realtor have been calling this bank on a daily basis to get them to hurry up with their decision. We’re not the only ones anxious about this offer. The house is close to foreclosure and the sellers know that they are lucky to have an offer on their house in this housing market. Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with the house, but it doesn’t have a garage and that’s generally a negative thing for most people. We’re fine with that since we do only have the one car and Jesse doesn’t mind shoveling off the snow.

Now, Monday rolls around and we don’t hear anything. By 3pm that day, the Realtor is trying to get a hold of someone and she’s been put on hold for 30 minutes before she has to go. Tuesday comes around and still no word, so she gets back on the phone with the bank and sits on hold for 2 HOURS and finally gets someone. She’s told she’ll have an answer by 9pm that night. Wednesday comes around and another 2 hours hold session and she’s told she’ll have an answer by 5pm.

Yeah, this place hasn’t really been good on their deadlines. We still didn’t hear anything by Wednesday at 5pm and that night I told Frank earlire that day that if we don’t hear anything, then we needed to start looking again. Jesse and I are both getting frustrated and the lack of activity in finding a house was starting to get to us. Thursday comes around and since there still wasn’t an answer, Frank sent us some houses, we looked at them and picked out 4 to see on Saturday. Friday comes around and we’re finally given an answer. Sorta. We’re told that the bank is faxing a pre-approval letter to the sellers. Our offer has been pre-approved and while I’m not sure what that means, it gave Frank enough hope that we called off the house hunt.

And finally, we receive some good news this past Monday. The bank sent an approval letter to the sellers. The bank approved the offer. Of course, this was all conveyed verbally and we still haven’t seen it in writing. So after waiting 3 months on a yes or no answer, we have a 90% yes.

I haven’t even mentioned the beautiful part either. The bank that took 3 months to give us a decision wants to close within 15 days. 15 days! They take their sweet time in getting us an answer, but they want it down ASAP. It normally takes 30-45 days to close on a house and they want to do it in half the time?! Granted, Jesse and I want to be in our house by the end of the month since our lease is up, so we’re fine with that, but just the fact that they said that is appalling. I laughed when I heard that. It still bugs me that these people who constantly told us they would give us answers by certain dates and then continually didn’t give any answers by their own deadlines want us to be out in less time than it normally takes for a mortgage to go through. They are extremely lucky that we have our act together and have given everything over to our mortgage lender and were only waiting on the purchase agreement. As it is, we still don’t have a signed purchase agreement. We’re told we have a house, but it’s not in writing yet.

I’m excited about getting a house, but I haven’t spread the news before this because I’m afraid the stupid bank is going to come back and say they’ve changed their mind. That whoever told us the offer was approved wasn’t allowed to do that or didn’t have the authority to approve it or whatever. I’m still waiting for the other shoe to drop. I know it’s a little pessimistic, but with this bank, it really wouldn’t surprise me.

Since I have been giving this bank a glowing review, I should probably say who it is so other people will know the crap they dish out. The bank is Indy Mac and I think it’s out of California. I’ve never heard of it, but Jesse did a Google search on it a couple of days ago and found some interesting articles about them. He actually found a forum where some of the staff talk about working at Indy Mac and some of their underwriting process (and none of it is good). Another site, Planet Feedback, has an article where someone was trying to cash out their $80k CDs and the bank wouldn’t release the funds to them. If you want even more reading material, just check out this RSS feed. I have yet to see an article stating this bank is any good.

As it stands right now, we’re on track for purchasing this house, but I won’t get excited until I know it’s in writing. Now I’m done. I can’t think about this any more. I really want this house, so I’m hoping everything comes through with the inspection on Tuesday.

I hate mice. I am really really REALLY hating mice right now. For the last couple months, mice have been invading my home. We have killed 15 since the end of August. My stupid complex hasn’t really done anything to fix the problem either. After the 12th mouse, they finally looked around the outside of my building and found a nest. They took care of that and said that should be the end of that. Yeah, it wasn’t. The next day another mouse was caught in the trap in the kitchen and today I found yet another mouse. The maintenance guys keep telling me it’s all my fault too because I leave cat food out. Well, excuse me, but I’m not going to starve my cat and if I put the food up, that’s what is going to happen. Is it too much to ask that they actually look to see where the mice are coming in at? I know that they can squeeze through tiny holes, but seriously, to your job and actually take some time and look. Is it too much to ask that they attempt to solve the problem instead of just looking at it and pointing fingers? If we still didn’t have another 8 months on our lease and breaking it would be expensive, I would actually start looking for someplace else to live now. I’m thinking Ian and I will take a walk up to the office Monday and ask again for them to figure out where they are coming in at.

“For the life of me when the CDC (Centers for Disease Control) and the other experts come forward and say this is safe, it’s been tested and it’s available, why in the world would we not make it available,” Gov. Rick Perry said. (Businessweek.com) I have to agree with Gov. Perry.  If it has passed the CDC analysis and there are other experts saying it’s safe, why not take advantage of it?

“Genital HPV infection is very common, with estimates suggesting that more than 50% of women will become infected with one or more of the sexually transmitted HPV types at some point during adulthood.  By age 50, about 80% of women will have been infected with genital HPV infection. (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2004)” (wikipedia.org)

As a society, we’ve already started taking precautions against HPV.  As a female, we schedule year Cervical Pap Smear test to make sure we haven’t caught anything.  One of the things doctors look for during this procedure is HPV, and since HPV can result in cervical cancer, why wouldn’t a person take an extra step to ensuring that you don’t get it?

Maybe I’m just ranting at this point, but why are people against a cancer vaccine when everyone is crying for one to begin with?  Yeah, it’s not one of known killer cancers (i.e. lung, breast, etc), but it’s still a cancer.

Here’s the story. When Jesse and I moved into our apartment in April, we noticed some problems with the built-in shelves in our loft.  We put in a work request order thinking we would get some kind of response within 24 hours, per the guarantee and what they told us when we signed our lease.  We finally got some kind of response around day 100 and a contractor came out and sanded and stained out shelves (what I was looking for) and we were told that the actual shelf railings were the responsiblity of Ramblewood.  We placed a call into Ramblewood about getting the railings replaced (since all you had to do was blow on them and they fall apart) and possibly getting our shelves back (they orginially took our shelves in May to work with, but we never saw them again).  Their response to fixing our railings was shoving the shelves back into place.  They literally jammed them into the slots.  They never did fix the railings.  We found this out when we tried to adjust the shelves (did I mention that they were supposedly adjustable?).  It took Jesse 20 minutes to adjust the one (1) shelf.  After that, I placed in another call to Ramblewood to see about getting them fix or if they were finished with me.  Since I received a work request completion survey from them the next morning, we both assumed that they were wiping their hands of us.

Come to find out, the following Wednesday (4 business days later), I receive a call from the Maintanence department requesting to set up a meeting with the Dept Manager so he could come out and discuss what exactly I want to see if it could possibly happen.  We set up a meeting for Friday, August 11th, at 1pm (since the meeting had to occur before 3pm, I had to set it during my lunch break).  I get to my apartment 10 minutes early on Friday and proceed to wait for 30 minutes for the Dept Mgr to show up.  After waiting 30 minutes, I leave to go to work and call the Service Dept to see if I was confused as to the time.  It turns out that the Dept Mgr forgot about the meeting and tried to save himself by having his office tell me that he was on his way.  By this time, I had to get to work and I told them as such.  We set up another meeting for today, Monday, August 14th, at the same time.

Guess what.  Again, the Dept Mgr stands me up.  I call the Service Dept again to let them know that he did not make it out to the apartment and if he was still interested in meeting with me (since he WAS the one who initiated the meeting in the first place), than he would need to meet with me after work some night as I was not wasting another lunch hour waiting for a guy who has no intention of showing up.

Maybe it’s too much to ask for a Dept Mgr to actually go to meetings he set-up and initiated or maybe they just want to see how far they can continue to jerk me around.  At this point, I’m through with the.  I’ve been patient re this work request considering it has taken them over 4 months to complete the request.  I was unable to unpack the 400+ books that Jesse and I own prior to our 30-day deadline for the movers, so if we’re missing any, we’re out of luck.  And now, after I figured they were done with us, they continue to have poor communication and they wonder why I’m frustrated and upset. 

It would have been one thing if I had received any kind of message saying he was going to be late or needed to rescheduled; but to give no indication that you’re not going to be there is not only unprofessional, but tactless as well.

Jesse and I just got back from the doctor and we found out that I am 8 weeks and 3 days along (due date of March 10th). We go to Meijers to scan the ultrasound picture and on our way home what do we see…..PRO LIFE ADVOCATES. Okay, I have nothing against people stating their opinions, but I do have a major problem when they are using blatant falsities and trapping me into witnessing them. Driving down 44th street, there are a ton of signs depicting an aborted child of “8 weeks” looking like a war victim. I’m sorry, I just got a picture of my 8 week old child and it looks nothing like that. And no, they weren’t saying these were 8 week delivered babies; they were 8 week aborted babies. It honestly offended me to be trapped into seeing these pictures knowing that that isn’t what an 8 week old fetus looks like. Not only that, but they were holding up traffic DURING RUSH HOUR on a busy street trying to get people to sign their petition. I’m sorry, no I’m not going to sign your damn petition because it isn’t your choice what I do with my body. It’s my body, it effects my life, not yours. I will do with my damn body and anything in it that I will damn well please to. And I will not wait in my car during a green light while you get other people to sign your petition. You are not only entrapping me into your beliefs, but I will not allow some middle aged men who don’t know what it feels like to give birth, to bear a child for 9 months to tell me what to do with my body. Do they know who I am, do they know what I’m going through. No. Do they care. No. All they see is an individual who wants/has gotten an abortion and that is all they want to see.

So until the day that MAN aka (the idiots making laws who have Y chromosomes) can carry a child full term (40+ weeks), go through labor and raise it, I don’t want to hear anything from them. If you can’t experience pregnancy, than by what right do you have to make decisions concerning it?

First – I hate it when people have a problem and they don’t discuss it. Especially with the person they have a problem with. I mean, how do they think the problem is going to be solved unless the person knows about it. Sometimes people amaze me.

Second – The only thing I can say with clarity right now is that I am so glad I don’t give a damn what other people think of me. If I offend them, if they don’t like my views, fine. They are entitled to their feelings. I conformed to society in high school and I hated it. It amazes me that people will make decisions on what other people say and do. The moment you start caring what other people think of you, of how they perceive you is the moment you stop being true to yourself. If they don’t like you the way you are, than they are not worth it. If they cannot accept your decisions, than they are not your friends. Or at least, not as close as you thought they were. Friends are there to help, to be supportive, not to decide who you should be with, what you should be doing, what you should be wearing. If it makes you happy, than do it. If they can’t handle it, than it’s their problem, not yours.

And finally – People say I’m judgmental and opinionated. Guess what, I am! Big surprise there. However, they are my opinions and I’m entitled to them. So people can either take it or leave it. They don’t have to accept it.