So last night we went to Best Buy to pick up my new printer…luckily, there were no further problems, we were pretty much in and out of there, as I had hoped.

The printer is very nice for the money…MUCH better than the one that crapped out. Thanks again to Jill for recommending it! I haven’t tried printing put a photo yet, but there will be time for that after we return from our weekend away. But I’ve tried printing a regular document, as well as scanning and copying, and it works great. Very good value for under $100!

But Mike sure was pissed last night…he got home and MC Hammer’s Hugh Jass van was STILL parked in our space. We figured he’d be gone soon, but when we got back from Best Buy, at around 8PM, it was STILL THERE! The landlady did come out and tell us that he was leaving in five minutes, but it was more like 20 minutes by the time he did. We had to park illegally in the meantime because there was no flippin’ place else to park.

So now, Mike is out getting the oil changed, and so far, MC Hammer is not here. I hope he doesn’t come today, as there’s once again nowhere else for Mike to park when he gets back. No spaces on the street that I can see from here.
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I don’t know how long the oil change will take…depends on how many million people are there getting their inspection stickers today. But I should go and take a shower and pack my bag, so we can get out of here ASAP once he returns.

So the fine gentlemen over at PayU2Blog saw fit to honor us with another early payday. Since I don’t know if we’ll have time tomorrow to go to Best Buy and get my new printer, I decided to go ahead and order it from the website, using my PayPal debit MasterCard, and request in-store pickup. And when Mike gets home with the car, we can run out there to pick it up. I’m not even going to TRY to lug this thing home on the bus…it’s not heavy, only about 11 pounds, but no doubt the box is big and bulky…styrofoam packaging and all, yanno?

Okay, so I went to the Best Buy site, and they did have the printer I wanted in stock at the Saugus store, which is not too far and easy to get to. So I ordered that and a “value pack” which contains a package of HP photo paper and a Vivera ink color photo ink cartridge. I guess this is different from the regular color ink cartridge that comes with the printer. They had that in stock at Saugus, too, so I went ahead and placed the order.

After waiting forever for an order number, the site times out on me. The previous screen had said that if you don’t get an order number, to call customer service. So I did just that, and they kept me on hold for what seemed like weeks. While I was waiting, I logged into PayPal and saw that the order did indeed go through, and was showing up as “pending”. But I still had no order number, nor any emails with one on it.

Finally, someone took my call, and it was some guy whose first language was clearly NOT English. He didn’t speak English that badly, but it was still hard to understand him. I told him what happened with the timeout and all, and that my card was charged but no emails have arrived. I asked him to give me my order number so that I had it just in case the email never got here, and he did. I read it back to him after I wrote it down, and he said it was correct. He also spelled out my email addy, just to be sure it was correct. It was.

I waited another hour, then I went back to the Best Buy site to check the status of the order…maybe the email got lost in cyberspace and I’d never get it. I did check my spam folder, nothing there but spam. Oh, and I won the Powerball, Irish sweepstakes, and the International lottery today. Several times. Isn’t this my lucky day?

Anyway, I typed in the order number as they guy gave it to me, and it wasn’t in the system. Delightful. These guys are tying up $141.73 of my money, and I had not a clue if or when I’d be able to get the stuff I ordered. I had figured that if I never got the email, I could just show up at the store with my ID, the credit card, and the order number, and still maybe get my order. But now here I was with an incorrect order number.

FINALLY, I get an email saying that it was ready for pickup. I know that they wanted to make sure that they actually had the stuff in the store before telling me that it was there (unlike Sears, which I’ll get into in a bit). But still, could they have not sent an automatic email with the order number and stuff on it, and then tell me to wait until I get the second one that I need to bring to the store when it’s ready for pickup?

And guess what…that guy on the phone DID give me the wrong order number!

All’s well that ends well (I hope, we’ll see once we get to the store to pick it up). But I seriously doubt that I will use Best Buy’s or any other store’s *order online, pick up at store* service. It’s supposed to make shopping less hassle, but it usually ends up being MORE. Still, I don’t know which is worse…something like this, or having to hang out at the store forever, waiting to be helped, and then waiting to pay, and having them try to sell me a service plan and other crap that I don’t want or need. Still, can’t there be ANYTHING that is hassle-free?

As for Sears…when I bought my iPod, I ordered it originally from them. Once again, I wanted to pick it up at the store. I got two emails from Sears right after I placed the order…the first was just an acknowledgment with the order details on it, the second was saying that it was ready for pickup.

So I was getting ready to go catch the bus to pick it up, and my cell rang. It was some guy from Sears who said, sorry, the Saugus store doesn’t have your iPod after all. I was pissed and made him cancel the order, and ended up getting it directly from Apple. Screw ‘em…if they can’t get their shit together, they lose a sale. At least they didn’t take forever to credit my card back after charging it for something they didn’t have.

Crappy customer service annoys me to no end, but it seems that if you want to buy anything, there is no avoiding it.

I just realized that tomorrow may be a sucky day to get the oil changed, and that it really IS a good thing that Mike is taking the whole day off from work.

Why is this sucky? Look at the calendar. It’s the end of the month. What happens at auto service places at the end of the month?

Yep…it’s INSPECTION STICKER TIME! People alway seem to wait until the last minute to get their cars inspected, and at the end of the month, there are always five million people in the place. We always try to go in the middle of the month for that. But it didn’t work out that way this year. We had bought the car at the end of May, on a Saturday. Mike went to pick it up at the dealership the following Monday, and had to wait forever to get the sticker for it. He said everybody and their dog was there, all for the same thing…the sticker.

Here in Massachusetts, at least, inspections can be done by any mechanic, garage, or service center that is authorized by the state to do so. The only other state I’ve ever had a car inspected in is New Jersey, and there, they have state-run inspection stations. The problem is that there aren’t that many of these, and no matter what time of the month you go, there’s always a line that’s a hundred miles long. It’s always been far worse than anything I’ve had to deal with here.

New Jersey is kind of weird about some things, though. Did you know that they STILL don’t let people pump their own gas? I thought this was normal until I drove in other states, and saw that I had to pump my own gas. It was odd at first, but now I prefer self-serve stations.

Anyhoo…that oil does need to be changed before we go anyplace, so Mike will just have to suck it up and wait. This is what he gets for not getting up early enough last Saturday. Hopefully, if he gets there early enough, he can be in and out in a reasonable amount of time. He doesn’t want to be stuck in the queue behind six million people who are there for inspection stickers, having various auto accessories, and all of that happy fun stuff.

There was a box of Entenmann’s Rich Frosted Donuts on the kitchen table. I went over to get myself a donut, and what do I see?

The box was EMPTY. Yes…E-M-P-T-Y!

It’s bad enough that I can’t get Mike to wash a dish to save his life…but now he can’t walk a few feet to the trash can to dispose of the empty box after he eats the last donut?

What am I gonna do with that man…sometimes he just does these things that drive me insane! Maybe he needs to go and soak his head, or get a colon cleanse, or something…ANYTHING to make this stop!

Grrrrr……..

Oh, and I really wanted that donut, too. I’m going to make him go to the store and get more!

That damned van is in our parking space AGAIN! Apparently, it left yesterday before Mike came home, because he didn’t say anything about it being there.

I am really going to need to find out who it belongs to. Yanno, I wouldn’t mind so much if they parked there, but they could have at least ASKED us first. And they’d have to agree to get out of the space when we need to park in it.

But people around here don’t care…they want something, they just take it. Just like the losers across the street who stole a snow shovel off of our porch last winter. One of the landladies was looking for it, and then she saw the guy across the street using it. She went over there and got it back, and never left any of the shovels out on the porch again.

But that van is going to be a problem if they come back here tomorrow. The thing is, Mike needs to go out early in the morning to get the oil changed in the car. The service department at the Ford dealer is only open until noon on Saturday, so he needs to get there early in order to be taken before they close. We don’t go to Jiffy lube or any such places anymore…they suck…with the new car, we have a service plan. The Ford dealer now does all of the scheduled maintenance, including oil changes, and we don’t have to pay each time. The cost of the plan was financed with the car itself.

Mike will be back from the oil change before noon, and if Asshole Van steals our space again, it will still be there at noon. So then Mike will have no place to park, unless we can find a space on the street, which we SHOULD NOT HAVE TO DO. Also, the Skeevy Corner Bar is busy during the day on weekends, so it might be difficult to impossible to find a space on the street at all.

Yeah, we plan on going out again a couple of hours after he gets back, we’re going to a charity baseball game up in Manchester. But we don’t want to have to leave at noon, that is way too early.

I am very sick of this shit.

Here we go again with the hammering upstairs! I swear, how can they live like that, with renovations and stuff all around them, all the time? They always seem to have one workman or another around, forever hammering at something. It would drive me insane.

It wouldn’t be so bad if they hired competent workers who got the jobs done quickly and got the hell out of there. But they usually hire their lame-assed relatives (including the infamous Brian) who not only take forever, but do shoddy work. We won’t let them do anything in our unit anymore, because I can’t live with having these guys, some of who are rather skeevy, in here day in and day out. If something really needs to be done, we will do it ourselves. There is very little that ever needs to get done that either Mike or I can’t do. If we actually needed a licensed electrician or plumber, we’d insist on hiring our own, and not the half-assed ones that the landladies use. Even if we have to pay for it ourselves, it’s well worth it not to have to deal with the hassle and bullshit from their people.

Time for iPod earphones!

…as of today, I have an AARP membership card.

Do you know how freakin’ OLD this makes me feel? Sheesh…when I was a kid, I used to go and visit my great grandparents. Nana and Papa were AARP members…I remember seeing the magazine that they send out in their house. It used to be called “Modern Maturity”, now it’s just called “AARP: The Magazine”.

Technically, I’m not old enough to be a member of the geezer club. You have to be 50+. But the rules also say that if one spouse is old enough, the other gets a membership, too, no matter what the age. So perhaps there are many, many women, much younger than me, who are in AARP. I mean, look at all of the rich old guys who marry 20 year old bimbos.

So Mike joined this thing, because he’s old enough. We had been seeing on various hotel reservation sites that many have a special AARP discount…a few just ask for proof of age, but most require a membership card to the geezer club. I was looking at the membership booklet that came with the cards, and there are TONS of discounts on things that we can get now. Cool!

We just can’t get the cheap car insurance that we’ve seen advertised on TV for AARP members. If you guessed that it’s because they won’t do business in Massachusetts, you win a cookie. Here, the government sets the car insurance rates, and they force insurance companies to insure bad drivers, of which there are many here. There are so many, a term has been coined for them…Massholes, or Masshole drivers.

So, not only do we have to worry about the Massholes trying to kill us on the roads every single day, but we’re also forced to subsidize them by paying higher insurance rates than we should. It’s one of a trazillion reasons we’re moving to Maine, and not ever buying a house in Messychusetts.

Anyway, it’s now official…I Am A Geezer.

…from my last post. I DID win the U.K. lottery again, after all. Just once today, though. Usually I win it at least three or four times a day, I guess today was just a slow day. Oh, well.

Seriously…it’s scary that there are still people out there who fall for these internet scams. I’m sure that there are still people who get duped by that Nigerian thing, as well. I still get a few of those, too.
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I hate FedEx! WHY do they have to have Saturday service? I just got an e-mail saying that my new blinds were shipped, and guess when the delivery date is? This Saturday…when we won’t be here AT ALL. It would not be so bad if the damned FedEx guy would bother to KNOCK, and then not leave the package on the porch if no one answers. Sometimes they do knock and then just leave the thing there and go away. More often, they just leave it on the porch without bothering to knock at all.

As I’ve bitched about many times before…around here, people will steal anything that is not nailed down, and if it is nailed down, they will pry it up and take it. I can’t afford to risk having this big package of blinds sitting on my porch for so long…they WILL be stolen before we get back. If the landladies are around on Saturday, which they usually aren’t…they are out and about a lot on weekends just as we often are…they could bring them into their hallway for safekeeping. No, the best solution might be to call FedEx tomorrow during business hours and see if I can arrange to have the blinds left at the local facility in Medford, and then fo and pick them up myself. A bit of a pain, but it beats the shit out of getting them stolen.

You probably remember the free blinds I was given to review. I ordered two more sets of the same, for the other two front windows, and I was really hoping they’d arrive on a day when I’d be here. WHY, of all the days in the world, did they have to pick the ONE day I won’t be here?

I’m not counting on getting good service from FedEx when I call…I’ve had a few run-ins with their phone people in the past, and they have always been very rude and obnoxious, not willing to help me. How this company stays in business is beyond me!

This is what I get for not having them delivered to Mike’s work. Next time I use a company that ships FedEx, I will. We didn’t plan this weekend away too far in advance, so I wasn’t worried about it at the time. Silly me.

It’s hot in here, and I’m sitting here wearing a big T-shirt, undies, and socks. T-shirt is not quite big enough to cover the undies. But no one sees it but the cats (and Mike, who is out at the Good Post Office collecting the mail).

Stupid mailman from the Evil Post Office just came and stuck a bunch of stuff through the mail slot on the door. ALL of it was for the landlady. This has been going on for weeks now, and I never catch the asshole to yell at him about this. This is clearly not the regular mailman that’s been hee for years…I thought he’d just gone on vacation, but now I realize that he is Never Coming Back. Ever. He was the ONLY decent person who worked at the Evil Post Office, and maybe he just couldn’t stand working for that rat bastard of a postmaster any longer. I’ve had more than a few nasty run-ins with that postmaster, and he really is a nasty, evil piece of work. It sure explains why his post office is so badly run!

So this new guy is stupid, and keeps putting the landladies’ mail in our mail slot. That’s why I had to put on pants, because I had to go out onto the porch and put their mail into THEIR mailbox.

Now I need to remember to leave a note for Patti, the cat-sitter, about this. When she comes in to feed the cats and all, she picks up any mail that is on the floor and puts it in the table. I need to ask her to look and see if any of it is addressed to the landladies, and have her put it into their box.

Stupid mailman. I’m all the more glad that we have that P.O. box, and most of our important mail goes there. We’re still trying to get Ford Motor Credit to mail the car payment bills there, but they still have this weird insistence on a street address. I don’t know why, but I guess we’ll just have to explain that if they won’t send it to the P.O. box, that idiot mailman will deliver it to someone else’s house, and that someone else won’t be as nice as we are and give the mail to whom it belongs. Miraculously, we did get our latest bill, but if we don’t get this fixed soon, one day, someone else will get our car payment bill, and we’ll never see it.

Stupid mailman.

This CAN’T be happening. Not NOW!

WARNING: Icky and gross girly stuph inside, read at own risk!