4/27/09

George and Gracie lovers, pictures (and a short video!) will be up tomorrow.

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Anita sent me the link to this page, and it cracks me UP.

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You know what annoys the shit out of me? When I am required to call a company to cancel my account. When I signed up for Stamps.com back in 2000, did I have to call to sign up with them? Why, no. No, I didn’t. I was able to sign up right on the computer, never had to talk to a living person even once.

Last Friday when I was balancing the checkbook, I realized I was still paying $15.99 per month for the privilege of printing out postage online, and that’s ridiculous. Know what? When you print out postage at USPS.com, it costs less than when you print out postage at Stamps.com. As an example: if I send a 3 pound 2 ounce package to my sister via Priority mail, it costs 66 cents less if I print out the postage at USPS.com than if I use Stamps.com or took the package to the post office. Granted, 66 cents isn’t SUCH a big difference, but it adds up.

So I was paying $15.99 a month PLUS full price for postage – and I suspect that Stamps.com pays the lower price and pockets the difference. Which, I know, they’re a company and they’re in it to make a profit, but I DON’T LIKE IT.

I tried to cancel my account online, but apparently it is not possible to cancel your Stamps.com account online “due to security and privacy concerns.” MY ASS. I note that they were never all that concerned about my security or my privacy at any point in the past nine years of my account.

I got all fired up and called the customer service number, ready to be an asshole when they started offering me special deals and trying to talk me into staying. The longer I sat on hold, the more fired-up I got, knowing that it would be pointless and that I’d end up talking to someone in India and have I mentioned that I hate talking to strangers on the phone in the first place, let alone someone I can’t understand?

But then I got to balancing my checkbook and by the time the customer service rep – who did not appear to be located in India – answered the line, I was so distracted by what I was doing that I was perfectly nice. (It helped that she was perfectly nice, too. But then, most customer service reps are.) She tried to talk me into saying, offered me the cheaper $9.99 plan (which, I note in retrospect, was not listed on the site when I went to see if there was a cheaper plan), and eventually she said “Is there anything I can do to convince you to stay?”, and I said “I’m sorry, no.”

Yes, I APOLOGIZED to her for not keeping my account. I guess that showed THEM.

So my Stamps.com account is closed, and I’m totally going to use that $15.99 a month to parTAY.

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Know what else annoys me? When you’re looking for something in particular online – like such – and instead of listing the price, the site says “Call for pricing.”

Um, no. If you can’t be bothered to list your price on your web page, I have no desire to call you up so you can try to get me to buy 6 other things along with the ONE THING I’m interested in. If I can’t find it somewhere else, I’ll go without, THANKS.

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Last week, I finally got my ass in gear and updated my links page.

Man, I read too many blogs and journals. No wonder I’m perpetually behind!

The link to that page resides in my sidebar to the left, the one with the picture of Miz Poo that says “blogs i read.” I’ve noticed a lot of people doing site searches for my links list lately, and so I thought I’d point out the link in the sidebar. To the left.

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My friggin’ iPod shit the bed last week, doing the same thing it was doing before I sent it off to be fixed (I get a screen with vague unreadable blue lines on it). I ordered a Zune off eBay on Wednesday, and it arrived here (from San Francisco!) on Friday. Of course, by the time it got here, my iPod had started to work again. I figure I’ll just use the iPod ’til it stops working completely, and then I’ll sell the stupid thing on eBay. It amazes me that people buy iPods that don’t work on eBay, I assume they use them for parts.

The Zune is about a third the size of the iPod, which should make it easier to use when I’m puttering around outside doing stuff.

Speaking of puttering around outside doing stuff, yesterday I finally got my plants planted in the planters on the front porch (Caladium bulbs, with Impatiens and Pink Splash), but of COURSE it wasn’t ’til I finished the planting that I remembered that I’d intended to plant banana peels in the pots since I’ve read that they’re good for most plants. Figures.

Then I cleaned out the brooder in the garage to ready it for the newest chicks (a woman in Madison borrowed our incubator and bought a dozen eggs for hatching so that her grandkids could see eggs hatching; then she gave the resultant chicks back to us. In other words: MORE CHICKENS, eight of them, to be exact. Thank god, because I was afraid we were going to run out!), vacuumed the house, and did some laundry.

Saturday was actually a busier day for me – in the morning we went to the feed store where we buy some of our cat food, we went to the co-op to buy pig and chicken food and Frontline for the dogs (and I kicked myself for that – it’s so much cheaper online, I just forgot to order more, and we needed it immediately), we stopped by Lowe’s so Fred could buy a few things and look at their fruit trees, and we went to Wal-Mart to buy a take and bake pizza.

On a side note, I went to Sam’s one day last week, and while I was there, I picked up a pepperoni take and bake pizza that we were going to have for dinner Saturday night. I also bought flour and sugar while I was there. When I got home I put the pizza atop the extra freezer in the garage (which we don’t currently use) so that I could put the flour in the freezer we do use, and then I was going to put the pizza on top of the bag of flour and shut the freezer. Well, I got distracted, put the flour in the freezer, and then wandered off – LEAVING THE TOP OF THE FREEZER OPEN AND THE PIZZA ON TOP OF THE OTHER FREEZER. When Fred got home from work Friday (Friday being THE DAY AFTER I’d left the freezer open; I don’t know why he didn’t notice it that morning when he left for work), he saw the freezer open, the pizza set on the unused freezer, thought I’d been abducted, and came running into the house to find me laying on the couch, covered in kittens, watching The Reader. We didn’t dare eat the pizza, since it’d been sitting out for a day and a half, so we ended up going to Wal-Mart Saturday to buy a (more expensive, grrr) pizza there.

(Same pizza, same size, a dollar more. Not that great, either.)

When we got home, Fred went out to start working on the new shade structure on the front of the big chicken coop and I cleaned up the kitchen and started baking. I made:

Tomato Soup Chocolate Cake. Neither of us really cared for it, each ate a small piece, and the pigs are getting the rest of it.

Chocolate Chip Teacakes. Surprisingly good! I rolled half of them in powdered sugar and put the other half to the side for (you guessed it!) the pigs.

Amanda’s Oatmeal Cranberry White Chocolate Chip Cookies, with some changes. First, I didn’t have an entire cup of dried cranberries, so I used about 3/4 cup of cranberries and 1/4 cup of dried blueberries. Second, I didn’t have – and don’t like – white chocolate, so I used milk chocolate instead. They came out really good – though Fred said that the cranberries and blueberries were sticking to his teeth. I didn’t have that problem, though, and I liked them a lot.

So all in all, a pretty good weekend as far as baking goes. I’m really disappointed in that Tomato Soup Chocolate Cake, though. I had hoped it would be good, but it was just blah. (Fred, of course, said “What did you expect? It has TOMATO SOUP in it!”)

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Friday evening, I was in the house putting the kittens in their room. At this point, they’re being let out into the house around 8, and then I give them their evening snack and put them back in their room around 6 – sometimes later, depending on what they’re doing. They are awfully cute and sweet, but having seven of them bouncing around like wild things can be a TAD overwhelming, and not only to me. They’ve pretty much taken over the cat beds on my desk, and Mister Boogers (I assume) registered his displeasure by peeing on a magazine I’d left on the couch.

The latest issue of Backyard Poultry, damnit, and I’d only read half of it! FUCKING CAT. Now how on earth will I ever find out what good alternatives to Cornish Crosses are???

So I was putting the cats up, and the phone rang. Fred, who’d been in the back forty digging holes with the tractor to set posts for the shade structure, wanted me to come let him (on his tractor) through the gate. I told him I was putting the kittens up and I’d be just a minute, then I rushed through giving the kittens their snack and scooping the litter boxes, and as I rushed to the back door, I saw that His Highness Princess Fred had tired of waiting (LITERALLY TWO AND A HALF MINUTES) and let himself through the gate. So I’d rushed for nothing.

I charged him a $1 Douchebag Tax. AND HE PAID IT.

In fairness, if he’d realized what I was asking for the dollar for, he might not have paid it. But as I told him, the fact that he paid the $1 indicates acceptance and thus he is required to pay the Douchebag Tax WHENEVER I DEMAND IT in the future.

I foresee big bucks from this new venture.

(Yes, he did threaten to turn around and charge ME the Douchebag Tax when I’m being a Douchebag (which is often), but I informed him that (1) I do not accept the Douchebag Tax and will not pay it and (2) If he tricks me into paying it, I will then turn around and charge him an Copycat Tax of TWO dollars, so there.)

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If you don’t read Love & Hisses, you missed some really cute pictures last week. I’m just sayin’.

Beulah roared past the one-pound mark this week – she’s now at one pound, five ounces. She’s still far outweighed by her siblings (Bessie’s the closest, weight-wise, and she weighs a pound more than Beulah now.), but she’s getting there!

Bessie and Caleb are both over two pounds now, so they’ll go to be spayed and neutered this week.

Doesn’t it totally look like a patch of orange tabby leaked off her brother onto her stomach?

Suspicious.

I swear she looks just like a little bulldog.

“What?”

I don’t know just how she does it, but somehow she manages to get cuter with every minute that passes.

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“Quick! Behind you! A serial killer! Or maybe nothing at all! Same diff!”

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Previously
2008: No entry.
2007: No entry.
2006: I have no skillz, but I’m a quick learner!
2005: Spot let out a sad, drawn-out demon-from-hell sound.
2004: Meme-licious.
2003: No entry.
2002: No entry.
2001: No entry.
2000: I live to please you, my beloved readers.