1725 Run-on talker, drugs, GPS, CC, etc.

Wednesday, March 12, 2008

(Yeah, ok, icky title. But I don't do cute, they're supposed to help me find stuff later. I don't want to use tags, because tags lead to more search engine hits, and I don't particularly want that.)

I have always paid off my credit card balances in full every month. The past nine months or so, however, I've been using the cards for more (taxes, insurance, etc.), and someone told me that it's actually better for my credit rating to carry a balance, so I've been paying off half or two-thirds of the balance every month. The cost balanced out with my money market account, so it was ok.

Recently, the money market has tanked. So earlier this month I decided to pay off the credit card totals from the money market account.

Much excitement!

The banks have panicked.

They're afraid I'm on the verge of closing the accounts, and are making all kinds of inducement offers, including stuff like blank checks I can write with 0% interest for three months. I'm tempted to write an enormous check or two, invest the money, and in three months pay it back and keep the interest earned.

Howcome for all those years that I always paid off every month, no one tried to woo me?

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A year or two ago, I wrote a post about how hospice had told me to flush Jay's rather powerful and controlled meds after he died, and how I reacted in horror because we all have septic tanks and wells around here, and I didn't want to put them into the groundwater. I was also concerned that older city sewer treatment plants (who do not include reverse osmosis) can't remove pharmaceuticals, and they don't test for them in the water they release, and I think it's becoming a more serious problem than people realize.

Well, guess what's in the news lately. Nobody has a solution, either.

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I need to register some disclaimers for my post on the "Ugly American" women. The fake-looking red hair adorns no one I know personally. I know a few redheads who do color their hair, but they all look reasonable. The red I described does not occur in nature. The first time I saw that particular color was in 1997, in France, where it seemed like one out of every three women had it. It's a very hard, brittle looking color. Jay and I referred to it as "French whore-head red". It's not very common in the US, or at least not in the venues I frequent.

And I know two women who have a nose stud, but they're both graceful, polite, and don't overwhelm a room with noise. Their studs are beauty marks. On the service station woman, it gave the impression of a bovine nose ring.

So no hackles, please.

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Now I *am* going to pick on someone. She sometimes attends the dinners, and I always feel a sinking feeling when I see her at the table. She's perhaps late 50s, very nice, sweet, harmless. Soft innocent smiling face. But she drives me crazy with the way she speaks.

"...and then, uh, I tried to, tried to figure out what the, uh, buttons on the, uh, on the side were for, uh, and I thought maybe if I, if I pressed them in, uh, sequence, uh, maybe I could, maybe I could get some, uh, some sound out, uh, if they, if they, uh, worked that way, but, uh, ...."

That is not an exaggeration.

She has a tiny high-pitched little-girl voice, and she talks relatively fast, and sounds breathless, a quick intake breath after every "uh". Even that wouldn't be so bad, all the "uh"s and repetitions in a high voice, but she talks constantly! She goes on and on and on with no pauses. With all the "uh"s and run-on sentences, there's no chance for someone else to get a word in. No one else at the table can talk at all unless they're willing to interrupt and talk over her.

She did mention last evening, in the context of wanting to learn bagpipe, that she has some kind of lung problem, so that may explain all the "uh"s. Small lung capacity? And maybe the run-on sentences and the repetition is because if she doesn't, she gets interrupted when she has to take a breath, and it's a defensive habit?

Ok. Believe it or not, I started this very annoyed with her, and worked out the above while writing this. So maybe I won't be so annoyed next time. BUT, she still talks too much! She needs to let someone else say something occasionally. Sheesh. Her monologues sound like my blog entries!

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I bought a Garmin GPS unit online from Costco, for my car. The box arrived last Friday. I opened it before the UPS guy had left the driveway, and saw inside several plastic packages containing the "acessories pack" I had ordered, and the smaller cubical box for the device.

A few minutes later, I opened the smaller box. It contained more accessories, in plastic bags - some, like the USB cable and a power cable, repeats of the accessories pack. Duh? No GPS device. No instruction book.

I called Costco. They said they'd have UPS come out and take the box and contents, and that I'd eventually get a charge-back on my card. They wanted me to immediately reorder another device. I didn't want to, because that would put both on my card at once, and what if they didn't refund me? Now I realize that looks bad, because if I'm ripping them off, I wouldn't want to order another. I'm not sure what I should do. I will eventually order another, but if I don't get the refund from Costco, I don't want to order another from them....

The UPS guy came this morning, and he agrees with me that the second set of accessories in the smaller box looks like the device was stolen at the warehouse. The extra stuff may have been put in to make the weight look right. I don't know what that means as far as a refund goes. Who do I get it from, and how long will it take? It was $100 off the usual price, and that goes only until March 31, so I'll want to reorder before then.

And, that's my week so far.
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