Citi, Catholic-style Parking, death of lightbulbs

Although one of my faithful blog readers has some issues with Citi, I wanted to share a personal story that I think is pretty neat. About 9 months ago, Citi offered me a service, should something catastrophic happen to me, I could put my payments on hold without accruing interest. Or something like that. I signed up for it because it was free for a month AND I could mail in a rebate to get $40 back. I mailed the rebate in and called to cancel my coverage before the 30 days was up. At that point, they told me I could opt for a lower level of coverage that would be really cheap AND I would be eligible for $30 in gift cards. The only catch was that the gift cards wouldn’t be sent if I wasn’t a member of this service. Knowing that I’d have to pay for a couple months of coverage to get my gift cards, I still calculated that I would come out pretty far ahead.

I had to mail in my request for the gift cards 3 times and I only received $20 worth, so I called Citi to cancel my protection and complain. I requested a refund for all the months of service since they hadn’t lived up to their end of the bargain, but I wasn’t really expecting to be fully refunded. They told me they would credit me for the previous month, and I thought that was acceptable. This week, I saw my most recent statement and they actually credited me every penny that I paid for the coverage over the 9 months. That was pretty nice of them. It’s so nice to get more than what you expect.

Parking Catholic-style – does this mean anything to you? My favorite morning DJ used that phrase and it cracked me up because I knew what it meant. It’s when you back into a parking space so that you can easily pull out of it when you leave. I had never heard that phrase used before on a phenomena I witness often...

Last week, after I got out of bed one morning, I turned on my dining room light and one of the bulbs on the chandelier went out. There was a pop and a flash and then it was dead. The light fixture and the bulbs are pretty new – I installed them both in July. But that’s not really that big of a deal. So then I went to the kitchen and turned on my recessed lighting and one of those bulbs went out too! Same thing – a pop and a flash and no light. I was kind of afraid that something was wrong with my electricity. Then this morning, the other light bulb in the recessed lighting in my kitchen suffered the same pop, flash, dead fate. But (knock on wood) my house hasn’t burned down. Yet.

Snowball Makers

Yesterday, I was perusing the Bed Bath and Beyond circular while enjoying some quality quiet time. A lot of their stuff is really nice and I enjoy looking at their goods. Yesterday, I saw that they sell something that I consider to be completely objectionable. I got really worked up. It’s a snowball maker. And the picture showed these little kids using it in fake snow. It is wrong on so many different levels.

First of all, snowballs are meant to be made with hands. Hands without gloves make the best snowballs because the heat from your hand will melt the snow into a tighter, firmer packed ball.

Second, snowball fights are meant to be spontaneous. You can’t be like, “Oh, hold on! Stop throwing snowballs at me so I can run inside and get my snowball maker! Oh and wait! Stop throwing snowballs at me so that I can build up an arsenal of snowball-maker-made balls!”

Third, isn’t a snowball maker a really wimpy idea? Why don’t we give kids a snowball catapult while we’re at it so that they never have to actually touch the snow during a snowball fight? (Except for when they’re getting pelted by a kid who knows that you can’t have a snowball fight that involves a snowball maker! Sucker!)

Fourth, the design of the snowball machine is wussy. It’s like a pair of salad tongs with ice cream scoops on the end. Kitchen utensils are not to be used in the snow!

I guess I have an idea of what a snowball fight should be. They are brief but ongoing battles between brothers, sisters, friends, classmates, and teammates, on the way out of church, after a basketball game, after school, etc. They’re not 2 hour long Antietams in someone’s yard where the kids stockpile an armory of snowballs that they made using a snowball maker.

Snowballs should be made with hands. Period.

Amen.

Tall boots are made for winter; adventures in miscellaneous engineering activites

Last fall, I bought a pair of knee high brown boots. They have exceeded my expectations in every way. I bought them off the clearance rack at DSW when I was in San Fran and they were either $20 or $25. The problem is that I only have one brown skirt that I can wear with the boots, but have lots of black skirts that I could wear with a hypothetical pair of tall black boots.

This fall, I made it a goal to buy a pair of tall black boots. I didn’t want to spend over $50, I wanted them to fit well and look hot but be practical too. I found a couple pairs at Famous Footwear a couple weeks ago that were on sale and finally bought a pair. I wore them to church and then grocery shopping on a chilly Sunday afternoon, under a knee length black skirt and a long black wool coat. I was walking in the cold and realized the genius of tall snug fitting leather boots. They keep your calves really warm! And calves can get cold easily since they are so far from your core body heat. Cheers for tall boots!

Last night, I was putting up my Christmas tree and watching the late football game. (“In my element,” as someone who knows me put it.) The tree is fake, stored in my basement in the off season and came pre-lit, with white lights attached to its branches. I remembered from last year that the lights on the top fifth of the tree are pretty finicky. Mostly they stay off, but sometimes they flicker on. After fluffing my tree, bending the branches to more natural positions, and manipulating the lights for about an hour, I finally figured out which light was giving me the problem! So I removed it and saw that one of its wires was bent kinda funny. I concluded that it was not making a good electrical contact, bent it to a position I thought was better, and now all the lights work! I felt an amazing sense of accomplishment. Not unlike the a couple weeks ago when I took apart a Stanley tape measure because it had locked up. All the bearings were gunky so I cleaned everything and after trying 4 different ways of putting it back together, finally did it right. It took me an embarrassingly long time. But no device – mechanical, electrical, or otherwise – is too small or too trivial for me to apply my 100K engineering education to.

Best use of my college education? A couple weeks ago, I was talking to my dad on the phone and he mentioned that the DVD player I bought for him and my mom will no longer power on. I promised I would take a look at it at Thanksgiving. I was about to leave on Thanksgiving and he reminded me that I hadn’t taken a look at it yet. So I crawled over to the TV and he shows me that nothing happens when you press power. I followed the power cord and realized it wasn’t plugged in. My brothers all watched me plug it in and cheered me on and made fun of my dad. It was a good time.

Dessert

Let me propose a hypothetical situation and please feel free to leave your comments. If I gave you two options regarding dessert, which would you choose and why?

Ok, first think of your absolute favorite dessert – the sluttiest combination of fattiness and sweetness you can imagine. You’re thinking of it now? Option 1 is giving up this one favorite dessert for a certain amount of time. You don’t really know how long the time will be, but I am the one who will control the time. After a certain time period, say 2 to 3 years, maybe sooner, you will be allowed to reintroduce it into your diet. Let’s say your favorite dessert is chocolate chip cookies. That means no chocolate chip cookies (or cookie dough) for up to 3 years. No chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream either. But everything else is fair game. Oreos? Go for it. Mint chocolate chip ice cream? Fine. Oatmeal raisin cookies? Pumpkin pie? M&M’s? Hot cocoa? Brownies? All ok in my book.

Option 2 is giving up all desserts during that period of time. Nothing slutty, fatty, or sweet. Fruit and yogurt or peanut butter on graham crackers is as close as you will get.

So I ask, would it be easier to swear off all desserts or just your favorite one? Which option would be healthier for both your body and mind? Which would you prefer to do?

I thought the answer is clearly to give up only your favorite one but I’ve faced opposition. I guess it depends on the person. I suppose if all you want is a piece of chocolate cheesecake, no amount of key lime pie is going to satisfy you...

benefits, contact lenses

It’s that time of the year again – to sign up for benefits at work. Vision coverage is a 2 year commitment, which I committed to 2 years ago, and maximized my benefit by getting 2 eye exams, glasses and contact lenses. I was agonizing about whether or not I should sign up for vision benefits again because it’s kind of expensive if I’m not going to use it but reasonable if I do. Then I found out that I can use money from my MEDICAL plan for eye exams, glasses, and contacts. SCORE. I have an HSA (Health Savings Account) through work and for young, healthy people, it’s the way to go. If anyone you know ever wants to know more, I’d be happy to share my knowledge.

I consider contact lenses to be almost miraculous. You put something in your eye and it gives you perfect vision. I’ve been wearing them almost 10 years. I think I’ve gone through 4 prescriptions (but it might be 3), and I broke a lens once and had to order a replacement. That’s 9 contact lenses total, thanks to gas permeable technology. The lenses can last forever years with proper care. They don’t lose their shape. They don’t really let your eye lose its shape. I’m told they’re not as comfy as soft lenses but I love not having to be a slave to the system. The system is you have to keep getting your eyes checked and keep buying new product. I like that I am responsible for the care and upkeep of my lenses and as long as I can still see well, I don’t need to replace them. This is my way of sticking it to The Man.

Bean counters

Today, I had to give a presentation at work which I really resented. It is required for all employees in my position and lots of people above me and below me as well. We have to show the team in charge of saving the company money (bean counters) that we used some tools from the company toolbox to solve a problem that saved the company money. I had argued with my bean counting advisor about the reality of the cost savings figure she had come up, but to no avail. So I get in front of all these bean counters to explain the problem that I helped solve while I was in Chihuahua in August. I discussed the tools and process and methods that the team used, and finally explained how we arrived at the dollar value of savings because of the project. The head bean counter calls my bullshit, and my advisor who came up with the figure more or less let me fry in front of the group! I found myself in front of my audience, channeling my inner Pano and thinking to myself, “You bean counters have no respect for the brilliant, beautiful, and bitchin’ engineering that we did in such a short period. I had to dummy all this shit down so that you could understand it and I had to leave out a large part that was worthwhile because if I had presented it, somehow those results would have nullified the work that we had done because it doesn’t fit into your idea of what a cost savings project is. Screw all of you!!!” Instead, I kept my cool and told the head bean counter that he was probably right and would he please invite me to a follow up meeting to revise the figure? Yeah self-control.

How good are peanut butter M&M's?

I work with 4 men, ages 50, 50, 45, and 29. One of the 50 year olds was at a social business meeting and someone gave him a pocket NFL schedule for all the teams, organized week by week. When he got to work the next day, he put it on my seat and I was so happy when I saw it. Everyone laughed about how that was a delightful surprise for me, but no one else in the office. Hehehe…

I'm currently in 7th place out of 12 teams in my fantasy football league. I have the 5th highest point total though. I have three games left before the playoffs and I think I have a good shot at making the top 4. I just need all my guys to stay healthy. Even if I don't make the top 4, we instated a new Polish Fantasy rule that the highest scorer of the non-playoff teams gets their entry fee back. My brothers formed the Polish Fantasy League with random relatives (dad, uncle, cousin-in-laws)and friends and last year, none of the Poles made the playoffs. I lobbied unsuccessfully for a guaranteed playoff spot to the highest scoring Polish team but that got shot down since the majority of the league is no longer Polish.

Another food to add to my “really good but not so good for you” foods is honey. My sweet potato soup called for it and I haven’t had it in forever. Mmmm. Honey.

I bought Halloween candy the weekend after when it was marked 50% off. Farmer Jack had one of my obscure favorites – peanut butter M&M’s on sale. They are so wonderful.

Why does the % sign go after the number but the $ sign comes before the number (for example, 50% and $50)?

I attempted an 8:45 mile on Wednesday but only got through about 5:30 before I was dying and had to stop. I was disappointed in myself but figure it’s just a matter of time before a new personal record is mine. In the meantime, I’ll just keep running those hard intervals. I felt really off. The 8:51 mile felt so great – everything about it was wonderful and nothing about Wednesday was good.

I found out that my church is buying a new grand piano.
http://www.steinway.com/boston/models.shtml
the GP-178. I am soooooooooo excited. I have been lusting after that specific piano since I was a teenager. I used to compete and perform (can you get any nerdier?) and I just adore Boston pianos. My choir directors promised that I’d be allowed to play it.

Gold vs. Titanium, Style vs. Substance

I was listening to a jewelry commercial on the radio and there was some guy talking about the gold jewelry he buys his wife and what the gold symbolizes – permanence and preciousness and what not. While gold has lots of applications besides jewelry because of its non-reactiveness, it’s traditionally expensive because of what other people think of it. It's value is in the mind of the consumer.

I much prefer titanium and what it symbolizes. It is valued for its properties and the way it performs. It has substance. It has an awesome strength to weight ratio. (That’s sort of one of my motivators for working out and lifting – to achieve an awesome strength to weight ratio.) Because of its versatility, it has tons of applications – everything from sports equipment, to sunscreen, to the roof of the Peter B. Lewis building. I figure, if titanium is good enough to be used on spacecraft, it’s definitely good enough for me to wear as jewelry. I aspire to be like the titanium that I want to wear.

Maybe I need to be an ladies athletic apparel designer

So here’s my most recent weightlifting incident: There’s a squat machine at the gym with pads that cushion the weight that will be carried by your shoulders. Ergonomically, the machine is very sound and takes you through a good range of motion. I did it for the first time on Friday and when I got home to take a shower, I realized the pads had forced the seams of my sports bra into my shoulder and now I have lines on top of my shoulders :-( So I guess I need to shop out a sports bra with better placed seams so that I can use the squat machine without leaving marks on my body.

There’s a security guard at work who doesn’t make me feel very secure. He scares me in a way that is creepy, rather than intimidating. I keep watching Dateline thinking that I’m going to see him arrested. I have absolutely no basis to make this judgment except from what my intuition tells me.

Yesterday, my old boss’s boss (who I adore) walks into our office and says, "Do you guys think that our security guard probably isn't playing with a full deck? He overheard me say that I have 6 kids and asked me if I ever lost any of them. It seemed like he was serious so to be silly, I said, 'Well, not since we started keeping them all on leashes.' And he replied, 'Oh, that's a good idea...' " We all had a good laugh about it. I feel validated that I'm not the only one who thinks he's odd.

I recently went through a stage of trying to get rid of things I found in my freezer and cupboards. I finally ran out of ideas about how to use up cans of diced chili peppers and bags of frozen oriental style veggies, so it’s back to real cooking for me. I went through a bunch of recipes last weekend and found some soups I wanted to try and bought the ingredients this weekend. White chili with ground turkey, white beans, and special seasonings was terrific. Curried sweet potato soup was tasty but I still felt hungry after I ate it. Tonight, I’m trying something with Swiss Chard and leeks…

A couple weeks ago, a girl from this summer's softball team had a housewarming party. A neighbor and her boyfriend were the last to leave and I guess they were making out on my friend’s couch and trying to get my friend and her boyfriend to join them. You talk about being made to feel uncomfortable in your own house…

I was listening to a rather manly morning show on D-town’s hard rock radio station and one of the hosts read an ad that started, "Are you interested in breast augmentation?" This got me thinking. My guess is that most of the morning show's audience is either male, or female like me (not interested in breast augmentation). So clearly, the ad's intended audience was to men who would want to buy breast augmentation for their significant other. I don't like that.

At the moment, I am not a big John Cougar Mellencamp Fan

Did you know that Chevrolet was named after the Swiss racecar driver Louis Chevrolet? And the blue cross/bowtie emblem was inspired by wall paper in a French hotel? I was made aware of this after not being able to get “This is My Country” out of my head (I watched way too many football commercials yesterday) and one of my coworkers caught onto it.

How much do I miss playing football? :-(

workout

Last night I ran a timed mile on the treadmill and did it in 8:51. That's mighty fast for me. I think 8:49 is my personal record but that was on a track, not a treadmill. (I consider treadmill timed miles to be illegitimate, hahaha.) I'm pretty sure I'll break 8:45 the next time I do it. I'm way excited about that. The ultimate goal is to run an 8 minute mile by the end of March and an intermediate goal is to run an 8:30 mile by the new year.
I know what I need to eat, when I should eat it, and how much water to drink in order to do my best workouts in the afternoon. Sometimes I'm afraid to be my best though. I can't figure out why I occasionally sabotage my workouts. I think getting down to the most fundamental thing, when I am well-rested, I am able to make the best decisions for myself. I have willpower and discipline and prudence. And when I'm tired, all hell breaks loose.
I know lots of people talk about how wonderful it is to work out in the morning but I get super unmotivated super fast because my morning workouts aren't nearly as good as my afternoon ones. I'm weaker and slower in the morning.
I've played sports since I was five and sports practice was almost always in the afternoon/evening. So 20 years of conditioning had made me an afternoon workout person. And I don't do yoga either. Screw breathing.
Anyone know where I can get my body fat percentage measured in one of those water tanks?

Shower curtain, weather, lifting, blockbuster, and the saddest excuse for a fly

The planning, measuring, cutting, patch working, trimming, hemming, sewing button holes, and slicing holes finally culminated in the ceremonial hanging of my shower curtain this weekend. It is as gorgeous as it was labor intensive and brings me great joy.

On my walking trips between my place and my gym this week, I've noticed how nice the weather is. I think it was about 50 after the sun set and in my mind, I had not had enough of those great fall nights this year. It seems like it got really cold really fast. I'm actually pretty content with any evening temperature above 45. I love not having to wear a coat over my sweats when I'm outside.

In my mind, fall and spring time have distinct smells but rain, no matter what season smells the same. The other night, it smelled like rain and then I woke up the next morning to light showers.

Running intervals is really hard. My goal at the gym is to push myself hard enough and build up to a point towards the end of my 20 minutes on the treadmill where I feel like throwing up. Then I know I worked hard enough. It’ll make that 8:30 mile that much easier to come by. On Monday,after a decent run, I lifted not so great and it kinda got to me. I hate not being good. Every day is a good lifting day when you haven’t lifted in a long time but now that I’ve been lifting more consistently, my weights and reps aren’t progressing like I wish they were. The good news is that you always get a another chance to try to be better.

I subscribe to Blockbuster online and couldn’t rave enough about it until now. They just made the membership benefits even better. Now I can bring the DVDs they mail me to a store and the store checks in the online DVD, the online blockbuster sends me my next DVD, and I walk out of the store with a free rental. I’ll probably give it up once I get cable but for now, it’s more than adequate as a substitute. I’m trying to hold off on cable as long as I can. I won’t have to wait much longer now that my car is paid off though! Right now I'm cathing up on episodes of Life as We Know It, Mind of Mencia, and Da Ali G Show.

I made the awesomest salad for lunch: lettuce, dried cranberries, Vidalia onions, green peppers, walnuts, leftover salmon, and poppy seed dressing.

There was a fly buzzing around the office area yesterday afternoon. It was the most pathetic fly I’ve ever seen. It was flying really slowly and then landing, rolling over on its back, waving its legs around slowly and buzzing its wings but not going anywhere. Once he chose his ultimate resting place – my coffee cup, I covered it up with my hand and let him out outside.

My neck hurts :-( I hope I'm not getting sick.

Do You Know How Hard It Is to Play the Piano While Intoxicated?

There’s a really nice, really hot, really strong, and really young guy who works out at my gym. Judging by his weightlifting regime (among other things), I once asked him if he played in any adult sports leagues and he surprised the heck out of me when he told me that he’s not an athlete and in his free time, he plays the piano. We exchanged sheet music and information about piano tuners, and then compared notes about our piano training and repertoire. I told him about a alcohol-related piano performance at a party a couple weeks ago and he jokingly told me that his sober piano playing is probably equivalent to my inebriated playing. Knowing that neither of us really drink, I didn’t think we’d ever get to test that theory. And then there was Friday night…

Being a good girl, I went to the gym after work on Friday and put in a really hard workout. While there, I ran into some people who said they were meeting later at a bar to celebrate the hot piano playing lifter turning 21 two weeks ago. So being less of a good girl, I went to the bar.

After about 2 hours at the bar (and 5 to 8 beers, “I sort of lost track” says the bad girl who “doesn’t really drink”), I decided to call out the gym cutie on the drunken piano playing theory and we headed back to my place to play my newly tuned piano.

Do you have any idea how hard it is to play the piano well, after drinking? Really really hard. I went through a sloppy warm up and attempted much of my repertoire but I knew how poorly I was playing and there wasn’t a whole lot I could do about it. Stone Cold Sober, however, who drank 1 Bud Light, played quite beautifully and I was very impressed. For the record, we both played well enough to put our third friend to sleep on the floor of my conservatory. When I saw Stone Cold at the gym this week, we agreed to have a real concert sometime soon. Yay!

snoozing, calculator, deer

It’s time for me to explain to the world, (or maybe just to my 3 friends who read this blog) my theory on the snooze button. There are plenty of people who get up when their alarm goes off. The first time. And they think hitting the snooze button is a waste of good sleeping time.

I like to think of waking up as a process. I relish the time that is neither sleeping time, nor up-and-about-time. (Maybe we could call it sleep purgatory?) I don’t like to rush into my day. My most relaxed time is on the weekends when I can sleep in AND lay in bed after I sleep in to think about life for awhile. During my snooze time during the week, I can’t say that I do very much thinking about life, but to me, it’s time I need before I’m ready to face the day. Ideally, I press the snooze button twice and get up on the third but sometimes I snooze three times and get up on the fourth. My ideal snooze is 7 minutes each.

I had a dream that I let my calculator drown. I was swimming with all these people and keeping the calculator above water and then somehow, it ended up going flying and I couldn’t save it before it sunk. We were in a harbor and I actually asked someone, “How deep do you think it is here?” as though I would be able to swim to the bottom to get it. I was deeply saddened by the loss of my calculator. Somehow, my cell phone was in my pocket, didn’t mind going for a swim, and worked fine after.

The other day, I was walking to the gym. It was dark out and I was getting ready to cross a major road where the speed limit is either 45 or 50mph (but people drive even faster). I always am very careful when I jaywalk and look both ways many times. I was walking on someone’s driveway to get ready to cross the street. I looked right, and then turned to look left and I was like the proverbial deer caught in the headlights. It appeared as though an SUV was coming right at me! Even though my mind knew all the angles were impossible for a collision, for a split second, I got very scared and my heart flew up into my throat before I realized the SUV was turning onto the street, and was not coming at me. I just happened to turn and look right when it appeared to be coming at me. I can’t remember the last time I was that scared.

Trampolines

A warning for people who don’t want to read about feminine hygiene products, specifically, the one that beings with “t” and ends with “-ampon.” I think I would rather refer to them as "trampolines" in this post.

Really, now is the time to stop reading if it’s going to gross you out.

About a month ago, Sushee and I were bitching to each other about the high cost of feminine hygiene products. We had both gotten reamed on our most recent purchase at the drug store. I try not to think about the price when I buy them – they are a necessity and I buy the name brand that works for me in bulk so that I won’t have to buy them again for as long as possible.

This morning, in my sleepy stupor, I’m unwrapping a trampoline and notice that it has a “new and improved” design. It is rifled. My trampolines are rifled.

Everything I learned about rifling, I learned from some boys in my senior year EMAE355 Design of Fluid and Thermal Elements class. They taught me that rifling our potato gun barrel would induce spin in the potato projectile, which allows for a more stable flight pattern, and increases the distance the potato will fly (which is what we were graded on). (At least that’s how I understand it.) But I had never heard of rifling the potato.

I was trying to think why trampoline engineers thought rifling was necessary. In my bewilderment, I examined the box that held my new-and-improved-ly designed products. The marketing folks for my name brand of trampolines call them “fluid lock channels.” I wish I could have been on their marketing team.