Month: June 2014

Introducing Milo

Posted on

Milo

Isn’t he cute? We picked him up this afternoon but I had named him over a week ago. I wanted an M name to match Marshmallow. He’s very small; about twice the size of the mice I used to have but the smallest rat I’ve ever owned because he turns five weeks old tomorrow. He doesn’t care for being picked up or petted yet, but he’s very inquisitive and takes treats from me readily. He’ll be in quarantine downstairs for two weeks and then I will introduce him to Marshmallow who is easily 2-3 times his size so I’ll have to keep a close eye on them to make sure there’s no aggression. Let’s hope not!

Yelp

Posted on

I love Yelp and use it all the time. I’m very active on it posting reviews and photos, so there’s some things about the way it functions that annoys me. I just submitted this feedback to the Yelp team this morning. Let’s see if anything comes of it since I’m pretty sure I’ve already submitted feedback regarding # 2 years ago and nothing has changed.

—

# 1 Lists – Is there a way to add a business to an existing list while on the business page? I don’t see it, but editing a list and trying to add a business from there is cumbersome when you have over 500 reviews like I do. Sorting by date would be more helpful if the list shown on the screen actually includes the date. Sorting by name is useless because the list takes up the entire page and anything below a screen’s worth is not able to be dragged and dropped to the list as it’s no longer visible and the screen doesn’t scroll back up so I can do it.

# 2 – Bookmarks. I see no way in the mobile apps to view notes I’ve put on bookmarks while using Yelp in my web browser. This is rather limiting when I’m on the road looking for a place to eat and I can’t remember what dish I wanted to try when I initially created the bookmark.

Bummer Summer

Posted on

I’m having a real bummer of a week.

A week from last Sunday the vision in my left eye started bothering me and finally on Friday I couldn’t take it anymore and went to see an eye doctor. He saw a little irritation in that eye, but nothing extreme, and just advised to put some drops in it daily and not wear my contacts for a few days. On my follow up visit Monday he said the irritation was gone but to be safe I wore my glasses one more day. Today I finally took the leap and put in my contacts and that eye is starting to bother me again. WTF?!? It gets sore and a bit itchy and these are brand new lenses so I don’t understand what the heck is going on. Light starts bothering my eye and it feels sore behind the eye, kind of like when I get a migraine.

I don’t understand how the mere presence of a contact lens on that eye could cause such a reaction especially when an exam doesn’t reveal anything of concern. It starts making me feel paranoid that it’s a problem with my retina or possibly a tumor or something behind the eye. I know that sounds crazy, but stranger things have happened and they didn’t dilate my eyes so I don’t think they’d see an issue like that unless they did.

This is really bad timing as we’re going out of town soon so I don’t have the time to go back to the doctor. Our hotel rooms are prepaid and non-cancellable as well. Not that I necessarily want to cancel our vacation anyway (I soooo need to get out of town for awhile), but the weather forecast for our time away is looking worse and worse with each passing day. We have literally waited years to take this road trip and I feel like the universe wants to make sure it’s ruined.

Another shitty thing that happened is that the purse I was so excited to get never came. Apparently it’s not coming back in stock so Amazon cancelled the order the other day. Ugh!

Life just keeps throwing me lemons this week. I really hope things turn around soon.

Rats

Posted on

I posted this update on Facebook today:

I think living alone but in close proximity to other rats who hate him is making my poor Marshmallow neurotic. I was vacuuming the pet room today and he just started going beserk! He was running around his cage so fast he was literally bouncing off the walls. It was like a cartoon, and if it wasn’t for how obviously terrified he was it would have been funny. 

I ended up having to put him in a holding cage in another room so I could continue cleaning. He’s never freaked out around the vacuum cleaner before which is why I believe he’s becoming worse without a buddy to live with. I am trying so hard to find one but these people who post on FB and Craigslist saying they have babies available are unresponsive when I contact them. 

I’m not getting another rat from a pet store because they are always sick. When Marshmallow came home he was so sick he gave it to my other rat and he died. Then I had to pay over $100 on medicine to get Marshmallow well. I’m not going through that again. 

The good news is I found a new home for the brothers. The bad news is their new owner isn’t taking them until August.

Later in the day I finally heard back from a lady on Craigslist who has agreed to hold a baby rat for me until we come back from vacation later this month. He’ll be five weeks old at that point. I’m so excited!

I hope it all works out. I will miss Steve and Doug when they go to their new home in August (a coworker of Joe’s who took care of our first two rats when we went on vacation years ago is taking them) but I won’t miss the tension their presence has caused. I just hope the new baby and Marshmallow get along!

Free Purse & Amazon Prime

Posted on

I’ve been drooling over this particular purse (the Kipling Callie Crossbody in Pearlized Grey) since I spotted it at Macy’s weeks ago.

Kipling Callie Pealized Grey

I almost bought it the first time I saw it but it wasn’t on sale for 25% off like some of the other Kipling purses were, so I put it back. $79 is a lot of money for a purse! I went online to see if I could find it elsewhere cheaper, but Macy’s was the only game in town so I figured it must be exclusive to them (it wasn’t even on Kipling’s website in that particular color). I tried to put it out of my mind but I kept thinking about it (a sure sign that I really wanted it).

Fast forward to today. I found a Macy’s 25% off coupon on Groupon and with Joe’s blessing decided to apply for a Macy’s credit card to get an additional 20% off so the purse would only be $51.19 (including tax). We were on our way to Macy’s when something told me to check Amazon again and wouldn’t you know it, suddenly they had it. Not only that but it was $50.82 total! I was all over that! I almost opened an Amazon Rewards card (via Chase) as they were offering me a $50 instant discount, but the application was confusing as it wants your annual income and it didn’t seem like I could add our total household income since the card would be in my name. So I logged in as Joe and was going to apply as him but they were only offering him a $30 credit, probably because we purchase more on my account. I started reading the comments about how they rarely approve you instantly and sometimes you have to wait weeks to get the credit so by then I was turned off to getting it at all.

I logged back into my account and realized I could use my Discover card cashback bonus to pay, and since it was over $100, I ended up doing that and not having to pay one cent out of pocket. I opted for free super-saver shipping but the delivery period was when we plan to be out of town so I ended up signing up for an Amazon Prime trial so I could get the 2-day free shipping.

I’m so excited that my purse will be here on Monday and I didn’t have to pay anything for it. Woot!

And if anyone has recommendations on how to get the most out of the Amazon Prime trial, I’m all ears!