Category: Life

Adventures in Target

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I often wonder if the security guard at Target thinks we have no lives for as often as we shop there. We had to go there twice this weekend because we forgot a few things the first time around. Actually, most of the stuff we forgot we bought at Walmart early this morning. Yep, another trip to Walmart in less than a month. Scary, I know! But I needed to return a shirt so what could we do?

One of the things we needed, for the first time ever, was ant traps. You see, we had a little invasion a week ago. Apparently ants really like jellybeans and when Joe put his hand in the dish to grab some, he noticed there were creepy crawlies everywhere. It was pretty nasty, especially because when he started killing them, some of them hid inside the cd cabinet and made appearances for days afterwards. Every time I walked by another ant was crawling around up there! That will be the last time I use the Easter candy dish for actual candy.

We needed apples, so it was back to Target we went. You see, the apples we bought there yesterday were mysteriously absent when we unpacked the groceries. Since Joe couldn’t recall if the cashier forgot to put them in the cart or he forgot them in the cart, we just bought another bag this morning. Now, you have to know that whenever we visit Target on a Sunday morning, Joe gets coffee. I usually stop in the restroom while he gets it, and then meet him when he’s adding sugar/cream. From there we make a right and start our shopping in the Produce section.

This is important to note because today Joe started walking to the left, which confused me. “Where are you going?” I asked. His response, “the guy has my change”. Then the liar walked over to the counter and came back with a hot dog! I was beside myself. The little shit ordered a hot dog with his coffee at 10 am when he knew I was making us breakfast as soon as we got home! Plus he had already eaten a Ding Dong on the ride to the store. I swear, his eating habits are starting to mirror Doug’s (from King of Queens). Remember his pre-dinner Whopper? Hilarious!

Which reminds me of a little conversation we had a few weeks ago. We were driving home from picking up dinner from Burger King when I was teasing Joe about how much food he got. He remarked, “I’m just working on putting on my winter weight” and I replied, “Um, I think you’re already there”. Luckily my husband has a sense of humor or I would have been sleeping on the couch that night.

But in all seriousness, we’ve let the eating get out of control again and we’re going to ease back into watching what we eat and exercising. Since we both love to eat, we’re focusing on the physical first, although I have made a vow not to purchase anymore cookies and to at least cut back a little on the bad food. So we took a walk in the park this afternoon. It was the first time we’ve been outside for recreation in months and it was nice, especially because most of the park was deserted.

Then we came home and I made a meatloaf. Oh the irony!

Pearle Vision sucks

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I cannot express how disgusted I am with my recent experience with Pearle Vision. They have always been the only place I’ve trusted when getting new glasses and after the horrible customer service and job they did cutting my lenses, I will never go there again.

I should have known to run far far away the day I walked into their establishment a little over two weeks ago and the girl who eventually took care of me didn’t know they were having a 50% off sale even though I had just been told about it by another girl working there. From there it was nothing but aggravation. When I said I wanted to get the same coating my lenses currently had, the two girls argued over whether it was a UV or anti-reflective. The total price came to $172 and that was with a $100 discount and with me using my old frames! Can you believe that? It’s highway robbery!

Not only that, but they never called me when the lenses came in like they were supposed to. After 10 days I finally called to check on them and Smug Employee told me “they’ve been here” like I was an idiot for not knowing it. I asked why they didn’t call me and she said “we normally do” and when I said they didn’t she didn’t apologize or anything. When I asked how long they had been there she said she didn’t know (yea, right). So then I tried to find out when the lens cutter would be in since they don’t have one on staff full-time like the other Pearles I have been to. She had to keep putting me on hold and would tell me everything BUT what I wanted to know.

For example, here’s the conversation I had on Monday:

Me: What time will someone be available tonight?
Her: Hold on …. after 6. Probably 6:30.
Me: Ok, and what about tomorrow in case I can’t make it in tonight?
Her: Hold on.
*Puts me on hold for three minutes*
Her: Ok, if you want an afternoon someone will be in on Wednesday at 2 pm.
Me: What? I asked when someone would be in tomorrow.
Her: Wednesday they will be in at 2 pm.
Me: Will someone be in TOMORROW?
Her: Yes.
Me: What time? I want to know what time someone will be in tomorrow. Just because I can’t make it tonight doesn’t mean I was asking when someone would be available in the afternoon.
Her: Ok, tomorrow around 6 pm.
Me: Thank you.

Talk about retarded!

I had Joe call them again later in the week since I was ready to rip their collective idiot heads off. I had no intention of getting aggravated with them after work so he got the lens cutter’s schedule for the weekend. So we went in yesterday at 4:30 like we were advised and the lens cutter wasn’t there. Even worse, Smug Employee (same one who didn’t know about the sale) said to us, “that’s why you should call first” before even asking if we had. She just ASSumed because she’s a condescending moron. When I told her we had called first, she just looked at us. Again, no apology. Gee, why apologize to an upset customer on behalf of the establishment? That’s only good customer service!

So I asked what time someone would be in today and she told us “I don’t know, I don’t even work tomorrow”. Well what does that have to do with anything? WTF kind of business are they running there that they don’t know when someone is available to cut the lenses? Isn’t that a HUGE part of the service? I asked if I could take the lenses to a different Pearle since I was fed up with them at that point and she refused to give them to me. In fact, she scolded me, “I can get in a lot of trouble if I give these to you” as if I was supposed to know there’s some law against it. It was all about her and what might happen to her instead of doing what she could for the customer. She was very defensive and unapologetic about all our hassles even when I said to her, “You could see how as a customer how frustrating this is”. Seriously, I wanted to knock her block off.

One of the other employees just standing there with their thumb up their ass finally spoke up and said someone should be in at noon. So we called at noon today and the lens cutter wasn’t there. But the girl who answered said she’d call us when someone came in and then actually did call us back about an hour later, so we dropped my frames off. We went back an hour later and they were done. And now that I have them I have to say that it’s the worst lens cut I have EVER seen and I’ve been getting glasses since I was six. Maybe they need a full-time person instead of someone who, based upon the information I’ve gathered, works two hours a day. They obviously did not take their time or put any care into the cutting of the lenses. They are not smooth around the edges like my old ones were which causes light to bounce off them and distract me because I see it out of the corner of my eye. Plus I paid $20 extra for scratch-resistant coating and they gave them to me with two deep, albeit small, scratches in them. They look like apostrophes. Luckily they aren’t in my line of vision.

Honestly, if I thought I could take them back and get a refund, I would, because the quality is that poor. But after everything else I’ve endured with that place I cannot see them being that accommodating considering the fact they can’t even apologize for all their previous mistakes.

So I guess I’ve learned my lesson the expensive way. Stay away from Pearle Vision! I don’t know where I’m going to go next time I need glasses since I already tried Lens Crafters once years ago and hated them. I’s just unfortunate because I never trusted any other establishment more than Pearle and now I will never trust them again.

No Shedd for us

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Spring morning Good morning! So here’s something unusual: I’m awake and Joe is still in bed. I have been sticking to my weekend bedtime of 11 pm pretty religiously. Ok, that’s not entirely true. I went upstairs last night at 11 pm but I did spend twenty minutes playing my new DS rental, Magnetica, which is pretty fun. However, I couldn’t sleep past 7:30 this morning whereas Joe still stays up late so he’s going to sleep a little longer.

My back and legs are so sore today! I hate being a woman when it gets in the way of fun. You see, we were planning on going to the Shedd Aquarium today. In fact, we’ve been planning to go there for, oh, the past three months. We were originally going for my birthday in early January, but again, women issues got in the way. Then on the day we rescheduled we didn’t end up going because there was a playoff game (Bears) and we were afraid parking would be a nightmare. Turns out they closed the Shedd that day anyway! So then we had various other reasons: too cold outside (the walk from parking to the aquarium can be far depending on what lot you choose), prior obligations, etc. etc.

Suffice it to say, we are never going to visit at this rate. I don’t expect the day to be perfect, but for $27.50 per person (to see it all), I want my body and the weather to try and cooperate since there’s a lot of walking involved. So the trip has been postponed once more. I am praying for the final time, which will be two weeks from today. That will also give me ample time to clean my camera’s sensor. Or more like time for Joe to clean it, since I don’t trust myself with such a delicate operation.

Yummy in my tummy

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We hit our favorite Vietnamese restaurant for dinner tonight. Joe tried their noodle soup and I ordered the tried and true Mongolian beef. I am still burping it up but oh well, it was worth it. The soup was weird and had a somewhat floral taste to it.

We stopped at Jewel-Osco after dinner and managed to spend over $40 on alcohol, cookies, and orange juice. That’s why I hate that store. They have too much selection (although NOT the Lays Hot N’ Spicy chips I’ve been craving) and everything is “on sale” so we end up buying a ton of junk. You gotta admit, though, these are super cute. I hope they taste good! I’m still an alcohol virgin you know.

And the cookies. Well, blame PMS and Joe’s bad influence on those. I almost never ate cookies until I met him. He certainly isn’t making losing weight any easier, but I’ll let him slide since I plan on fully enjoying our three-day weekend.

Tomorrow we’re going to see Blades of Glory. I can’t wait! My bestest friend, the hilarious Nick Swardson, is even in it. Which reminds me, I should really order tickets to see his stand-up show in May. Woo!

Organized files and Puzzle League

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For me there’s an internal struggle on the weekends between feeling productive and getting an appropriate amount of relaxation. If I sit around too much I feel like I wasted time and energy I usually lack during the week that I could have spent on projects and the like. However, if I do too much cleaning and otherwise non-fun stuff, I feel like I never get a break. Finding a balance is tough. I think today I did quite well as I did a little laundry and finally finished the overhaul of our filing I began last weekend. It went from looking like this to this. Not only does it look more organized, it should be easier to file paperwork in their appropriate folders.

Now all I have to focus on the rest of the evening is playing games with the kids and finding time for my latest addiction: Puzzle League. I rented the GBA version of Dr. Mario from Gamefly and Puzzle League came with it. I tried it and have been hooked ever since, even going so far as to order it at Amazon.com when I ordered a handful of DS games on behalf of my brother. Now I’ve also learned that a DS version of the game is coming out later this year. I can’t wait! I’ve been sneaking upstairs and playing in the bathroom while the kids are here since they don’t know about the DS. I haven’t played Dr. Mario since the day the game came in either.