As has become fairly common around these parts, I’m going to do a basic ‘catch all’ post to cover the things I’ve hinted to earlier in the week, with more depth.
First, I’m going to give an update on my step mom. Earlier this month, she had her left kidney removed because they’d discovered cancer and felt that was the best course of action, based on her medical history. During the surgery, the discovered ‘something concerning to send off to the lab’ and so she was waiting to hear back from that.
Well, she heard back on Friday and the surgeon basically said that there was more cancer than they’d originally thought and they were sending her back to the regular ole non-surgical oncologist.
Naturally, she’s freaked out and so are we. At this point, we’re not sure exactly what it all means, but it most certainly means more treatments. The Dr. made some cursory statements that have basically made us all freak out – but at this point, we’re going to wait until she’s had a chance to speak to her regular oncologist.
So, that’s what the Tweet and Facebook messages were about last week. I certainly appreciate all of the positive vibes/Karma/thoughts/prayers directed her way and I will, of course, update when I know more.
Secondly, you may remember a few weeks ago that I tweeted (at length) about our Chili’s experience. It was awful. I actually had to get on the phone and call the restaurant to request our drinks finally be delivered, this was after having placed our order for both drinks and food and had our food brought to us. It was a real stupid-fest.
At any rate, I sent @Chilis a tweet and told them how unhappy I was and I sent Corporate an email spelling it out in depth.
I never did get any kind of email from Chili’s, which I thought was sort of disappointing, since my contact had been made via email, But when I checked my snail mail yesterday, I discovered they’d sent me a letter and a $20 gift check, so we decided to give it a shot for lunch.
In the end, our service yesterday was much better than the service we’d experienced previously – and when we pulled out the gift checks to pay for our meal, the guy asked us if we’d had a bad experience and if it had been at their location. When I shared our experience with him, he looked at me us and said, “You know, we had retraining this morning and I wondered what had happened – it sounds like we really needed it, so thanks for writing in so we could make your experience better”
It was great that we actually went in on the day they’d done training – but even better was the response from their staff.
So, this is another one of those “bad experiences gone good” – I’m disappointed when I go some place and the service is crap – but I am always happy when I go some place where I’ve told them their service is crap and their service is crappy no more.
Sadly, that never happened with On The Border. Their loss.
In other news – I hinted in comments that someone at work had finally ‘delved deeper’ into the ‘my daughter doesn’t live with me’ statement I had made previously. Basically, she wanted to know who my daughter lived with, since she didn’t live with me. I shared that I had placed her for adoption and that she lived with her mother in the Chicago area and just kind of left it at that. She did ask if we knew each other – which isn’t an a-typical question from people inexperienced with adoption – and I shared a bit about our openness.
It was a great chat. She was super friendly and totally nonjudgmental about it – I didn’t have that ‘crushing guilt’ that usually accompanies these types of conversations. I’m sure some of you know what I’m talking about there.
At any rate – I feel much better now – way less apprehensive and a whole ton less worried about how to deal with it going forward.
Finally, I am looking at options to help with productivity in my drive. I’ve got to find a good ear phone/mic option – the Apple Ear Buds don’t work for me – I’ve installed the Dragon Naturally Speaking App on my phone and I’m unsure of one of the Borg-Style Bluetooth Headsets will also work with Dragon. I haven’t been able to find anyone who knows that answer either (Anyone know? Can you use a Bluetooth headset to talk to your ‘voice control’ on an iPhone 4?)
Now, if I could just get my work email on my phone – I need to look into that.
Anyway – that’s pretty much all I have going on right at the moment. Ready to start my week with a bang.
Damnit, I forgot to get gas. Crap.
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I’m so sorry to hear about your stepmom. I caught some posts here and there on facebook and was just so sorry to read there here tonight, Brandy. She (and you) will be in my thoughts!!!!