A few weeks ago, John and I decided to forgo our paid TV services, including TiVo, and try life without cable and the like. It’s been rather painless, with one minor exception:

The few Wireless keyboard/mouse combo’s we’ve tried haven’t spanned the distance of our living room and trust me, our living room isn’t that big.

So, after some research and chatting with friends, we decided to get a Logitech MX5500.  I did a quick search and found it on Amazon with a rebate. I was pretty stoked so I placed my order.

That’s when the problem started…

I came back to the product page to click the link to get the documents for the rebate and discovered that I would have needed to place my order a week ago to get it.

So why were they still publishing the “After rebate” price on their page? I’ve taken a screenshot to share, in the event that they fix their error – which I did call and report to them when I called to cancel my order (after they refused to honor the rebate, which they were advertising).

Stuff like this makes the articles and commentaries like the one recently published about Amazon.com in the NYTimes and on various blogs incredibly hard to ignore.

I should add, when I inquired about why the rebate information was still posted, I was told that it was because someone who purchased the item during the rebate period may still need the documents. When I asked why the rebate was still being reflected in the ‘final price’ – there was a lot of ‘ums’ and stumbling.

Ironically, I would have paid $119.99 for the keyboard – it was still a pretty good price – but their games and gimmicks left a bad taste in my mouth.

If I don’t start getting some rest when I sleep, I might just flame out. Seriously. I am getting to the point where I need some sort of apparatus to keep my eyes open.

So. Stinkin. Tired.

For the last two days, the old man and I have both gotten up before the alarm and just ‘given up’. He’s not sleeping well either.

Did I mention that we’ve got a cricket?

No?

Well, we do. He made himself known two nights ago and that has been the source of the old mans inability to sleep.

*chirp chirp chirp*

It lives in the wall between our bathroom and our office. There just isn’t a lot you can do for a cricket in the wall.

In other news, I’m thinking I might start Vlog series, but if I do, it’ll have to be something unique and different from what is already out there. I do have an idea floating around in there…but I’m not jumping on it until I get some of the other things in my life worked out – like the fact that the vast majority of my telephone calls now include the sentence, “I think you put me on mute”. So, give me a call sometime – we won’t actually /talk/ – I’ll just conference in my Dr., hang up on you mid-sentence and/or mute the phone so you can’t hear a word I’m saying.

Ha. I should Vlog about my total inability to communicate using my iPhone 4, using my iPhone 4.

Oh, and our head shots came in – mine are awful. I really want to cry…I may ask about getting them done myself. I’m willing to pay to get a decent head shot…plus I totally need someone to do my hair and make up.

That’s all. I’m going to go shower. I am going to leave at 6:45 today and see what the traffic is like. This should be all kinds of fun.

I’m tired.

I want to go to bed.

But first, let me tell you about my day:

• Took the totally wrong way to work this morning – and as a reward, I got to sit in traffic for 1.5 hours. It was so awesome – I think I might take my camera just so I can shoot some pictures of some of the stupidity I see in the morning. I’d forgotten what commuting in traffic was like. Woo hoo.
• Got flipped off twice before I even got on the highway after leaving the office this afternoon – I’m pretty sure they weren’t offers/requests – but more like suggestions. I have no idea what I did to deserve it, but whatever.
• I got on the highway and drove home, only to take the wrong exit, have to go four miles out of my way, in traffic, while in a hurry.
• Went to the mall to buy a shirt, had zero luck.
• Got home and found the following things broken or on their way to being broken: Jerrett’s glasses, the washing machine and my hot water heater.
• Decided that I’d pretend my give a damn was busted and not worry about, so I started to iron a few things. Guess what? I got one shirt ironed and, yes, my iron stopped working.

You know what I need?

More stress.

Yup – that’s just what I need.

But  it’s gonna be ok – because this is *all* I had to deal with today

Most all of you know what that last sentence means.

Oh and I’m totally taking my camera tomorrow. I am, you watch.

I’ve been going back and forth on what I wanted to write today. It was supposed to be my last day at my former employer, but I ended up leaving earlier, because I’d done everything they asked me to do and I was just kinda killing time – something I could do at home.

So, I am comfortably unemployed – at least until Monday.

I celebrated today by going and getting my hair cut and colored. I deserved it.

I also might have taken a two hour nap.  At 8 AM. I can neither confirm nor deny.

I thought I’d feel different. I thought I’d be sadder. I was really sad for the two weeks and two days that lead up to leaving, but all I felt when I finally left was relief. Enormous amounts of weight lifting relief.

So, Monday starts a new chapter and I am super-freaking-excited about this new chapter.

I can’t seem to put how I’m feeling into words just yet, so I think I’ll stop trying.

In non-job related news – I ended up getting an iPhone 4 a few weeks ago, because my old iPhone 3 crapped itself and here are my thoughts on that:

• I shoulder talk because I think those bluetooth things are quite possibly the most ridiculous looking thing you can wear on your head and I have yet to find one that I can activate and get on my face when I need it – and I refuse to wear it ALL-THE-EVER-LOVING-TIME in the event that a call comes through where I need to use my hands – so if you can get that shoulder talking thing fixed, so I don’t hang up on people, that’d be grand.
• Hi. I’m fat. When I put the phone up to my face to talk – I routinely A) Hang up B) Dial random numbers C) Scroll through my Contacts and manage to some how cheek conference call in random people – like, my Dr.’s office – not cool. I never had this problem with my old phone – it seems like the screen would go inactive on my iPhone 3 when I had it up against my fat chipmunk cheeks – so if you can make that happen on the iPhone 4 so I can stop conferencing in my Dr.’s office while on the phone with my husband giving him a grocery list – that’d be grand, also.
• There is some random glitch with the OS on the phone that makes my email inbox have eleventy hundred empty emails. See screen shot below. This is, by far, the most annoying complaint I have because it simultaneously makes my unread message indicator show that I have unread messages, which I do not – and when you have unread message OCD, like I do, this is NOT a fun or neat trick.

Unacceptable "Feature" of my iPhone4

Here’s a helpful hint: (No Sender) (No Subject) This message has no content – DO NOT SHOW IT – THERE IS NOTHING TO SEE HERE!

/rant

Moving on…

My current favorite person’s (formally known as, my coworker, Chuck) husband worries about me when he doesn’t see me online on Facebook – how cute is that? CFP is pretty freakin awesome – and the fact that her husband worries about me when I’m not on Facebook is either pathetic (on my part – because holy crap, how much time do you have to spend on Facebook for people to worry about you when you’re not online) or enormously touching – right now, I’m going with touching – because I’m not prepared to call myself pathetic. Yet.

Mr. CFP: You are almost as awesome as your beautiful bride. Almost

[I feel like I need to elaborate on my Facebook usage, before the folks from Intervention show up at my house. I use a 3rd party IM chat client called Digsby. I am usually signed into some type of IM chat throughout the day, by virtue of my job (working with off-site contractors) - this also allows me to stay signed into Facebook Chat without actually being *on* Facebook. So, yes, I am /on/ Facebook Chat all day - but I am not generally *on* Facebook all day - I realize this explination makes me seem even more guilty than if I'd not tried to explain at all.

Ok fine...I have issues - send the men in white coats.]

I needed to find something to wear for something I have going on this week, so I headed out for a little shopping yesterday.

Shopping isn’t fun for me. I’m tall, I’m fat and I’m female.

Clothes for tall girls are generally for tall, skinny girls.

Clothes for fat girls are generally for fat, short girls.

Back in February, I wrote about my frustration over a recent shopping trip to Lane Bryant. I’d been buying their “Right Fit Jean” for a few months and I was on the search for a new pair. I was frustrated when the employee told me that Lane Bryant had decided to discontinue their Right Fit product and that they’d no longer be carrying Tall’s in any of their stores, they’d only be available online. I was down right livid when I placed my order online and learned almost a full week later that they were ‘out of stock’ and didn’t know when they’d have more.

I even reached out to customer service looking for an answer and walked away even more confused and frustrated.

People were, and are, understandably upset over this change. I’m obviously not the only person who was irritated, as that post has generated quite a bit of traffic here on the blog. Even traffic from store employees, although I never did get a clear and concise answer from their corporate office and no one ever reached out to me to clear up any confusion.

Imagine my surprise, yesterday, when I walked into Lane Bryant and discovered an entire section of pants and jeans in tall sizes. I asked the clerk if they’d be stocking tall sizes there and she looked at me like I’d grown a second head and said, “Well, of course!”

Of course?

I went on to explain my experience, thus far, with finding tall sized pants – she seemed completely unaware that tall sizes were limited to only certain locations and that her location was one of the lucky few…

I think the most frustrating part of this entire experience is that no one seems to know anything. If a corporate brand is going to limit the availability of certain products to a limited number of retail locations, then you’d think they’d make darn sure that everyone in that market knew what location those products were being sold at, so they could refer their customers and potentially save a sale.

Instead, it left customers like me frustrated, angry and pantsless.

If I hadn’t happened into the Lane Bryant Store yesterday (my 3rd Lane Bryant of the day and the furthest from my home) I might have just assumed, based on what I’d been told at stores where they were NOT carrying tall sized pants, that Lane Bryant wouldn’t be stocking tall sized pants in their stores any longer.

So, score for tall pants – at least I can find them semi-close to home and if you’re in the Phoenix market looking for tall plus sized pants/jeans from Lane Bryant, I’ve located what appears to be the only store in the area that stocks them:

Fail for Lane Bryant – every store in this market should know which locations sell tall sizes and I should be able to search on your website for store locations that stock tall sizes – instead, I’ve you’ve made it impossible for me to easily find my size at Lane Bryant and that’s a huge disappointment.

As for my shopping trip – I did find a few pieces to wear, including a pair of pants from Lane Bryant that fit me. I didn’t find any tops I liked there – they all looked like my grandmothers house dress got pregnant and gave birth  – way to busy and loud.