Today is not the day to fuck with me!

I’ve been a customer of Lane Bryant for more than 15 years. In all that time, one thing has really bugged me about buying clothes at their stores. Every time I check out, I am pestered by the cashier to apply for a Lane Bryant credit card. Every. Fucking. Time.

The conversation usually goes something like this:
Cashier: Will this be going on your Lane Bryant card?
Me: Nope
C: Do you have a Lane Bryant card?
Me: Nope
C: If you apply for one today, you’ll save 15% on your entire purchase.
Me: No thanks.
C: But it’s a really great deal.
Me: Nope.
C: Okay, but you’re missing out.
Me: I don’t care.
C: Your total is…

I’ve tried various ways to cut this conversation off.

Trial 1:
C: Do you have a Lane Bryant card?
Me: Nope, and I don’t want one.
C: But you could save …

Trial 2:
C: Do you have a Lane Bryant card?
Me: Nope, and I’m really tired of you people asking me.
C: But you could save…

Trial 3:
C: Do you have a Lane Bryant card?
Me: Nope, and I don’t want another credit card in my wallet.
C: But you could apply, save your 15%, and just pay it off right away.

Trial 4:
C: But you could save 15% on your entire purchase today.
Me: I know because you’ve accosted me about this every time I shop here, and I haven’t changed my mind.
C: You’re missing a great deal.

I realize that one way to deal with this would be to lie to the cashier and simply say that yes I have a Lane Bryant card, but I don’t care to use it today. However, I don’t want to have to lie. I shouldn’t have to lie to have a good shopping experience.

Today I decided to try something different. (“Decided” might be a bit of an overstatement – I’m a bit stressed out, so perhaps my frustration just boiled over to make the decision for me.) The conversation went something like this:

Cashier: Are you going to put that on your Lane Bryant card?
Me: No, and I don’t care to apply for one, either.
C: But if you apply today you’ll save 15%…
M: Yes I know, and I’m tired of being asked every time I shop here. If you bring up that credit card again, I’m walking out of this store.
C: Yes, but…
M: Bye.

And, indeed, I walked out while she was ringing up my purchases.

I’m sure I’m now known as the “crazy lady” at that store, but I don’t care. I’m tired of having that conversation every fucking time I check out. I don’t shop there very often anymore, anyway, because much of their clothes are…um…hoochy-mama clothing, which I’m not into wearing. However, they are the only place that sells cute underwear in my size (emphasis on cute…I can find it elsewhere, but it’s fun to wear somthing cute, dammit). Maybe I’m just going to have to get used to boring, white, granny under clothes. Sigh.

Any other suggestions for how to deal with these over-programmed cashiers and their well-rehearsed script?

Tags: rant

Update on Dad

I just talked with Dad. He had a “heart cath” this morning so they could check his heart and valves. He hasn’t talked with the doctor yet, but he knows that he’s had two more stents put in and hear something about an aneurysm (according to WebMD, that’s a stretched and bulging section of a blood vessel). He should know more this evening, so I’ll let my brothers or Mom call him and report back to me. He also thought he might be moved to a room outside the ICU later this evening.

Tags: family, suckitude

Kitten check

Artemis and Duncan are sleeping-clones on different sides of the room:
  

Ares was being silly on the chair by my scrappin’ table:

Tags: pets

My very own PhD fairy!

My crazy aunt, Maggie, just knew that I’ve been having trouble motivating myself on my thesis lately. Her solution? A PhD fairy! How awesome is that?

The card she sent says:

This is your own personal PhD fairy.
She loves to do RESEARCH!
Put her on your computer and watch the numbers start to CRUNCH!
She also gives OOMPH when you’ve had enough.

Now I have to finish. Yay!

Tags: comfort, family

Home for the afternoon…

..and not for good reasons.

My brother e-mailed me during lunch that Dad’s in the hospital. He had been having chest pains and when he went to the emergency room, his EKG did not come back right. Unfortunately, Dad is in Colorado for work right now (he and the rest of my family live in Minnesota, I live in Virginia), so he’s away from his family, in a strange hospital with only his “guys” (what he calls the guys he works with) at his side. Fortunately he’s got someone he knows, at least, but according to my brother, he’s feeling a bit scared and alone (who wouldn’t). To top it off, he’s in a small town which doesn’t have a cardiologist on staff (yikes!), so they’re transporting him to Denver. So, I won’t know anything for a few hours (more than an hour to get to Denver, and a couple hours for tests, etc.). He is stable and alert, at the last report – he even talked with Mom while in the ambulance to Denver). But, I decided to come home for the afternoon – I’m no good at work right now.

I’ll update when I can/when I have news.

Update 6:25 PM: Dad’s in Denver, and the doctor thinks that he may have had another heart attack. He’ll be having an angiogram in the morning. I talked with him on the phone, and he sounds in okay spirits. He’s all alone in an ICU in a city away from all his friends and family, so he’s as good as he can sound right now.

Tags: family, suckitude

Book catch-up, part 2

The rest of my books for the past few months:

Harry Potter and the Order of the Pheonix
by J. K. Rowling

Wow. Just wow. With Voldemort back in the picture, Harry has more to worry about than ever. Add to that the Ordinary Wizarding Levels at the end of the school year, and it’s a wonder Harry survives the year at all. Of course, the pressure does start to get to Harry. This book sees a lot of changes in Harry’s personality – he seems to be teetering on the edge for much of the school year.

The book is as engaging as the others, and left me gaped-mouthed and wishing for someone to turn to and say, “What? What just happened? Did I read that right? AAAAAA!”

Burning Road
by Ann Benson

I was a little surprised to find that this book is actually a sequel to The Plague Tales, but there was no indication of this on the book jacket (only a sentence like, “by the bestselling author of The Plage Tales).

That said, once I got past my surprise, the book was just as engaging as the first. As The Plague Tales, this novel follows two related medical tales that are separated by 700 years in time. In 14th century France, Dr. Alejandro Canches has kept a low profile since he saw England’s royal family through the last surge of the plague. He gets pressed into helping to translate a jewish text for an alchemist. Alejandro’s journal stumbled into Dr. Janie Crowe’s hands in the 20th century in The Plague Tales. We now find Janie dealing with a possible resurgance of DR SAM, a deadly and highly infectious disease that swept the world, killing a good percent of the population, including Janie’s family. The text that Canches had been translated also came into the possession of the same depository that Janie used to store Alehandro’s journal.

This was a good follow-on to The Plague Tales; however, in some ways it’s much the same, with the two parallel stories, and a bit unbelievable that two books with writing by the same person would first of all both survive 700 years, and second fall into the same book depositotry. It was just a bit too much to swallow. I likely won’t read a third book in this series if Benson continues. However, if she decides to start with a new story and new characters, I’ll be happy to give it a try.

Deep Wizardry
by Dian Duane

This is the secon book in Duane’s Young Wizard series, and I must confess that I missed the first one (though it is now on my to-read pile). Nita and Kit have only recently fell into wizardry, and now on a vacation with Nita’s family at the beach, they discover that they are needed by the wizards living in the sea – whale wizards.

This was a fun book. Fluffy and a quick read, but fun.

The Clan of the Cave Bear
by Jean M. Auel

The novel begins with an earthquake that takes the live of young Ayla’s family. After wandering for days, unable to feed herself, and attacked by a lion, Ayla collapses, on the edge of death. She is found by members of the clan of the cave bear. The clan was displaced from their long-time home-cave by the same earthquake that took Ayla’s family, and they are searching for a new home.

The novel follows Ayla’s struggles with becoming accepted into the clan, for she is clearly not of the clan – she is blonde and tall and likes to use her voice. The people of the clan are dark-haired, short and talk mostly with their hands. The people of the clan are also very set in their ways, with men and women having very particular roles, and both men and women seem happy with those roles, not only unwillingly to change, but unwanting. Ayla, on the other hand, wants to explore, hunt, and genearlly act unwomanly. Throughout it all, one member of the clan hounds her, Broud, son of the mate of the leader.

This was an excellent book – a page turner.

Tags: reviews

Dilema

I’ve been seeing preview for Scoop, a new Woody Allen movie. I like Woody Allen, for the most part. Scoop also stars Hugh Jackman and Scarlett Johansson. I like Hugh Jackman. He’s rather cute in addition to being able to act. The dilema? I hate Scarlett Johansson. Ghost World? It was middling. Lost in Translation? Hated it (I want my 2-hours back). Girl with a Pearl Earring? Middling, bordering on boring. The Island? Actually, it was okay (not great cinema, but I didn’t expect that), but it also had Ewan McGregor in it (yum).

So, do I go under the assumption that Wood Allen and Hugh Jackman will nullify the mindnumbing performaces of Scarlett Johansson? Or do I finally learn my lesson and skip it?

Tags: rant

Random Thought

Is it sad that the following came up in a google search:

The Big Rip-Off (TMNT 1987 episode)

And I instantly knew the TMNT was Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles?

Tags: tv

Book catch-up, part 1

I took a bit of a hiatus from reading in December, but I have been reading since then – I just haven’t been keeping up with my book diary. Here’s half of the books I’ve read since my last entry.

Wicked
by Gregory Maguire

This is not your mother’s Wizard of Oz. In fact, that’s clear from the first page.
“She [the wicked witch] was castrated at birth,” replied the Tin Woodsman calmly. “She was born a hermaphroditic, or maybe entirely male.”
As with Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister, this book is fairly dark. Elphaba was born green and with sharp teeth. Is it any wonder that life was hard for her? Her father was ashamed of her, but doted on her armless sister. In school (yes, Shiz, just like the musical), she found a cause – the rights of Animals (where the capital ‘A’ denotes an animal who is sentient and intelligent). But when she brings her cause to the Wizard, she finds that he’s behind the villification of the Animals. He created them as an enemy to unite the different factions of Oz. Her crusade goes wrong, and everything she touches seems to go wrong. Is it any wonder that she became “wicked”?

Great book, highly recommended

In Search of the Big Bang
by John Gribbin

I didn’t actually finish this book, but that’s because the content wasn’t what I expected, not because of the quality of the book. In fact, as usual, Gribbin takes a very difficult subject and makes it manageable for laypeople. he tells the story of how scientists came to devlop Big Bang theory and some of the ongoing investigations into refining the theory.

I was looking for a book that told the story of the COBE spacecraft and its results. Since COBE is depicted on the cover, I don’t think I was foolish in thinking that I might find it here. Sadly, COBE was only mentioned in a paragraph or two of one chapter. Sigh.

Undead and Unemployed
by Mary Janice Davidson

The subject on the spine says “paranormal romance”. What more could a girl want?

Betsy Taylor is Queen of the vampires. She got this title just a couple months ago when she died, though most vampires don’t acknowledge her as Queen yet. In fact, several of these vampires are now out to kill her…er…again. During all this, Betsy secures a job at Nordstrom’s shoe departement at the Mall of America. So, at least her shoe-fetish is satisfied among the death threats.

There’s not much substance here, of course, but the book is rather fun while it lasts.

Twilight Rising, Serpent’s Dream
by Diana Marcellas

I’ve been anticipating this book since The Sea Lark’s Song. It’s Marcellas’ third in her series that started with Mother Ocean, Daughter Sea Brierly grew up wondering if she was the last of the shari’a, a race of witches which had long ago been killed off. But then Brierly found a young fire witch after Brierley fled the Duke’s dungeon. In this book, we found two forest witches, a girl and her twin brother (usually the shari’a abilities are passed down to the girls in a family, but if a girl has a boy twin, he may get some of the abilities as well). The forest witches have been awaiting The Finding – an event that will only happen when one of each type of witch gather (fire, ocean, forest and air). However, no one is quite sure what will happen at The Finding. Perhaps the abilities of the witches will change/grow. Perhaps new types of witches will come about. But it seems clear that the shari’a will find a rebirth at The Finding.

Wonderful book – up to the high standards set by the previous two books in this series.

Tags: reviews

No-gas books

We finally got out on the bikes again today. Yesterday it looked like rain in the morning, so we decided to scrap our biking plans, catch the farmer’s market in Vienna and finally see Superman Returns. It was wet outside this morning, but the sun was out, and despite weather.com’s report that we had 80% humidity, we decided to brave it. As it turned out, it wasn’t that bad for biking. The temperature wasn’t too high and there was a bit of a breeze which helped with that humidity. The clouds returned for a while and we felt a few drops, but all in all not bad weather for biking.

And Andrew finally got to try out his new biking outfit we bought him over a week ago. I’d been raving about how much I loved my biking clothes – the padded shorts, the water-wicking material, and of course, the fashion statement it makes.

Our destination was Hole in the Wall Books. We’ve biked there several times, but usually we drive the bikes up to Vienna and bike from there. Today we just biked from home. That adds about 6 miles to the round trip total, and, actually, without that the ride has become almost too short for us now.

When we got to Falls Church, we biked up Broad Street a bit to a statue Andrew had seen on his last trip to the doctor. He had thought it was a man with a bunch of dogs. What was it really? A disturbing statue of a farmer feeding slop to a bunch of pigs. WTF? The statue is outside Don Beyer’s Volvo, and apparently Don Beyer Sr. was the one who commissioned the statue. Just weird.

Trip miles: 17.2 miles (or so &#150 my bike computer keeps resetting itself at random, even while I’m in the middle of biking)
Weekend miles: 17.2 miles
Season miles: 236.3 miles

Tags: bike