Photo a Day: Mail

Our mail is usually pretty boring. Ads, more ads, and bills. A couple of weeks ago, however, we got this in the mail. It made my stomach turn.

If you can't see what that says, it's a collection notice.

If you know me at all, you know that I NEVER pay my bills late. EVER. Nor would I ever skip out on paying somebody.

Back in October, we switched internet providers, because our internet was super slow. (Although right now, with our new internet, my computer is still being really slow. Maybe it's my computer. But either way, it's annoying.)

So I paid our last bill to the old company, and sent in our modem. A month later (November), I got an email notice from them saying I owed them for the modem - like I had kept it, so they were charging us for keeping it. So I called, gave them all the information about how I sent it in. Supposedly they took the charge off, and all was well.

I didn't hear another peep from that company. Until a couple of weeks ago.

You know, that's the one thing I don't get. Why didn't the company try to get ahold of me first, instead of just sending stuff to collections and ding my credit? I didn't get any phone calls, or emails, or anything. Awesome.

After getting this notice, I called the company, and got it all straightened out on their end. And then I called the collection company.

I told the guy on the phone that there had been a mistake, and that I didn't actually owe the company that money - they had charged me for something that I didn't owe to them. He was all, "Well, you should pay us anyway, and then I'm sure they can get you a refund." And I replied, "I don't want to wait around and have to hound them for another four months trying to get a refund on something that I don't owe in the first place!" Very frustrating.

Anyway, I called again last week. And the charge was removed from the internet company. I called the collection company, and the charge was cleared with them too.

So yes, it's all taken care of. But I LOVE doing other people's jobs for them.

Memory Monday: Reuben (Knuckle) Sandwich

When I think of the worst dates that I've been on, this one is probably the worst one.  Well, maybe not the worst one, but definitely in the top 5.  I was a junior in college, so fall of 1999.

There was a guy in my ward in college named Reuben.  I called him Ruby, I think mostly to bug him.  Nice guy and all.  He lived with about 8 guys in a house that they had dubbed the "cinna-batch".  I have no idea why they called their house that, but whatever.

So Reuben asked me on a date for a Friday night, which I gladly accepted, because he was a really nice guy, right?  Um, yeah.  Right.  I mean, he is.  But just not on this date.

He picked me up, and when we got to the car, he said, "You can get your own door, right?"  1st wrong step of the night.  I was like, "Uh, yeah, I guess."  For dinner, he took me to a stake barbecue.  We got there late, so there were slim pickings on the food.  Come to think of it, I don't even think it was our stake-I think he just heard about it from who-knows-who, and decided, hey! free food!  2nd wrong step of the night-free food for a date?  Not that I expected a super fancy expensive meal for dinner, but dinner together would have been nice instead of with 100 other starving college students.

Going back to the car (and every time we got in or out of the car that night), Reuben again said, "You can get your own door, right?"  One of the times I replied, "Um, no, I can't.  Would you please get it for me?"  Which he grudgingly did that time, but dude.  It ticked me off.

We went back to his apartment, and we watched "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid".  And I totally kept falling asleep.  Reuben was in love with that movie, and so of course he owned it.  (Free movie.  Hm.)  And it was fine to sit and watch, but when he was reciting every line along with the movie, it got a little old.

Right before the movie, we went to the store and got some dessert/snacks to munch on during the movie.  I'm remembering ice cream, which I think I might have gotten one little scoop out of before he hoarded it away in his freezer.

Then we went to an Institute dance, where there was a band that was playing Beatles songs.  I thought maybe the date would improve at the dance, because I love the Beatles, but I was wrong.  So we were hanging out and dancing and stuff, and then he decided to start chatting up some random chick.  I went and called my roommates, and begged them to come to the dance and crash my date, essentially.  So my date with Reuben became a date with Reuben, Random Chick that he was flirting with, and my two roommates. 

Eventually, it was time to leave, so we left...and walked Random Chick home.  She didn't live that far away, but dude!  WE WERE ON A DATE!!!  We got back to the car, and he had the decency to walk me to my door after the date, which was the first gentlemanly thing he had done all night.  I might have given him a high five (no way was I going to hug him-I think I would have strangled him if I had gotten that close), because by then I had HAD it.

I walked in the door, and was like "WORST DATE EVER!!!" to my roommates.  They all agreed.

Reuben ended up asking Random Chick to Homecoming.  And we stayed friends, but there was no way I would have ever gone on a date with him again.  Though apparently, he felt the same about me, but before our date even started.

(I just looked to see if I had a picture of Reuben in my scrapbook.  That would be a big fat no.)

Memory Monday: A No Good, Very Bad Date

The summer after my junior year in high school (1996), I had a boyfriend.  Named Ned.  (Not joking.)  We were together all of two months.  Anyway, another one of my friends named Ahren was dating a guy named Sean (which, when I was younger, I thought it was pronounced "Seen".  One of those weird spellings.  Like Seamus is pronounced "Shay-mus".  Didn't know that for a long time, either.)

But I digress.  So Ahren and I decided that we'd plan a double date for our boyfriends, and it was going to be awesome.  We had a candlelight dinner at the park planned, and making homemade ice cream...the whole romantic nine yards, I guess.  Or something like that.  We had our other friends drive them around for a while blindfolded while we set some things up, then met them and took over.  We drove around for a while, then went to our candlelight dinner.  Which, if I'm remembering right, was going to be, like, cold cereal.  I don't know why we thought that was a good idea, but whatever. 

Anyway, I grew up in Idaho Falls, which is a very windy place to live.  We tried time and again to light our candles and keep them lit outside, and it just wasn't working.  And then Sean and Ned decided to start...sabotaging our date.

I don't know what it was.  Maybe it was our poor planning.  Maybe it was 17-year-old boys and their awesome maturity level.  Maybe it was just in the air.  But our date went from bad to worse.  Both Ned and Sean kept making dumb snarky comments, and just acting like idiots.

We ended up at Ahren's house, where we wanted to make homemade ice cream.  The way we learned is you mix a few ingredients in a bag, set it in a bag of salt and ice cubes, wrap it in newspaper, and then shake it for a long long time.  We did it successfully in Young Women's or something, and thought it would be a great idea.  So Ned and Sean, being as awesome as they were, started throwing the bags of ice cream around really, really hard, and really high up in the air (we were outside).  Well, Ned threw the bag of ice cream to Sean, and... it hit my car.

Now, my car was not a fancy car.  It was a light blue 1983 Honda Accord.  It had been my dad's, and it got passed down to the girls when we were in high school.  There were so many things wrong with it.  The tape player wouldn't work-it would make the sounds all garbled.  We had to plug it in in the winter so that it would start up.  Someone had stolen the head rests, so we found some from a car parts place that were brown, and the car parts place spray painted them blue to match the rest of the interior.  It had plastic thingies sticking out on the sides of the seats.  It was a beater, but it was my beater.

So when the ice cream hit my baby (which we had dubbed the Ocean Car, because of some lame Disney Australian show called Ocean Girl, and the fact that the tapes playing sounded like underwater music-oh yeah, and it was blue), which, mind you, it barely tapped my car, I just LOST it.  I grabbed the ice cream bag, whipped around, and threw it as hard as I possibly could.  I wasn't even aiming at anything, I just threw.  Well, my boyfriend Ned just happened to be standing a few feet away, and the bag full of hard ice cubes and everything else hit him right in, shall we say, a delicate nether region.

I should have felt bad.  I kind of felt bad, but only a little.  But I kind of started laughing, too, when he crumpled to the ground and starting moaning and rocking back and forth.  It actually felt kind of good to get back at him for being such a jerk on the date that we had planned, even though my throw was unintentional.

I don't remember the rest of the date.  I don't know if we ended up eating the ice cream or not, or if we just called it a night (a very weird, frustrating night).

But I will always love my Ocean Car.

(Dude, I can't believe I found a clip of the show Ocean Girl on youtube!  Watch out, it's a super awesome show!  Actually, I never watched it, but I always saw the previews:  "Did you see that?"  "What?"  "There was a girl!  A girl in the ocean!"  Good times, my friends.)

Sometimes...

Sometimes...when something is less expensive, it's because it really is cheap.

Sometimes...it's better not to clean.

Sometimes...when something is labeled "dry clean only", even though it's cotton, you should dry clean it instead of opting to wash it in the machine.

Sometimes..."all I need is the air that I breeeeathe, and to looooove yoooouuuu."

Sometimes...air drying is the better choice.

Sometimes...drapes decide to have a mutiny and try to display their owner's personality (dorky).

Sometimes...six inches shorter makes a huge difference.

Sometimes...I wish companies would pre-shrink their fabric.

Sometimes...when you decide to wash one set of drapes, you should wait and see what the result is before washing the back window set, instead of doing them simultaneously.

Sometimes...the back set shrinks as much as the front set.

Sometimes...you just have to "embrace the awkwardness". (Thanks for the phrase, Suz! I need to embroider that on a pillow; it's my life's motto.)

Nesting Gone Wrong

Dear Duckie shower curtain:

I'm so sorry I accidentally maimed you. You were a good curtain. You've been with me since college. I've loved you, and moved you, and enjoyed the privacy you gave me.

I didn't want to hurt you. Actually, I was trying to clean you, and thought I'd take the easy route and put you in my clothes washer. I didn't know you would take it so hard.

Well, so long, Duckie. It's been a wonderful friendship. I'll have to try and replace the irreplaceable.

With love, your brokenhearted former owner, Nat