Tuesday, January 31, 2006

might as well...

...post something so that everyone knows that I am alive...which I am. I just haven't felt like blogging lately, or much of anything for that matter. I guess you can say that I have the blahs...I am oh so tired.

part of it has been that I have been working alot lately. It looks highly probable that I will be taking over the Outreach assistant position at the end of March, and I have been working overtime to help them out. the nice thing is that I am getting time and a half comp time hours and already have 15 hours built up. the wedding is next week and I am not freaking out at all. I have a huge list of things that need to be done but I am definitely not paniking. Although if some of the things that we have in place fall through it might be the end of the world, but let's hope that it doesn't come to that.

hummm....I can't think of anything really...I just want to go home at the moment and relax...maybe I will try to go to one of the craft stores for thread. I fixed our shower curtains this weekend and I need more thread to mend the towels. And then I am not sure if I want to go to my class tonight...it is sad, only 5 weeks into the semester and I am trying to figure out a way to not go to class. pathetic really.

Wednesday, January 25, 2006

I have some bug gossip....

but I am not going to post about it yet, maybe tomorrow....however for you Star Wars fans out there, look at this site! It was written by another one of the GV bloggers about Star Wars tourism in Tunisia.

Monday, January 23, 2006

A Blog of Interest

One of my fellow authors over at Global Voices (who covers the Persian blogs) is going to Israel on a citizen journalist excursion to write about the similarites and differences between the Israelis and the Persians. At the moment he is waiting to get into Israel, and if they let him in it should be an interesting project to follow.

Blue Monday

My family stayed over the weekend, and while I love them dearly, I don't feel like I had a weekend at all. It was cute though because a lot of this time this weekend was spent on getting clothes and shoes and other misc. small items ready for the wedding. Just the fact that my Dad bought $80 shoes (and that was the 50% of rate) was amazing. And my mom got a shiny outfit that she looks great in.

However, at the moment I find any and all wedding plans to be depressing. Money is so tight and I feel like I have given up a lot already just to save money... So really the last thing that I wanted to do was try coordinate matching tablecloths and napkins.

The current Outreach Assistant's husband got a job in Louisiana and she will be leaving soon. I regretted not applying for the job before she was hired and I am not going to pass it up this time. The paycut is minimal...about $20 a week and I would be working 10 hours less. I would be a fool to pass it up. Linda has pretty much all but hired me for the position. It should be nice and the change should happen in less than 2 months. Right now, anything to get me away from having to work with the bug everyday would be wonderful. I almost killed her on Friday. She messed up on a student committee meeting schedule which affected "I"....and of course in this instance it was "the student's fault" and then not less than 5 minutes later she had a fit because "I's" schedule wasn't working with hers and she was going to have to reschedule a student's committee meeting so that she could go. She is only there for paperwork...which she admits too all the time, but she has to reschedule everything if she can't make it....but oh yeah...when she messes it up, it is the student's responsibility. I think what really made me so mad about the situation was that the May Accord was all about her right to schedule these appointments and how she has SOLE responsibility for them. Mr.3 said to talk to the AA about it, but it wouldn't matter anyway, it would only be an example of how slimey she really is. I don't think that she will ever be fired, not unless something happens in which she can't squirm her way out of.

Saturday, January 21, 2006

Friday, January 20, 2006

Finishing one story and beginning another....

Jason notified me yesterday that I wasn't clear on what the resolution was on the Tabula Rasa problem. The deal worked out with my Mom and the manager was that when the credit card company called about the reversal of the charges that he wouldn't object. so all should be well.
Anyway Mr.3 and I have already gone through the 75 invitations and I keep finding people that I want to tell them about it...it is a pain really. But as that one hurdle is over with I can work on other aspects of the wedding now.

Let's talk a little about my medication, shall we? I hate it. A food that my stomach is alright with one day, it's not alright with the other day. Foods that we have in the house I can't eat, so I haven't been eating more than one good solid meal a day, with the other meals resemebling snacks more than anything. Someone mentioned cottage cheese the other day and that has been all I can think about...apparently it is something that I can eat...but we haven't been able to go to the store yet. However today is payday, so that should be better.

to top today off right, I dreamt that I was fighting with my mom---I can't remember what about--but I woke up annoyed and it won't go away.

Wednesday, January 18, 2006

An Evening Joe Wilson

Last night Mr.3 and I were given the oppurtunity to go and see Ambassador Joe Wilson speak in front of the Salt Lake Chapter of the Council on Foreign Relations. Actually we got to sit at his table, which including a brief 10 minutes of star-struckedness on my part which faded quickly.

For those of you who don't know who he is, Joe Wilson has lately been known as Mr. Valerie Plame (who was "outed" as a CIA employee), but before that he was known as the last American Diplomat to speak with Saddam Hussein in Gulf War 1. But I believe that when the Gulf War broke out he was "acting" Ambassador as the real Ambassador was in the US warning about the possibility of war breaking out at the time war did break out.

Impressions of him: Nice guy when he doesn't talk politics. Fantastic hair, and I would say 95% of the female population in that room would have slept with him if he was willing. He is a self-promoter to the point of being incredibly vain and arrogant. Mr.3 asked him a question privately after the talk and in answering that question told him 3 times to buy his book. Call me crazy but when someone asks you a direct question about 500 tons of yellow-cake uranium that was found in Iraq, the response to that question should not be "buy my book".

What he said that evening: He has a lot of anger about the war in Iraq, as many US democrats do, however it is obvious that his anger is focused on the fact that the current administration did not listen and follow his recommendations. His bush-bashing is completely personal, I do not wish to really discuss the whole issue of his wife being "outed" but he used that in his speech (and probably his book as well) as a further reasoning why he must have been right...it was a case of "I was injured personally, I am a victim, and therefore my opinion is the most correct one", which logically is a load of crap. He wasn't listened to in matters about the Middle East because his knowledge is severely lacking, he may be great and wonderful with Africa, but the Middle East is a completely different animal...here is why:

His definition of weapons of mass destruction: is limited to strictly Nuclear weapons because they alter society and civilization. Biological weapons are weapons of terror and do not affect society in the long term. Anyone who knows about the atrocities Saddam carried out on the Kurdish populations in Iraq can tell you that biological warfare effects you on a systemic level...hum...let's see birth defects, a skewed population demographic, low birth rate, high infant mortalitiy rate, and don't forget little things like the increase in the snake population as all of the birds in the region were killed and there was no natural predators for the snakes. But apparently those are only side effects of "terror weapons".

His lack of knowledge on terrorism in general: Apparently he is under the impression that Ansar el Islam was a pro-Kurdish group rather than a group that was killing Kurds. He also stated that "25 million ethnic people" is no reason to not support our NATO allies. First, where did he get his numbers, secondly the Kurdish situation in Iraq and in Turkey are vastly different and you can't lump them together...but then again he seems to think that Kurds=terrorists. Oddly enough two seconds after he made that statement about the Kurds he stated that HAMAS and Hizbullah were doing things the "right way" in regards to elections, but he failed to mention the whole terrorist bombings which killed innocents. He classifies himself in the lines of a "Progressive" but he isn't really, just another diplomat/pseudo celebrity that believes in the cause that is most popular at the moment. But can you expect anymore from someone who prides himself on delveloping the US stragey in the Rwanda genocide, because we all know how well that turned out.

Monday, January 16, 2006

It is finally over..

After a few phone calls of the Tabula Rasa store manager to me, Mr.3 and my mom it is all finally over.

I feel much better.

The manager from Tabula Rasa just called...

and I feel myself slipping into a dark spiral downwards.

Tabula Rasa is scourging my soul

I feel incredibily hollow at the moment.

Suzanne from Tabula Rasa left a prefectly chipper message on my phone this morning saying that my invitations are in and that they are absolutely beautiful. A hundred dollars and seven hours of printing on Sunday were the alternative arrangements that we had made because they couldn't even promise them to arrive on Monday.

So I called Suzanne back, and told her that I couldn't believe her nerve after treating us like she did to even call me and tell me about the invitations. I told her that her customer service was non-existant, that her people had lied to me, and that when she made no attempt to call me on Saturday night to let me know what had happened that we called the credit card company to reverse the charges. She called me a liar, that I was making it all up about what her employees had told me, about the date that we had been promised. She contended that it was FedEx's fault and that we owed them money. Mr.3 told her that her vendor problems were not our problem.

I have cried so much that I feel hollow. It hurts to know that a company who regularly deals with brides has no tact with dealing with them, who assumes that the bride is just blowing off steam when they lie to her and fail to deliver a time senstive product. It also hurts to know that the perfect invitations with their plum lined double envelopes with the addressed printed on the back, with their plum ink invitations with matching note cards, are sitting in a store less than a mile away...being held hostage by a heartless company who won't even offer a discount to a customer they have wronged. It hurts because I still want those perfect invitations in which my pride will not allow me to accept. It is also going to hurt every time that I look at the new invitations as they will remind me of this whole situation.

I will never shop at Tabula Rasa again.

I feel like I have had to give up alot in relation to this wedding (the Park building, the invitations, the shiny ring, I don't know how we are going to afford a honeymoon and have enough money to live off of through summer). Maybe I should just stop being materialistic and just let go...let go with it all...regret is going to be the death of me. All I know is that I want to be married to Mr.3, I want to grow old with him. I think that we complete each other, but this wedding is going to divide us...the 2 times that we have fought have had something to do with the wedding, and of course the wedding plans make me completely unstable so the sooner we are married and can move on with life the better.

Sunday, January 15, 2006

Why Tabula Rasa cannot be trusted...

or, alternative title: How Tabula Rasa is trying really hard to ruin my wedding

Okay, so when I have thought about getting married when I was younger I always wanted to spend the money to get invitations from Tabula Rasa, they were part of the fairytale, right? So I get engaged, I am looking to get invitations, I go to Tabula Rasa.

Problem number one that should have made me re-think what I was doing: the condesending manner in which the manager referred to me and to my mother. Also the same manner in which we were treated when we went to order the invites.

Problem number two that should have made me re-think what I was doing: when we were ordering the invites, the manager kept getting his days confused and kept saying that the invites were going to be in a week later than what he was telling me should happen with the shipping dates.

Nether-the-less I ordered beautiful invitations that left a scalding hole in my parents' pockets.

We ordered the invitations on the 3rd of January. The proof was signed on the 5th, the printing company would then need 3 business days to complete the printing which would mean that they would be completed by Tuesday the 10 and shipped out on Wednesday the 11th at the latest. We paid for next day shipping, making it Wednesday or Thursday at the latest for receiving the invitations. I called on Wednesday, was told that the invitations were not there, and that they had been shipped a day late but will be there tomorrow. I called on Thursday, now there was some delay in shipping because of the weather. I called on Friday, some problem with FedEx, was told that he was going to request a Saturday delivery. Called on Saturday, told that the box was somewhere in Salt Lake but that FedEx was unwilling to deliver it.

At this point I was enraged, and Mr.3 got involved. We were told to meet the Assistant Manager at 6:30pm, because she was going to be in later due to a bridal show. We are there at 6:30, the Assistant Manager isn't there,but she will be there in another half hour and she was told earlier that we were going to be coming. Mr.3 makes the salesman call his manager on the phone, and Mr. 3 talks to her the entire time of her drive back. No matter how many times we explain the situation, no one is willing to do anything for us about our invitations. 7:15ish Assistant Manager finally arrives in the store. Apologizes, doesn't know what is wrong, feels really sorry for us. 20 minutes into this conversation we have to mention the possibility of a refund of some sort....the Assistant Manager says that there is no way she is going to pay FedEx after the situation---hello...you already charged us for the shipping...you don't pay anything. It is also around this time that we find out the invitations were not shipped until the 12th, the day that we have in writing as the day the invitations would be in by. Even with being shipped by that time we still should have had them by Saturday. Yet now we are being told that they might be in on Monday, but they can't guarentee that. And we have no assurances that they will give us any sort of a discount. Mr.3 did a wonderful job trying to work with them and dispite the efforts of negotation...I snapped.

I jumped up from my seat, crying and began to yell in the store how this situation was impossible. They find a way of getting those invitations tonight or we were calling the credit card company and reversing the charges. I was the irrate bride.

The Assistant Manager did nothing to help us. She didn't even try to deal with FedEx beyound talking to a tier 1 lackey. They failed to notice that there was a problem with the order on Wednesday when I first called (but they did manage to keep a record of my calls). They also did nothing to notify me that there was a problem with my order. They also never called me last night to tell me what they had managed to find out about the invites. So we called the credit card company to cancel the charges for failure to deliver. Tabula Rasa now has to eat $350+ in non-reuseable invitations, I hope they enjoy them.

We have now wasted two whole weeks in getting out invitations, and now we are scrambling to make them. Mr.3 and I bought (after multiple "disagreements" on how to arrange everything) pre-made invitation kits to make the invites. I went online and stole the grafics of the invites that I had originally ordered to put on our new invites...hopefully the printer ink will hold out, but I am not sure. Mr.3 has been working his magic on the computer and printer to get everything done, but as it is invites will be getting to people 3 weeks before the ceremony. We are easily in our 6 hour of printing and haven't gotten to the reception cards yet.

To say that I am disappointed with Tabula Rasa would be an understatement at best. I feel betrayed and swindled. They have proven themselves to be a snooty sales staff with no customer services skills whats-so-ever, and a company that can not deliver on any business promises that they make to their customers. Do not ever buy anything from them, especially pre-printed invitations, you will only get burned!

Friday, January 13, 2006

Sick and Tired

I have now missed 2 weeks of the Kurdish updates on Global Voices...something that I used to live for. I think that partly I feel a little jaded with the Kurdish stuff at the moment. On KBU we keep sending emails back and forth saying how we all want the site to continue but no one really does anything. Before the new year I was trying to post everyday so that we wouldn't lose our readership, but it shouldn't be the "Delal" show over there...that is why I have this blog. It's frustrating, but I really need to get back to it.

I have been on my first week of medicine. Sugar now makes me physically ill and I can feel my body feeding off of itself---I am pizza the hut!---Mr.3 keeps making me eat. Which really isn't that bad, but if I could have my way at all right now, I wouldn't be eating at all. Let's hope that this works.

Tabula Rasa is going to catch some hell today. My invitations were supposed to be in yesterday and when they called they said that there was a problem on the shipper's end and that they should be in today. But they haven't called me yet to tell me that they are in and well....I need to get them out in the mail...now!

I got a new computer at work today, it is an updated MAC, really nice...the keyboard is so wonderful and springy! Randy's boss in the College paid for it, but I really don't think that a new computer will solve the basic code problem in the new Humanities system. wow, I really love this keyboard, and the speakers are much louder...I am so easily amused.

Tuesday, January 10, 2006

I get married in one month

cool, isn't it? I have so much left to do. I received an email from Dione whose wedding plans are no longer in her hands anymore, yet she is expected to pay for it all. Instead of May 2007, she is now getting married in December 2006...and she sounds a little petrified. I am glad that I don't have months to plan this thing, I would go crazy-more than what I am now, at least my mania is kept at a low point.

Went to the endocronologist yesterday and had a meeting with the Linguistics advisor. The endocronologist was well...interesting... I only made the appointment because Dr. Warner said that I should be treated for insulin resistance and the best way to do that was to be started on a certain medication. We made the appointment, but were unable to get into the Dr. she had been working with, we were able to meet with his "understudy" as it were. She completely disagreed with their research, thought that there was no merit to it (pretty harsh decision coming from someone who was just board certified) and refused to fill out a prescription for me, but proceeded to lecture me for 20 minutes as if I had no idea that I was fat. She wouldn't believe anything that Mr.3 or I said...in her mind, I was fat because I ate too much and that was that. After the lecture, and me being close to tears, she cheerfully asked what I wanted to do. When I told her that the only reason I made the appointment was to discuss the medication option and not to be lectured to she went to go and talk to the doctor that I was supposed to see anyway. They talked in the hallway for a few minutes and then she stomped back into the room to write the perscription. Dr. Knodel (who is the one working with Dr. Warner) came in to talk to us about it, and was excited that I was willing to persue this line of treatment. As Mr. 3 put it, "little doctor girl got spanked". Regardless, the incident was enough to shatter my self-esteem for the rest of the day.

Next up, went to talk to the Linguistics advisor yesterday. It went well, I should be done with my program in Spring of 2007...and it is recommended that I write a thesis but is not required to graduate. I think that I am going to start research this summer and try to get as much of it written as I can beforehand. Oh, dear. As I was writing this the bug came to visit wanting to know what she has to do with my old file to drop me. I better figure this out before she somehow gets me dropped from the school all together.

Sunday, January 08, 2006

Spring Semester's Eve

T'was the night before spring semester
and all through the house
not a student was stirring
just sleeping like a louse

their packbacks were filled
with notebooks and pens
that will help with their studying
on which their grades depends

sleep with without worry
for tonight is the last night
spring semester begins
on the next mornings light




....yes...I am fully aware of the hokiness....see you all at school tomorrow!

Saturday, January 07, 2006

another short break...I guess

on Wednesday I found a new kind of illness which completely incompasitated me...not fun...I think that it was a last hurrah of the flu from the holidays.

found out that we can't use the Park Building for the ceremony, but we have been given permission to use the Hinckley instead. at first the thought of having the ceremony in OSH didn't appeal to me but it does have a carmic effect to it: Mr.3 and I met in OSH, we practically live their because of school and work anyway, and he proposed to me in OSH...we might as well complete the circle and get married there. Plus the Hinckley will let us use the room for free, I don't have to worry about paying for a security guard or chair set-up, and dear Jayne said that she would film the ceremony onto a DVR for me...it's great! and it gets to keep the small wedding feeling that I want and people get to see my dress.

I will definitely be wearing flats for the wedding as I think that I broke my toe. I was shaving my legs, and when I do that I stand in the shower and put my foot up on the wall. Well I had just finshed one leg and as I was putting the other foot up on the wall I manged to kick two of my middle toes up into the spigit. yeah, I know talent. I broke my foot doing the conga up the stairs it seems fitting to break my toe shaving my legs.

in other news, saw King Kong today, loved it and cried a bit. go see it if you haven't.

Tuesday, January 03, 2006

A short break

The past 2 days has been a short break from blogging, although it was an attempt to have a short break from everything, that doesn't feel like it is working. Besides the fact that I dreamt last night that a man came into the Middle East Center with a shotgun looking for the bug and that I talked him out of killing us all....I woke up not really wanting to go to work. Dreading it in fact. I don't normally feel this way about my job. Mr.3 said that it was a sign that I am a grownup, but call me crazy...what is the point of making yourself miserable doing something that consumes 70% of your waking time?

Went to my follow-up with Dr. Warner today. The spinal pressure in my head is down way low and my eyesight is unaffected, which is wonderful. She did mention however that I am showing diabetic precursors and that I appear to be insulin resistant. So next week I will be seeing an endochronologist about that. Apparently there is a lot of research going into insulin resistant people not being able to lose weight, and with treatment for the resistance they have been able to lose weight. One thing that was scary was she said that if I was to become pregnant I would have gestational diabetes...I really want kids in the future (in fact my number one fear is actually not being able to have children-yes I know it's weird) so this is really affecting me. My mom has always said wait 3 years after being married to have children, and now I am at the point of realizing that within the next 3 years or so I will have a child, so this is something that I really need to work on.

I have less than 3 years to lose half of my body weight.