Amethyst's Shiny Pebbles

Now I understand why my parents were so incredibly unhappy when they had back pain.

(Bad enough that at 3 pm I was calling a chiropractor's office to see if they could take me this afternoon.  Fortunately, one could; it doesn't hurt quite so much to stand up from a sitting position now.  It's still kind of hurty, mind you.)

Boy, driving in Massachusetts when you're used to driving in California is really annoying. The combination of lots of nonstandard intersections, no left-turn-only lanes anywhere, and drivers who all know much better than you is kind of painful.

Dear Universe,

WTF with me being sick this year???

I would have thought between the flu, the resultant cough, the cat bite, the resultant infection and merry dance with antibiotics, the finger smash, and the cold last week (with new cough) that I would have gone through my quota of being less than healthy for at least a little while.

So why is it that I'm running a fever today?  I know, it's *only* 100.4 at the moment, not quite as bad as the last time I had a fever back with the flu.  But the achiness in joints I'd forgotten I had makes up for that, thank you very much.

Please make this be just a 24-hour thing.  I've got a new job to go to in the morning, and I CAN'T stay home.  The same way I couldn't stay home last week during the worst day or two of the cold.

Sincerely,
Me

Being kept awake for seriously large sections of the night by coughing is Not Fun.  Then (finally) falling asleep, only to be awakened by your cell phone ringing at Perfectly Reasonable Time on the East Coast but Stupidly Early on the West Coast, is also less than amusing.  My phone now has a setting which I have named Dead: no ringer or vibration.  Ever. For anything.  Period.

(I've been sleeping out in the living room for almost 2 weeks now, due to Huz being sick then me being sick - I figure that at least one of us should get some sleep, no matter how noisy the other person needs to be!  There's no clock in the room, so I've used my cell phone as a clock.  Last night, I forgot for the first time to put the phone on Silent mode overnight.  Blargh.)

Oh, and I went to work today.  Coughed a bunch and have the same extremely minimal amount of voice now as I did yesterday, but I went!  I will call our choirmaster tomorrow to inform him that I have no voice and won't be at choir rehearsal.  Hmm.. yeah, this *is* an improvement over lots of last week, but it's still mighty tiresome.

( Whining behind the cut )

Rrr.  Tired of this stupid cold already.

Oh, and while I'm whining... LJ, what is up with these stupid rollover adds on the journal entry page?  I am tired of having a giant ad for Wonderbread or lipstick or whatever pop up if I accidentally cross my mouse over that particular 1/15 of my screen.

Flipping the circuit breaker didn't work this time.  The heating guy is showing up at 9:30 tomorrow morning.  (long after I'll have departed for jury duty.  whee.)

Right.  Tired of waking up in the middle of the night and losing sleep.  First night we were both so tired we just kind of slept.  Second night, awake for ~ 1 hr around 4 AM local.  Tonight... woke up at 5:30.  Still awake.  Annoyed.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled activity.  Or lack thereof, if you're lucky.

Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.

Ticketmaster generally works fine, as it did tonight.  We have nice shiny tickets to go see the King Tut exhibit a week from Monday.  Pain level: minimal.

Intercity, New Zealand (a bus company that runs all over the islands) has been a source of moderate to complete fail almost since the word go.  We had trouble purchasing the initial 15-hour bus passes - they thought something was wrong with both the credit cards I entered, then mysteriously accepted.. well, one of them.. after I retyped their "prove you're not a 'bot" text.  Tonight I tried to use the passes to acquire tickets to get from Auckland to Paihia and back, and from Queenstown to Te Anau and back. 

(1) The website SHOULD NOT allow you to click a return date in the month preceding the departure date. 

(2) The website SHOULD allow you to put multiple trips into one booking.  It appeared, after doing the Auckland/Paihia leg, that it did.  But when I was shown the cart after doing the Queenstown/Te Anau leg, the cart had mysteriously lost the Auckland/Paihia leg.  

(3) The website SHOULD give more meaningful error messages than "Your trip takes longer than 1 day" upon attempting to re-book the Auckland/Paihia leg (a trip which had previously been put at 4 hours and change).  I'm guessing that something's gone wrong with my poor little flexi-pass in all the peregrinations, and it may think I have no credit left... even though I technically never checked out the cart.

(4) The website SHOULD have a way to check your balance on your flexi-pass.

(4) I refuse to call internationally to solve this problem.  (Even though my phone company only charges 5.5 cents/minute.)  I will email them and see if they can 'splain things.

Rrr.

-------

Edited Sunday 2/7 to add: Tried again.  Booked the two legs of the trip seperately, checking out the cart after each one.  Almost no difficulties involved.  Hah - done with that particular bit!

You may remember this post, where I ranted about being sent the wrong volume of D&D 4th Ed Player's Handbook.  I waited a few days after the first email, cc'ing Barnes and Noble this time to advise them that a seller hadn't gotten back to me about a problem.  That same day, I received the following response from the seller:

We are sorry to hear that you did not receive the correct order, we no longer have this book in stock to send you a replacement order. we have issued a full refund and you should be able to see it soon [sic - no period]

*shrug*  Fine; I can live with a refund.  B&N emailed me later that day letting me know that full refunds had gone to the various forms of payment (gift card and credit card).  Meanwhile, I still have a book on hand that I don't want and don't really legally own anymore, having been refunded for it.  The seller failed to enclose a Merchandise Return Label or anything useful like that, and I didn't exactly want to pay out-of-pocket to return the darn thing.  So I emailed the seller again, asking how to go about returning the unwanted book.  And I get back as a response, this:

Ok thanks. We will be shipping out your Player's handbook 2 today via expedited mail.

Hrm?  Wazzat??  You, uh, didn't actually answer my question.

I mean, I'll be happy to have the book (assuming they do it right this time).  But unless they are clever enough to include a merch. return label this time, I'll have the dual problems of (1) still having a book on hand that I don't want and feel obligated to return, and (2) getting Barnes and Noble involved again and getting them to re-charge the gift certificate and my credit card so that I can legally own the desired book that I will then have in hand.  (Mind you, that won't happen until the new, correct book arrives.)

This was not supposed to be this complicated.  I would advise people not to buy books on the B&N website from Book Outlet (on their marketplace), because they appear to be Very Confused.

So, Billie cat didn't have a standard abscess. ( Kitty medical TMI )