Random thoughts rattling around in my brain . . .

June 13, 2012 by Karen H. | 2 Comments

I checked my calendar today, and it said it was June 13th already.

June 13th?? How could that be possible?!

Then I checked my last post . . . June 3rd. *sighs* My readers are not going to be happy with me. And my excuse? Ummm….er….. I pretty much don’t have one, except I’m just damn lazy. It’s been interesting having a roommate (housemate, to be more accurate) and coming home and having about an hour’s conversation with him before he heads to bed. He’s got a work schedule that involves getting up to go to work about 2 am and then coming home about noon.

Then, after conversation, I fix dinner, eat it, and watch some TV. And then I mess around on the internet, reading email, facebooking, etc. And then my brain is simply too tired to come up with a scintillating post. Which I realize that so far, this one has yet to reach the stage of “snore-arama” let alone anywhere near “scintillating.”

So maybe this is just going to be a random thoughts post, because I’m at work, and procrastinating so when I sit and type it looks like I’m busy, so here we go.

1. The other day, as I was driving home from work, a homeless person who was at a bus stop, stepped off the curb right into the path of my car! Fortunately I was slowing for a red light, and was only going maybe 25 mph. I swerved, and missed him by a hairsbreadth. I don’t think it registered in his addled brain that he’d almost been hit by a car. It scared the ever livin’ crap out of me! I just about had a heart attack right there on the spot. My goodness it was scary! My heart pounded in my throat and I had a hard time catching my breath. Yikes!

2. I had to go to the dentist today and have my permanent crown put on. While I was there, I pointed out a loose crown that I had on another tooth. He tried popping it off and it wouldn’t come off. He shook his head gravely and said that wasn’t good. He took some x-rays and told me he thinks that my tooth is broken underneath the crown, but he can’t really tell until he breaks off the crown and takes a look. And then he can put on a temporary crown and discuss “options.” Like a bridge or an implant. Well, since the tooth isn’t bothering me at all other than I feel it pulling when I eat sticky things, I decided to wait until the first of the year. We have a cap of $1,500 on dental procedures with our dental insurance, and I’m sure I used a good part of that with the crown I just had done. If he goes in there, removes the crown, tells me it needs $2,400 worth of work and puts a temporary crown on there, that means I’d have to live with the temp crown until the first of the new year so I can get the maximum coverage toward the implant. I do not want to live with a temporary crown for six months. No thank you. So, the decision was made to just wait.

3. I’m going to my parents this weekend for Father’s Day. It’s a 3-1/2 hour drive up and 3-1/2 hour drive back. I’m leaving Friday and coming back Sunday morning. I love my parents, and they are in their 80s and won’t be around forever. But I really dread that drive. Sometimes I wish they lived closer. And sometimes I’m so glad they don’t. Know what I mean? Fortunately, they are in very good health and (so far) have maintained all their faculties.

4. So two weeks from today I’m scheduled to fly to Chicago and meet up with two friends from Second Life whom I’ve known for two years now and have spoken with on Skype many times, but never met. I’m very excited. One gal lives in New Jersey and the guy lives in Alabama. We’ve all been great friends and so we’re excited to spend time in Chi-town together, playing tourists. And while I’m there, I get to see my Chicago friend, as well. Good times! I’m excited.

5. Today after work I am finally getting my hair cut and colored! Woo hoo! My hairdresser only works part-time so getting an appointment for a cut and color (which is a 2-1/2 hour ordeal) is difficult at best. I am badly overdue for a cut; in fact, I look rather pathetic. My oldest son owed me money, and I told him I’d meet him at his bank so he could repay me. It was a Saturday and I’d been cleaning all morning. I jumped in the car, drove down and met him inside the bank (this branch was inside a grocery store). My son was on his lunch break from work and looked rather dapper in his work shirt and nice pants. I, on the other hand, looked like something the cat dragged in. My hair was a mess, and since it’s shaggy right now and has a bad case of root rot, no make up, sloppy clothes — I could see the bank personnel eyeing me, as if I might be a homeless woman who has badgered this nice young man into giving me some money. Oy. This was highly embarrassing. Never again! There is a reason my mama told me never to go out looking less than your best.

6. So, I play Sims Social on Facebook. I have a love-hate relationship with that game!! There are many times you become completely stuck with those FB games and can no longer progress unless you get your friends to send you the neck hairs from a boar to complete some quest. In my case, I had a quest to place and build a “heavenly bed” or something like that. The bed itself doesn’t cost anything. Go to “shop” and place the bed in your home. Voila! Now, click on the bed to build.

Turns out there are six different stages for building the bed. First you have to click on it for three different sets of five “build” sessions, each of which use energy. Of course you run out of energy. You can either come back another time, or, they tell you brightly, for 45 simoleons, you can simply bypass this and move forward! Yay! So you think ok I’ll spend $8.00 and purchase 55 simoleons and finish. Next stage comes along, you need a bunch of feathers, some angel wings, blah blah. Whatever. You can either ask your friends to send you some, or for another 45 simoleons you can bypass this stage, too! Turns out, building this bed has like 8 stages and there is no way to progress other than to wait for your friends (who have by now de-friended you because they’re SO SICK of your posting requests for this or that) or pay real money to purchase simoleons. What a racket!! You can rack up well over $100 in real money purchasing simoleons to finish a multi level project like this. Ridiculous!

So, what do I do? I decide, fine, I can spend $8 on simoleons (not knowing that I was getting sucked into the rabbit hole of their evil plan). I set everything up, and then click on the correct radio button for my $8.00 purchase. Then I decided, hmmm I’d rather use PayPal, so I click on that link, then click “purchase.” It thinks for a moment, then sends me an announcement. You have sent $100 to Facebook for the purchase of 950 simoleons!! Thank you so much for your purchase!” I blinked at it, dumbstruck. Gasping, I said a LOT of bad words (the f-bomb being the most common one).

“A hundred dollars?!?” I shrieked at the screen, “A HUNDRED DOLLARS??? I didn’t mean to spend a hundred dollars worth of freakin’ simoleons for a stupid game!!”

Frantically I looked back at my transactions. Turns out, when you purchase simoleons, there are several levels — $100, $40, $20, $8 and $2. Of course when you call up the purchase screen, it defaults to the $100 purchase. I had clicked the $8.00 radio button but apparently when I switched from purchasing with a VISA to purchasing with PayPal, it re-defauled to the the $100 radio button. Bastards!! Rat bastards!! No wonder Mark Zuckerberg is a freakin’ billionaire! Gah. But, honestly, I can only blame myself. I should have been more careful. After spending another half an hour to see if I could get my money back, I realized I was stuck. There was no way to re-convert the simoleons back into dollars. I think I heard Zuckerberg chuckling gleefully in the background.

So I figured what the heck. I have 950 simoleons to play with. It took me an hour, but I finished the freakin’ bed and nearly depleted my store of simeoleons. So I used what simoleons I had left to expand and update my home. I don’t have enough money for groceries next week, but my golly my Sims Social home is the nicest on the block!! Grrrrrrrrrr.

7. One last thing: I was absolutely appalled to see this picture on a website for the plus-size women’s store Avenue. I love Avenue; they have great clothes. When I saw this photo on their website, I was outraged. How dare they consider this a “plus size” model?!? Seriously?? Who are they kidding?? I’d be THRILLED to be this size. What in the holy hell is wrong with the fashion industry when a size 12 is a plus size?? Who decides this stuff?? It’s so completely and utterly ridiculous I can’t even tell you. No wonder women have self-image problems when they’re force fed that a size 12 is plus size. Ridiculous! I wish there was something we could do about that.

Ok, well that’s about it for now. I must get back to real work. I hope everyone is having a nice hump day. The bright spot in my day is that I get my hair done tonight and I can stop looking like a homeless person!!

Ta ta for now!