What Now

RANDOM ACTS OF BLOGGING

1) I'm currently sitting at my desk trying very hard to put off going to the gym.  I don't enjoy going to the gym, as I'm sure I've said here before, but today the angel on my right shoulder has triumphed over the devil on my left.  Now I'm dressed in all of my gloriously geeky gym clothes and my Dumbledore's Army hat (Shut up. My hair is too short to pin back.) and I'm trying to make myself actually GO.  I'm actually just in the middle of my Before-I-Go-To-The-Gym routine.  I have to brush my teeth and hair, take all of my various medicines and vitamins, and then sit down to drink a bottle of water and think about important things like: why I should be going to the gym, why I don't want to go at all, why I want to eat all of the coffee cakes...stuff like that.  Sigh.  OK, I finished my water and it's time for me to go before I change my mind.  Boo.

2) I'm back.  Gleh.

3) Not long ago, we had to replace the old laser printer because it was eating documents and causing general mayhem.  The new one scares me!  It occasionally gets these weird electronic hiccups, usually when I'm home alone and not expecting them!  It will also suddenly turn on with no warning and cycle up like it's going to print something, but nothing comes out.  Of course, one day I expect a piece of paper to come out with something like "I'm Watching You" printed on it, but when that happens, I'm going to get a young priest, an old priest and a rifle and put it out of it's misery.

4) Today I tried my hand at making homemade tapioca pudding.  It sounded easy enough, and I had all of the ingredients on hand, which is rare.  Unfortunately, what the recipe said would happen didn't happen, and so I kept adding tapioca pearls into it thinking that it would even out.  It didn't.  Also, I spilled a very large amount of salt into it, but I'm going to eat it anyways because if I'm going to stand and stir it for an hour, I refuse to throw it away until I at least attempt eating it.  I tried adding chocolate and vanilla bean to it as well, which kind of helped.  It still doesn't look like the recipe says it would, but I think I know what I did wrong.  I mean, other than the large amount of salt thing.  I'll try again when I get more milk. 

5) If you have a spare prayer, do you mind saying it for Grandma?  As some of you know, she had a stroke a month or two ago and up until the other day, she had been doing much better.  Unfortunately, she had a couple of seizures and is back in the hospital.  Although Mr. Lee said she sounds OK, he also said she isn't making sense.  She seems to think she's going to be going home, and possibly traveling out here soon.  We aren't sure if she's just being optimistic, or if she really has no idea what's going on.  I'm sure she'd appreciate the prayers.  :)

6) You know, I just don't understand people sometimes.  A few weeks ago, I got an email survey from a website where I am a member.  The website happens to be for a jewelry company that I admire, although I'd be hard pressed to actually afford much of what they sell, and the email said the first 75,000 (I think) people to fill out and return the survey would get a free bracelet.  Normally I wouldn't bother filling it out because I know that mailing lists for these companies are huge, but I figured I'd at least try.  I filled it out, but when I submitted it, I got a message saying that they'd already run out of promotional items, but thanks for my input.  I wasn't too bothered about it, since I knew it would be a long shot anyway, and I didn't mind filling out the survey.  After a couple of hours, I completely forgot about it.  Fast forward a few weeks and I got a package in the mail which happened to be one of the bracelets!  I was very surprised and pleased, because it wasn't a cheap knockoff, it was actually one of the bracelets that the company sold!  Granted, it wasn't one of the expensive ones, but it was genuine, and actually not the cheapest item they have.  Now, having worked in marketing (albeit, marginally) I know how these things usually work. They were probably going to discontinue the product because they weren't selling and they had a huge surplus to get rid of (EDIT: which turned out to be the case after I checked the product line) or they just really needed the info and were willing to lose the money.  Also, I'm fairly certain the company marks up the stuff substantially, so they probably weren't losing as much as I think.  At any rate, I was glad to have the bracelet. It was nice, I wasn't expecting it and I didn't have to pay for it!

A couple of days later, I got an email from the same company saying they had a Facebook page, so I went to it to see what there was to see.  I began reading the page updates, and noticed that a lot of other people had gotten the free bracelets, too.  Neato, right?  Most of the posts were nice and the people were saying their thanks, but I noticed a few who were kind of nasty.  There were a lot of whiny people saying things like "I wish I could have gotten a chance to take that survey. I guess you don't want to keep all of your customers happy." and "I just spent $1,200 in your store and I didn't get anything for free, I don't think that's fair!"  And there were those who said things like "Don't worry about not getting the bracelet, it was cheap and ugly."  Then there were a lot, and I mean a lot, of people who said things like "I finished the survey, but still haven't got my bracelet! :( Maybe I'm not getting it after all."  Hmm.

Look, I like free stuff as much as anyone, but I've never felt "entitled" to them like a lot of these people seem to.  I've actually noticed that kind of thing on a lot of websites and Facebook pages.  People get their panties all in a bunch about missing out on free offers, or wondering where their free items are.  I've seen people get hateful over something as stupid as drink powder samples.  Seriously, these are the same people who made me hate working customer service jobs.  If they are going to riot over free things that weren't even promised to them, I'd hate to think about how they are about things they actually pay for.  Obviously, these people have a serious case of "First World Problems."  Sheesh.