So, you may have seen my status yesterday about my bad experience with Freecycle in Clairton. Here's what happened:
I'm collecting garage sale items for a charity sale at work, and I posted a wanted ad on Freecycle. I got a response from a woman in Clairton saying she had several boxes of "knock knacks" from flea markets. I should have known right then that she was nuts. However, I'm not one to turn down a generous offer, so I set up a pickup time and got her address.
Yesterday was the day of pickup, and I had another stop to make in Imperial, where I actually received a large amount of clean, quality items. I was happily making my way into the bowels of Jefferson Hills when Gladys (the GPS I borrowed from my mom) told me I had arrived at my destination. I look to see a small, run-down house with a fenced-in yard overflowing with plastic children's toys. I'm talking pools, playhouses - you name it. I didn't see any boxes, so I went down a small alley of sorts to the back of her house. Sitting there were about 10 boxes of items, and I knew I was in trouble from just the sight of it. A rusty water cooler, an old stained pair of black pants, and a box full of dirty miniature tea sets was all I could distinguish from the masses. My car was already pretty full from my first stop, so I decided to take a few boxes of her items, just because I said I would, even though I knew I'd probably have to get rid of them at home or at least scour my body with bleach and pumice stones after coming in contact with them. I briefly rummaged around to figure out what I could possibly salvage and also what I could fit in my car. After loading in three boxes and a bag, I went on my merry way, intending to e-mail this woman when I got home, thank her for her donations, and make up some excuse about not being able to return for the rest of the items. In my defense, this was a 45-minute drive for a ton of junk that really belongs in a dump rather than on a flea market table.
So, I get home an hour or so later, after making a pit stop at Giant Eagle on the way, and I open my mailbox to compose my apology letter when what do I see? Hmm...an e-mail entitled "garage sale items" written by Nikki Morsaint, junk provider herself. Here is the exact text of the e-mail:
you know, I went through a lot of trouble to get things ready for you. I took several hours away from my kids in order to have it ready for you, and then you don't even take it. Not only that, but you don't have thew decentcy to knock on my door and tell my to lug it all back downstairs again, let alone bother to help. I am so glad I could be of help to your fundraiser." (typos were all hers)
I was shocked. Is this woman seriously yelling at me for not taking her ten piles of crap? Is she a quadrapelegic? How could it have possibly taken her HOURS to haphazardly dump a bunch of old junk in boxes and toss them on her lawn? And in what world am I going to knock on somebody's door that I've never met, in a bad neighborhood, and offer to help her "lug" her 3-pound cardboard boxes back inside? In hindsight, it would have been better for me to ignore her entirely, but I have a hot temper when it comes to being insulted through e-mail, so I wrote her back and explained that she only told me she had "several" boxes and I didn't have room in my car. I said I was actually going to thank her, but so much for that idea. Needless to say, we had an e-mail fight for a sequence of about 5 back-and-forths, where she proceeded to say that I was a liar, I only took the "new" items, and she took off work for the day in order to get things ready for me. By the end of all of this, I was fuming. Her comments were not only absurd, but verging on insanity. Our e-mail rants eventually ended, but I did get a little comfort from the moderator of Freecycle who told me that this woman was off-base and had no right to complain that I could not take 10 boxes of stuff when she only claimed to have a few.
Eventually I got over this little tiff and moved on with my life...until...I saw THIS post on craigslist today:
I took the time to go through all of my items for this woman that was so in need of these items for a fundraiser. It turns out she only took the box of new stuff, so she actually did not want flea market items, she wanted new stuff. It is unfortunate that other people use fundraisers as a means to get new things. Anyways I now have 8 boxes of flea items with no where to put them. They are ready to go, email for address.
ARE YOU SERIOUS, WOMAN??? I would really like to organize some kind of campaign against her, like where lots of people respond to her ad for the items and then either don't show up, show up and only take one or two boxes, or show up and add MORE boxes of junk to her piles. However, that's my vengeful side talking. All I did was send her a response to her craigslist ad, asking why she's still saying rude and untrue things. She probably won't respond, and tomorrow this will all be under the bridge, but for now, please leave a comment to commiserate/sympathize. It'd make me feel better.
Friday, October 02, 2009
Sunday, September 20, 2009
Emmy Blooper
While listening to the Emmys for best TV miniseries in the other room, I was looking at photos of celebrities on the red carpet. Look what an error I came across! I know actors probably hate it when fans call them by their characters' names, but they must hate it even more when even the media gets it wrong!
Can you make it out?
Can you make it out?
Saturday, August 15, 2009
Funny People
Just another funny thing Guy said that I felt like I wanted to post here.
I was trying to plan a week-long promotion at work revolving around the number 2. I wanted to do a sale or bargain each day like "20% off," "buy 2, get one free," etc. I ran out of variations on the number 2, so I was asking Guy for help. I said I could do "double" something, and he helpfully suggested that maybe everyone could pay double that day to come to day care. Not quite the promotional deal. There was a long silence, and I asked him why he wasn't suggesting anything else, and he just said, "I don't know. All I can think of is "double chicken."
Of course it makes no sense, but it made me laugh.
I was trying to plan a week-long promotion at work revolving around the number 2. I wanted to do a sale or bargain each day like "20% off," "buy 2, get one free," etc. I ran out of variations on the number 2, so I was asking Guy for help. I said I could do "double" something, and he helpfully suggested that maybe everyone could pay double that day to come to day care. Not quite the promotional deal. There was a long silence, and I asked him why he wasn't suggesting anything else, and he just said, "I don't know. All I can think of is "double chicken."
Of course it makes no sense, but it made me laugh.
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
Am I Well-Read?
BBC Book List
BBC believes most people will have only read 6 of the 100 books here. How do your reading habits stack up?
Instructions:
Copy this into your NOTES. Look at the list and put an 'x' after those you have read.
1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling X
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible x
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
Total: 2
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier X
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faul
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger X
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
Total: 1
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald X
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky X
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck X
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carrol
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
Total: 3
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis X
34 Emma-Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis X
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hossein X
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden X
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
Total: 4
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell X
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown X
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving X
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding X
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
Total: 4
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Total: 0
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck X
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Duas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
Total: 0
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Inferno – Dante X
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
Total: 1
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom X
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
Total: 1
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad X
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare X
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl X
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo
Total: 3
Total: 19
Instructions:
Copy this into your NOTES. Look at the list and put an 'x' after those you have read.
1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling X
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible x
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
Total: 2
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier X
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faul
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger X
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
Total: 1
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald X
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky X
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck X
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carrol
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
Total: 3
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis X
34 Emma-Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis X
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hossein X
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden X
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
Total: 4
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell X
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown X
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving X
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding X
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
Total: 4
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Total: 0
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck X
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Duas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
Total: 0
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Inferno – Dante X
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
Total: 1
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom X
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
Total: 1
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad X
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare X
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl X
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo
Total: 3
Total: 19
Thursday, July 02, 2009
Happy Birthday To Ya
I would just like to wish my biggest blog fan a happy birthday. I won't name any names, Jerod, but you sure are getting old!
Have a good one, brotha.
Have a good one, brotha.
Thursday, June 18, 2009
4 Years
You may remember the anniversary poem that Guy wrote for me last year. Well, I got a new one this year, so before I thank him for it, I decided to post it on here. :)
One year ago when I wrote you that poem,
We had one less beast living in our home.
I questioned if a child or a dog would come next,
which you answered by sending Lola in a text.
Thus the Tarberts began rollin' four deep,
and you received scratches whilst trying to sleep.
In need of a break from our two demon pets,
you booked us a trip and we hopped on a jet.
They say, "We're the town with the great football team,"
but now that we've seen it, we know what they mean!
Perched way up high inside Raymond James,
we rooted the Stillers toward 6-time world fame!
The Disney week pales when compared to that win,
but it still was fun and I'd do it again.
Although, it was costly. Where'd we get the money?
Did you sell a kidney or do something else funny?
You quit the Sharp Edge, and, good riddance, what a crock!
Although I do miss excuses to drink Gulden Draak.
Now you answer phones, be creative, and blog,
all for the South Hills' luckiest dogs!
You're finally doing something you love.
For once your work days fit you like a glove.
Not much ahs changed for me in this past year,
just doing I.T. and sitting on my rear.
So congrats to us both, we've made it to four;
Here's to the past and to many more!
Yay for Guy the poet!
One year ago when I wrote you that poem,
We had one less beast living in our home.
I questioned if a child or a dog would come next,
which you answered by sending Lola in a text.
Thus the Tarberts began rollin' four deep,
and you received scratches whilst trying to sleep.
In need of a break from our two demon pets,
you booked us a trip and we hopped on a jet.
They say, "We're the town with the great football team,"
but now that we've seen it, we know what they mean!
Perched way up high inside Raymond James,
we rooted the Stillers toward 6-time world fame!
The Disney week pales when compared to that win,
but it still was fun and I'd do it again.
Although, it was costly. Where'd we get the money?
Did you sell a kidney or do something else funny?
You quit the Sharp Edge, and, good riddance, what a crock!
Although I do miss excuses to drink Gulden Draak.
Now you answer phones, be creative, and blog,
all for the South Hills' luckiest dogs!
You're finally doing something you love.
For once your work days fit you like a glove.
Not much ahs changed for me in this past year,
just doing I.T. and sitting on my rear.
So congrats to us both, we've made it to four;
Here's to the past and to many more!
Yay for Guy the poet!
Tuesday, June 09, 2009
Arby's Oddities
My new commute to work involves driving past two Arby's restaurants, and I am somewhat ashamed to say that I eat at one of them at least once a week. Aside from enjoying my occasional roast-beast sandwich and jamocha shake, I have noticed a few strange things about Arby's. First of all, they have signage on their counter that advertises "sides" for your meals. It lists: hash browns, jalapeno poppers, cup of cheese. It all sounds normal until you get to the "cup of cheese." Now, I realize that this is probably cheese to dip your poppers or possibly even your curly fries in, but should a cup of cheese really be considered a side? Maybe they list it as a side so they can justify charging the same price as they would for a legitimate add-on to a meal, but it just bothers me.
Secondly, I have noticed that both Arby's (Arby'ses?) have posted small signs near the road that say "Bag of Ice - 99 cents." Is business really that bad that Arby's has to sell water during the summer to stay out of the red? What would compel a person to swing by their local Arby's seeking a bag of ice? I guess 99 cents is a good price as far as bags of ice go, but there still seems to be something fishy about this particular item for sale.
In other fast-food news, Guy was amazed that no one removed the "g" from the sign at McDonald's for the new Angus burger.
Secondly, I have noticed that both Arby's (Arby'ses?) have posted small signs near the road that say "Bag of Ice - 99 cents." Is business really that bad that Arby's has to sell water during the summer to stay out of the red? What would compel a person to swing by their local Arby's seeking a bag of ice? I guess 99 cents is a good price as far as bags of ice go, but there still seems to be something fishy about this particular item for sale.
In other fast-food news, Guy was amazed that no one removed the "g" from the sign at McDonald's for the new Angus burger.
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