31 December, 2006

Home again, home again

Jiggity-jig.

Three travel days, three days at my folks', three days at my in-laws'. 1845 miles under Dorian's belted radials, and at least five more pounds over my belt than when we left our driveway.

We had a nice trip again this year. At Mom and Dad's, it was lots of hugs and kisses from the godkids. I just can't believe how big they're getting. Godgirl is five going on eighteen; Godboy is two and... well, he'll probably be less unhappy next year, when he's three. Both are so adorable that it makes my teeth hurt. Along the way, there was some adult conversation, a couple TV football games, and a touch of some kind of stomach bug.

Also, the beginnings of another round of holiday package tag with UPS. You see, Turtle and I ordered a couple laptops for ourselves, and Dell decided to ship them a full six days before they were supposed to. To our house. Where we weren't.

I jumped on the UPS web site, called customer service, and was told that there was nothing they could do until the first failed delivery. Once the first attempt failed, I should call the local depot to make different arrangements.

"Oh. Okay. Can you give me the number for the depot?" I asked.

"No, we don't have that information."

"But I know from past experience that the local depots' numbers are unlisted precisely to prevent customers from calling there," I said. "How am I supposed to call them if I can't get the number?"

"I don't have that information," he repeated. "You'll have to call the depot for that number."

Blink. If that's the sort of Möbius thinking that drives UPS shipping logistics, it's no wonder I have such a hard time connecting with my packages. There ended up being a lot of tail chasing over the next few days, but Turtle hit on the idea to call our pet sitter. She gave us the prized InfoNotice number from the dreaded sticky note stuck to our front door 700+ miles away, and we were able to use that number to re-route our computers to my work address. There they'll sit until 2007.

Where was I? Oh yeah... from my folks' place, we headed over to Turtle's mom and dad's. We're not used to the constant buzz of activity that surrounds small children, so we were really looking forward to the quieter environs. Of course, we forgot how loud the Turtle parents' house can be when the relatives are all together. But aside from that one afternoon, it was much calmer and quite relaxing. We had a wonderful visit with my in-laws and even found time to have a nice lunch with a couple of Turtle's friends from her old job.

Dad (as I've become comfortable enough to call him) and I made our rapidly-becoming-traditional trip to the liquor store to pick up my 2007 bottle of Jack Daniel's Old No. 7. Around these parts, all we have are wine and beer sales, so I don't get in to real liquor stores very often. It's kind of fascinating to me to walk the aisles and marvel at all the fancy bottles and types of liquids fermented and distilled.

Somewhere along the line, it occurred to us to wonder: if both the green label and black label varieties of Jack Daniel's are now 80 proof (black label used to be 90 proof), then what's the difference? We asked one of the employees, and the answer was "none". Apparently, the same liquor is sold under both green and black labels because black label devotees such as myself have a traditional bias against the green label and wouldn't buy it.

Marketing. Gotta love it.

We got home last evening, and as usual the cats won't let us out of their sight today. We made some tentative plans to spend this evening with friends, but after being on the road for the past nine days, I'll be quite happy to just stay at home if the opportunity presents itself. In case I'm not awake at midnight, HAPPY NEW YEAR!

8 comments:

Bret said...

Happy New Year to you and Turtle!

I laughed at your conversation with the UPS guy. I'm going to thrust a new term into the lexicon: "dysfunctionary." It's the only word that fits.

You'll have to spill it on your laptop choices. I'm at long last looking to replace mine, and it's been awhile since I was in the laptop market.

Cheers!

Foo said...

Happy New Year back at'cha!

The laptops are Dell Inspiron 1501s
with AMD Turion 64 x 2 TL-50 (1.6GHz/512KB). 1GB memory, CD/DVD, 120MB hard drive, internal 10/100 network, wireless G, 15.4in display.

They're hardly cutting edge, but they're much better than the Win98 laptop that we've been sharing. That poor thing locks up just trying to load Norton AV.

Anyway, Turtle found a sale, and the price was right so we went ahead and got one for me too. The machines are essentially the same except that I bumped my operating system up to WinXP Pro. Both get a free upgrade to Vista when it comes out.

That Janie Girl said...

Happy New Year, Foo & Turtle!

Bret said...

Thanks for sharing the details; you inspired me (get it?) to go ahead with one of my own. I decided to splurge on the widescreen (17") since I was just buying one :-), and I stumbled across a 20% off coupon on one of the coupon sites, so really they were paying ME to get the bigger screen, right?

(Shhhhhh... don't tell the Random Wife...)

Anyhoo, that's a fun way to start the new year. Can't wait to upgrade to Vista -- I think I'm going to go with the Business Bugfest Edition.

WV: azkizz -- you know, if I wanted to be insulted, I could just talk with my kids...

Tink said...

He wanted you to CALL them for their phone number?!

That's the kind of thinking that creates black holes of stupidity.

I'm glad you're back, happy, healthy, safely. I missed you.

Oh and Happy New Year!

Anonymous said...

Oh. It's so nice to be missed, loved and well wished...even if I'm the significant "other." Thanks. A belated Merry Christmas and an even happier, healthier New Year to all! It's good to be "home."

Anne said...

SO GLAD YOU'RE BACK!!

I'm surprised you got your laptops in good condition. We had a UPS delivery just before Christmas. While I was trying to recover from being in the shower the guy left the dreaded sticky note. HubbaHoney wasn't very happy. He went to the UPS depot to get his box the next day and it was crushed. He had bought a Carver amp from a guy on eBay like one he used to have years back that he unwisely sold. It's been an ordeal.

Foo said...

Bret: from what I saw on your site, you got a much fancier, faster one than I did. But even with that, I'm already spoiled by how much sharper and wider my laptop display is than any of the desktop monitors I work with.

Janie: Thanks! So far so good.

Tink: I'd like to think that the UPS guy was on autopilot and didn't realize what he was saying--but that may actually be scarier.

Anne: That's terrible about Hub's amp. I'm always afraid something like that might happen when I buy from e-bay. There are so many dishonest people out there, I always figure that if something happened to my purchase, the seller would be like, "Yeah, sure it got crushed."

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