Hello Interweb peeps. I love you all so much that I am blogging from my phone at the Denver Airport. S is off to get me a panini from "Pour La France" and I decided to let you all know what's up.
When we finally made it to the airport this morning, I was sure that we were going to miss the flight. But we didn't. However the bag we checked in was overweight and we had to stuff some stuff into our carryin. Which was of course flagged at security and they took everything out to make sure we weren't carrying anything suspicious. So S had to sit on that tiny suitcase and close it twice at the airport. Nothing else interesting happened at the airport, except for the flight desk guy asking if we were going back "home" to Hawaii. :)
Am going to wrap it up now as S is back with my eggplant panini. Expect more updates and pictures the next few days.
Saturday, August 20, 2011
Monday, August 15, 2011
The Contact Lens Saga
I am back to doing what I do best - ranting. This time you get to read about how to order contact lens that you will not get in time for your vacation
As I wrote in my last post, I am going on vacation next week. About six weeks ago, I realized that I was on my last pair of contact lens. I tried to order them online, but my contact lens prescription was too old. So I tried to setup an appointment to get fitted for contact lens and was told that I need to pay for an eye exam to do that. I was really angry about that because I had had an eye exam just eight months ago and I couldn't understand why I had to pay for one again. But I decided to let things slide and asked to make an appointment. The earliest appointment was a week away. I mentioned my upcoming vacation and said that the reason I am making the appointment was to get contact lenses before that. I was assured that my brand of contact lenses would definitely arrive before that. So I went for my appointment and met the doctor. She was really nice to me and I told her about my need to get contact lenses before my vacation. She gave me a trial lens and said that she would order another trial pair and another pair of the one she gave me so that I would be covered for my vacation and after coming back I could order a year supply of the one I liked best. I was wary about this, but agreed to go along because the trial she gave me was different from the one I used before and I was not sure if I wanted to order a box of them. I have astigmatism, so I know and understand that it takes time to order and get lenses for my prescription. But she assured me time and again that I would definitely get the lenses in time. When I didn't get a call from her office, I called them last week to ask about my trial pairs. The person who picked up my phone told me that she hadn't gotten it yet and had no information about when it would arrive. I was seething with anger, but I didn't want to create a scene and hung up politely. So this afternoon, I called them again to be told just just one pair of trial lenses were ordered for me (though the doctor told me she was ordering two). She said that that particular lens usually takes 2-3 weeks to come in and that I could probably expect them sometime next week! When I told her that there was to be another trial lens for me, she said she would put it in now and I would get that in 2-3 days. When I persisted and told her about my vacation and she said that I do have that one pair of trial lens that the doctor gave me the day of the exam and that will have to do.
Gentle readers who have been following the story so far, am I wrong in being angry at the situation? I feel like I have been blindsided here. When I called 1-800-CONTACTS they told me that if I took an eye exam at Walmart, they would get the prescription from them and I would get my lens in a week or 10 days tops. I wanted to support a local business and order the contact lens from the nice local doctor and this is the kind of thing I deal with. While talking to the doctor, I told her that I would be wearing my lens while snorkeling and I was worried that I would lose them in the water and so I wanted more than one pair to tide me over that week. I realize that the doctor's office is not responsible for the delays in getting the lens (unless they forgot to put the order in rightaway), but a little empathy would be nice. Or atleast not promise me 2 pairs of lenses when only one has been ordered. I am eligible for a free eye exam in a couple of months and I would have just waited instead of paying upwards of $100 for an eye exam and no contact lens. Next time I think I should just go the warehouse route and swallow my feelings about Walmart and just get my eyes tested there.
Updated : I got a call yesterday saying one of the trials had arrived. I was ecstatic. When I went to pick them up this afternoon the other one had come too. So this is what I had planned exactly. The only caveat is that, the lens that had taken longer to arrive (the ones that are supposed to match my prescription better) are expensive and they want it back if I don't decide to buy a box. Which means I can't wear them while snorkeling. I can deal with that :)
As I wrote in my last post, I am going on vacation next week. About six weeks ago, I realized that I was on my last pair of contact lens. I tried to order them online, but my contact lens prescription was too old. So I tried to setup an appointment to get fitted for contact lens and was told that I need to pay for an eye exam to do that. I was really angry about that because I had had an eye exam just eight months ago and I couldn't understand why I had to pay for one again. But I decided to let things slide and asked to make an appointment. The earliest appointment was a week away. I mentioned my upcoming vacation and said that the reason I am making the appointment was to get contact lenses before that. I was assured that my brand of contact lenses would definitely arrive before that. So I went for my appointment and met the doctor. She was really nice to me and I told her about my need to get contact lenses before my vacation. She gave me a trial lens and said that she would order another trial pair and another pair of the one she gave me so that I would be covered for my vacation and after coming back I could order a year supply of the one I liked best. I was wary about this, but agreed to go along because the trial she gave me was different from the one I used before and I was not sure if I wanted to order a box of them. I have astigmatism, so I know and understand that it takes time to order and get lenses for my prescription. But she assured me time and again that I would definitely get the lenses in time. When I didn't get a call from her office, I called them last week to ask about my trial pairs. The person who picked up my phone told me that she hadn't gotten it yet and had no information about when it would arrive. I was seething with anger, but I didn't want to create a scene and hung up politely. So this afternoon, I called them again to be told just just one pair of trial lenses were ordered for me (though the doctor told me she was ordering two). She said that that particular lens usually takes 2-3 weeks to come in and that I could probably expect them sometime next week! When I told her that there was to be another trial lens for me, she said she would put it in now and I would get that in 2-3 days. When I persisted and told her about my vacation and she said that I do have that one pair of trial lens that the doctor gave me the day of the exam and that will have to do.
Gentle readers who have been following the story so far, am I wrong in being angry at the situation? I feel like I have been blindsided here. When I called 1-800-CONTACTS they told me that if I took an eye exam at Walmart, they would get the prescription from them and I would get my lens in a week or 10 days tops. I wanted to support a local business and order the contact lens from the nice local doctor and this is the kind of thing I deal with. While talking to the doctor, I told her that I would be wearing my lens while snorkeling and I was worried that I would lose them in the water and so I wanted more than one pair to tide me over that week. I realize that the doctor's office is not responsible for the delays in getting the lens (unless they forgot to put the order in rightaway), but a little empathy would be nice. Or atleast not promise me 2 pairs of lenses when only one has been ordered. I am eligible for a free eye exam in a couple of months and I would have just waited instead of paying upwards of $100 for an eye exam and no contact lens. Next time I think I should just go the warehouse route and swallow my feelings about Walmart and just get my eyes tested there.
Updated : I got a call yesterday saying one of the trials had arrived. I was ecstatic. When I went to pick them up this afternoon the other one had come too. So this is what I had planned exactly. The only caveat is that, the lens that had taken longer to arrive (the ones that are supposed to match my prescription better) are expensive and they want it back if I don't decide to buy a box. Which means I can't wear them while snorkeling. I can deal with that :)
Friday, August 12, 2011
Mish Mash Post
Hello my dear lovelies. I forgot to sign up for the Indie Ink Challenge this week. I went through the archives of past challenges and I picked one - a story of how I fell in love with my husband. But as I started writing it, it was too long and mushy and not very interesting (think Ross and Rachel from Friends). So I thought I could do a general post about what's happening in my life right now.
I am most excited about our trip to Hawaii next week. This is the first trip and S and I are taking together that is longer than 4 days (not much longer, it's just a week) I feel so nice and adultish to tell everyone that we are going away to Maui for a week, especially since our honeymoon never happened. S and I are the kind of people who take their travel booking very very seriously. We stayed up an entire Friday night (till 6am, no kidding) arguing and trying to decide which island to visit. S won that round (I wanted to go to Oahu), so if anything goes wrong in this trip, I can always blame him. When we picked the island, we had the harrowing choice of picking the hotel. Do we pick a resort or a condo? Do we want to cook during the vacation? Will the island have enough vegetarian friendly restaurants so that we aren't eating salads for every meal? Finally my parents came to our rescue and my Dad said that he didn't want his first born princess cook while on vacation (He actually said that since we do so much takeout during regular days, he didn't foresee us turning on the stove while on vacation. He also said Oahu has a lot more historic significance and to go there for our first visit, but we chose to ignore that) Once we figured out that we were going be staying on a resort, I had my heart set on this hotel on Ka'anapali Beach (The reason I liked this hotel was because it has a gigantic kickass pool - I know the beach is just a few meters away and I am weird for fixating on the pool, but humor me). We were pricing the vacation on Priceline and it gave us a number slightly more than our budget if we left on that particular week in August. S okayed it (the man has a problem saying no to me, he would buy me the moon with his credit card if he could) And then Priceline turned on us, it kept telling us that this price was not available though it turned up on the results. We started looking at other, more affordable hotels on the Ka'anapali Beach and me finding faults with all of them and wistfully going back to the website of the one I liked to ooh and aah at the pictures. After two hours of this, S put his foot down and booked this hotel on expedia (Yup I am that spoiled :)) And this is how we came to book our most expensive vacation to date which cost almost 2 months of my paycheck.
So we are off to Hawaii in 2 weeks and I am most excited. I will be taking my laptop with me and I am planning to post a picture everyday. We are planning on snorkeling, snuba diving, taking a rainforest and waterfalls hike, watching the sunrise from Haleakala Crater, driving on the Road to Hana, rafting the sea caves at Kanaio Coast and taking in a luau. So much for a relaxing vacation. But we may end up not doing all of these, especially considering my limited swimming skills. I hope to write a recap when I get back and I guess that will cover what we did do.
In other earth shattering news, we canceled our satellite TV service. I can hear a collective gasp from all cable stations right now! It's not because we want to cut down on our TV watching (honestly, we don't watch a lot of TV) But I would DVR a lot of sitcom reruns and all we were doing was watching Seinfeld, That 70s Show, Will & Grace and Frasier over and over again. We figured getting rid of cable would force us into watching shows that we really want to watch, but we don't because we don't want to hunt for it on Netflix or iTunes - like Game of Thrones, Breaking Bad, Pushing Daisies etc. Also S and I are huge fans of Lost and we are thinking about re-watching the series. And if we save some $$ every month by doing this, why not? We connected one of our old laptops to the TV and bought a nifty little wireless keyboard and mouse the size of a remote and use that to stream what we want to the TV. We plan to get a HD antenna for the TV so that we can watch the local channels. People tell me that it is possible to build your own DVR on your laptop and if the antenna works out well we plan to build one as well. It's been working well so far. I am more motivated to go to the gym in the evenings now since I can watch TV there. There are some things I miss - like Conan on TBS. But they upload the entire episode on teamcoco.com the next day. I will survive. The icing on the cake - no commercials.
If you have been reading so far, congratulations, you are now at the end of the post. The only thing you need to take away from this post is - I am going to Maui in a week and you are not :)
I am most excited about our trip to Hawaii next week. This is the first trip and S and I are taking together that is longer than 4 days (not much longer, it's just a week) I feel so nice and adultish to tell everyone that we are going away to Maui for a week, especially since our honeymoon never happened. S and I are the kind of people who take their travel booking very very seriously. We stayed up an entire Friday night (till 6am, no kidding) arguing and trying to decide which island to visit. S won that round (I wanted to go to Oahu), so if anything goes wrong in this trip, I can always blame him. When we picked the island, we had the harrowing choice of picking the hotel. Do we pick a resort or a condo? Do we want to cook during the vacation? Will the island have enough vegetarian friendly restaurants so that we aren't eating salads for every meal? Finally my parents came to our rescue and my Dad said that he didn't want his first born princess cook while on vacation (He actually said that since we do so much takeout during regular days, he didn't foresee us turning on the stove while on vacation. He also said Oahu has a lot more historic significance and to go there for our first visit, but we chose to ignore that) Once we figured out that we were going be staying on a resort, I had my heart set on this hotel on Ka'anapali Beach (The reason I liked this hotel was because it has a gigantic kickass pool - I know the beach is just a few meters away and I am weird for fixating on the pool, but humor me). We were pricing the vacation on Priceline and it gave us a number slightly more than our budget if we left on that particular week in August. S okayed it (the man has a problem saying no to me, he would buy me the moon with his credit card if he could) And then Priceline turned on us, it kept telling us that this price was not available though it turned up on the results. We started looking at other, more affordable hotels on the Ka'anapali Beach and me finding faults with all of them and wistfully going back to the website of the one I liked to ooh and aah at the pictures. After two hours of this, S put his foot down and booked this hotel on expedia (Yup I am that spoiled :)) And this is how we came to book our most expensive vacation to date which cost almost 2 months of my paycheck.
So we are off to Hawaii in 2 weeks and I am most excited. I will be taking my laptop with me and I am planning to post a picture everyday. We are planning on snorkeling, snuba diving, taking a rainforest and waterfalls hike, watching the sunrise from Haleakala Crater, driving on the Road to Hana, rafting the sea caves at Kanaio Coast and taking in a luau. So much for a relaxing vacation. But we may end up not doing all of these, especially considering my limited swimming skills. I hope to write a recap when I get back and I guess that will cover what we did do.
In other earth shattering news, we canceled our satellite TV service. I can hear a collective gasp from all cable stations right now! It's not because we want to cut down on our TV watching (honestly, we don't watch a lot of TV) But I would DVR a lot of sitcom reruns and all we were doing was watching Seinfeld, That 70s Show, Will & Grace and Frasier over and over again. We figured getting rid of cable would force us into watching shows that we really want to watch, but we don't because we don't want to hunt for it on Netflix or iTunes - like Game of Thrones, Breaking Bad, Pushing Daisies etc. Also S and I are huge fans of Lost and we are thinking about re-watching the series. And if we save some $$ every month by doing this, why not? We connected one of our old laptops to the TV and bought a nifty little wireless keyboard and mouse the size of a remote and use that to stream what we want to the TV. We plan to get a HD antenna for the TV so that we can watch the local channels. People tell me that it is possible to build your own DVR on your laptop and if the antenna works out well we plan to build one as well. It's been working well so far. I am more motivated to go to the gym in the evenings now since I can watch TV there. There are some things I miss - like Conan on TBS. But they upload the entire episode on teamcoco.com the next day. I will survive. The icing on the cake - no commercials.
If you have been reading so far, congratulations, you are now at the end of the post. The only thing you need to take away from this post is - I am going to Maui in a week and you are not :)
Wednesday, August 03, 2011
Fool's Gold
Another week means another Indie Ink Challenge. This is my first poem for the challenge. The challenge is at the bottom of the poem.
--
I look at his face
Brown eyes, misshapen nose
An unruly crop of hair
As rebellious as his soul.
His eyes meet mine
I melt in the warm embrace
A smile from within
Twisting my under belly.
I lean into his shoulders
Dark sinewy tattooed
A throne for my weary head
I rest like I never do
I take a deeper look
Into his heart no less
I see love buried
Almost as much as in mine
Fingers intertwine in a clumsy knot
My ringless finger feeling naked
I trace an outline in the sand
Of the undefined future
People call him a drunk
A player, a gambler
A fool, they taunt me
Why can't they see what I see?
--
I was challenged by Alison Newton who writes a wonderful blog here.Go check her out. Her challenge was
"You always see things as you want them to be instead of seeing them as they really are."
Alison, hope you like this. I see lot of people fall for someone unworthy of their love. I often wonder what they see in them that the rest of the world doesn't.
I challenged Headant (two weeks in a row now) to write about "magic". Can't wait to to read it.
--
I look at his face
Brown eyes, misshapen nose
An unruly crop of hair
As rebellious as his soul.
His eyes meet mine
I melt in the warm embrace
A smile from within
Twisting my under belly.
I lean into his shoulders
Dark sinewy tattooed
A throne for my weary head
I rest like I never do
I take a deeper look
Into his heart no less
I see love buried
Almost as much as in mine
Fingers intertwine in a clumsy knot
My ringless finger feeling naked
I trace an outline in the sand
Of the undefined future
People call him a drunk
A player, a gambler
A fool, they taunt me
Why can't they see what I see?
--
I was challenged by Alison Newton who writes a wonderful blog here.Go check her out. Her challenge was
"You always see things as you want them to be instead of seeing them as they really are."
Alison, hope you like this. I see lot of people fall for someone unworthy of their love. I often wonder what they see in them that the rest of the world doesn't.
I challenged Headant (two weeks in a row now) to write about "magic". Can't wait to to read it.
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