AT&T

This will begin a new series on my blog, in which I will write open letters to people/companies/etc. that make me angry.

Dear AT&T Wireless:

I wish I wasn't so easily distracted by shiny things. If the lure of that reflective silver phone hadn't been too much for me to resist, I surely never would have signed any sort of contract with you. I'll admit, the promised (yet never received) 20% student discount was also pretty tempting. It's too bad that the four months of our relationship have been filled with harassment and incompetence.

I would like to apologize though, because I believe while I was on the phone with customer service representative Chuck Hildebrand(t?), I referred to the guy who sold me my cell phone (hereinafter referred to as "salesman") as "an idiot" and "a moron," because I was led to believe that it was he who entered my Social Security number incorrectly into your system, thereby making it impossible for me to sign up for online billing, or to ever make any changes to my account. As the conversation with Chuck progressed, I figured out that when the salesman assigned me my "temporary" New York number to use until my old number could be ported over, he entered my SSN correctly. You see, I received a collection notice for a random New York cell phone number from you, with my name on it. After Chuck informed me that I cannot make any changes to my current account because my Social Security number is not linked to it, I commented that it was a good thing the SSN for the New York number was incorrect, because that way the collection agency could never catch me. Chuck informed me that AT&T actually has the correct SSN on the collection account though, meaning that it was someone further down the line from the salesman who is the idiot and/or moron.

So, I would like to apologize, and I hope you can add a note to my file that the salesman was helpful and nice, and I'm sorry I prematurely called him a moron and an idiot. I'm also pleased to know that should I remain supremely frustrated with you, I can stop paying the phone bill for my real phone number, since I KNOW you do not have the correct SSN on that account. Since you cannot link the correct SSN from my first account with you to my current account with you, I am confident in your incompetence that you will never connect the two should I decide to stop paying. Don't say I didn't give you a hint on this one.

I would have just e-mailed this letter to you, but I can't log in to your website, since I don't know the last four digits of the Social Security number you have on file for me. I hope you understand.

Talk to you soon!

Mandy

Bread and other things

This weekend I baked bread again. I don't think I blogged about the last time I baked bread. Joe and I managed to become the owners of a few packets of rapid rise yeast. After reading up on yeast, apparently rapid rise yeast is not one of the popular varieties used in baking, and it's difficult to find a well-loved bread recipe that uses rapid rise yeast and other ingredients readily available in our kitchen. I finally got some active dry yeast, and tried again. First, I put on my cow apron.

Then I made the dough. When I used rapid rise yeast, the bread did not rise rapidly as promised. This was probably in part due to the recipe telling me to just mash all the ingredients together, in no particular order. The dough for that recipe was really tough, and I had to break it into about 8 pieces just to knead it to the right consistency. This time it worked out much better, and the dough did what it was supposed to.

When it was done, it looked like this:

Joe might have had a piece or two, but otherwise, I ate all of it in about two days. I thought about making more yesterday when it became apparent that there wouldn't be any left for today, but then I had second thoughts about maintaining my all-carb diet for much longer.

On a non-cooking note, now that it's cold in New York, I've been seeing a lot of fur coats out and about, and it reminded me that I think fur coats are just about one of the ugliest types of coats a person can wear. Maybe I haven't seen a nice expensive one, but all the ones I see look really cheap, possibly because it takes multiple pieces of fur to patchwork together into a jacket. My next thought about fur coats is that if it's a nice one, and it's actually soft, wouldn't you rather have the soft fur on the INSIDE of the coat instead of the outside? Seems like it would stay nice longer, be softer and cozier for you instead of for the random hobo sitting next to you on the train, and then it could be your own dirty little secret and no one would know to throw red paint at you. Right?

Blogging strike has ended

I'm sure you've been anxiously awaiting another post (hi Gary!), but I was on a blogging strike until Joe posted something on his blog.

This picture sums up my vacation:
Joe and I dog-sat for his sister, which basically meant that we sat around in our pajamas for most of the day somewhere in Connecticut, and then every 3 to 4 hours, one of us would take the dog outside. During that last weekend of my vacation, I learned that I'm probably not grown-up enough to have my own dog yet, and that even though Joe's sister's cat is de-clawed, he's too much of a dick to learn to ride on the dog's back. So you could say it was a productive vacation.

Now it's a new semester at school, we have a new president, and I saw one of the guys who lives upstairs in 6N tonight. He was not a giant, he was not wearing rollerskates, and he was not carrying around dumbbells that he could potentially drop. Had I not seen him opening the mailbox for 6N, I would have doubted that he could be partially responsible for the noises from above. However, he definitely struck me as the type of guy who would listen to the Spice Girls.

Vacation is drawing to a close

Tomorrow Joe and I are headed to Connecticut to dog-sit for his sister. She lives near the beach, so I'm looking forward to doing nothing for a couple days, and getting to play with the dog on the beach. I tried to convince Joe that we should do a polar bear swim, but I didn't see him pack his bathing suit.

I will also use the last of my unstructured free time to catch up on television that I don't need to watch or have already watched. Joe's sister owns all of the Sex & the City DVDs, so maybe I'll start a new series where I respond to Carrie Bradshaw's stupid questions/thoughts that she types on her laptop during the show.

I'll take pictures of us trying to teach the cat how to ride on the dog's back.

90210 recaps

I never really watched 90210 until after I graduated from college. Right now I'm all caught up on the shows that I watch regularly now, but I've still got another week of vacation. I discovered that on CBS.com, you can watch the first four seasons of 90210, so I've gotten through seven episodes now. I'm glad that I waited until this point in my life to watch 90210, because not only is it entertaining in the way that it probably was when it came out in the 90's, but it's also got an added element of humor now that it's totally outdated.

Here are a few observations so far:

In one of the first episodes of the first season, Brenda uses a fake ID to get into a club. Kelly and Donna also try to get in, but the bouncer kicks them out. Instead of leaving the club once Donna and Kelly don't get in, Brenda starts talking to a guy. She lies about her age, and he asks if he can buy her a drink. She lets him get her a drink, takes forever deciding what she wants, and then she orders a banana daquiri. I think I'm going to try to order a banana daquiri next time I'm out at a club. I'll let you know the bartender's response. This was also the first instance in the show where I was thinking, "Oh my god, I can't believe 90210 starts out with Brenda being date raped!," and I was pretty surprised when her drink wasn't laced with roofies. Maybe that was more likely to happen in later seasons, at the Peach Pit After Dark.

So, of course, Brenda gets a ride home with this guy from the club, but she says she'll go back to his apartment first. This was the second instance in the show where I was convinced Brenda was about to be date raped. She was in the guy's apartment and they start kissing, and he starts to push off the shoulder of her dress, and I couldn't believe where this was about to be going. Who knew 90210 was so full of lessons?! Anyway, Brenda asks him to stop, and he does, and then he takes her home (well, she has him drop her off at some random sorority house, since she lied about her age).

Eventually, Brenda is at a nice restaurant with the guy, drinking wine, and confesses to him that she's only 17. Lucky for him she told him at dinner, because she was planning on sleeping with him that night (since he was so much older, it may have been statutory rape then, regardless of her lying about her age....little legal lesson for you). Anyway, he gets really furious with her, and starts basically crying about how he really liked her. Not the response I expected, but whatever. I don't remember the rest of the episode, nothing really noteworthy happened.

Episode seven of season one is the mother-daughter fashion show at West Beverly High School! But Brenda is ashamed of her "normal" mother, and thinks Kelly's mother is so much cooler. Kelly, though, is tired of her alcoholic mother, and longs for a normal mother like Mrs. Walsh. It turns out Kelly's mom is having a relapse, and Kelly comes home after dinner at Brenda's to find an empty bottle of vodka. It's actually kind of a sad episode, but what really caught my eye was that it was an empty bottle of Popov vodka. Personally, I would think that since Kelly's family is so rich, her mom would be drinking something a little more high-end than Popov.  I never would have found the humor in that when I was 12.