Sunday, July 27, 2014

Story of the Day 7/ 7/ 2014



My son, Ely, is on vacation.

When I go on vacation, I take part of the day and sleep late or go to the bookstore.
Ely and his fiancé, who have neither children nor elderly in-laws to tend to, do things like fly to Arizona.
Okay, it is not entirely a vacation, they are visiting relatives, his fiancé's and our own.

They started their vacation by visiting his fiancé's family. A nice get together for the Fourth of July weekend.
Ely is the lone Jew amidst this' rather large family of religious Mormons.
Not that Ely is a "practicing" Jew, but....

On his very first morning with the family, one of the sister-in-laws asked, "You are Jewish?"

Ely experienced a moment of discomfort. After all, his fiancé had already broken that " bad " news to his family..or had there been some misunderstanding or was someone left out of the loop?

But it turns out that the sister-in-law was hoping for a positive response, since then she could inquire how to spell a Jewish word she needed to finish her crossword puzzle.

"L'Chaim".

Sunday, July 20, 2014

Story of the Day 7/ 4/ 2014




We are a bit antiquated.
We have not managed to keep up with the technological revolution, despite owning cell phones, computers, laptops and an ancient gamecube.
In other words, we do not sit glued to our screens while we eat our separate meals,
instead, at dinnertime, and on weekends for lunch, and on holidays- which are like weekends,
we all sit down at the table, together, to eat.
There are plates, and napkins, and silverware.

There are glasses with ice water.
There is bread.
Usually.

On Friday, I bake bread.
Occasionally, I will bake it on another day as well, but I bake a couple of loaves of bread, every Friday, as part of preparing for Shabbat.
We enjoy it a great deal, on Friday evening. And on Saturday.
But, after a couple of days, no one will touch the "old bread".
They have been spoiled by having fresh bread, and by day 3 they consider it totally rank and devoid of charm.
All except my husband who has questionable tastes.
Obviously, since he married me.

My husband will soldier on, eating the 4 day old, and 5 day old and 6 day old bread, as the rest of us wince.
And sometimes I have made more bread than usual, or people have eaten less than usual,
and the old bread is hanging around past day 5.
Then, when he isn't looking, I will feed it to the squirrels.

It is summer, now.
You might have guessed that, because it is July 4th- Independence Day.
And, since it is a holiday, we all sat down to eat lunch together.
And my husband pulled out the 7 day old bread, the bread I had baked exactly a week ago.

He tears off a piece and eats some.
He puts the rest of the piece on his plate.
Then, he turn the bread over- the part of the loaf that is still in the bread box.
There is a spot of what is most indubitably mold on the bottom.
No surprise, really.
The bread is a week old.
And it is summer and it has been hot and humid
and the bread has been kept, when not having parts taken off it to eat, in a sealed box.

I tell him" Throw it out!"
Well, I didn't say that,
actually, I said " throw it to the squirrels!!"
After all, it was only small bit of mold.

My husband puts the bread into the box and sets it aside,
hopefully, to toss it out to the squirrels, later.
Then he picks up the piece that is on his plate,
and he eats it.

"Ewww!"
I can't help myself.
I mean, it is not as if we do not have enough food in the house to feed a small army- food that does not have mold growing on it.

My son, seated accross from me, adds,
"I would think it was funny, if I did not also think it was gross."

Tuesday, July 15, 2014

Story of the Day 6/ 24/ 2014




My son is in the midst of an internship. It is paid, too, although no one, not him and not the place he is working know for how much. He has been told that he will be given a sum at the end of the summer.
I am hoping that this is a pleasant surprise.

Of course, since last year's internship was not paid, any amount will be a pleasant surprise. (Last years internship suggested he would be paid out of a grant they were awaiting reimbursement on. It later came out that they had been waiting since 1993.)

I ask him, at least once a week, how it is going.
So far, all of the reports have been good.
They treat him nicely, it is a friendly work environment, and he has figured where to park his bicycle.

Today, however, I got a more interesting report than usual.
Today, he tells me, was spent in a meeting, a long meeting about plumbing.
In this case, plumbing means toilets.

The university is putting a new system in place at the sports dome.
They are collecting rainwater that falls on the roof and filtering it twice, then using this water to flush the toilets.
It is a move towards lessening environmental impact of combined sewer overflows that happen when it rains. This causes raw sewage to drain into the lake (which was once the most polluted in North America.)

The interesting part of this meeting was that they were concerned that people, (students, staff, visitors) might mistake the water for drinking water,
so they have decided to dye it purple.

My son spent the rest of the meeting unable to get his mind off of the fact that if anyone was so mistaken as to think they should drink water from the toilet bowl, the fact that it had not been treated by the municipal water company was the least of their problems.

Friday, July 4, 2014

Story of the Day 6/ 22/ 2014




My mother-in-law, my husband mother's, has died.

On Sunday evening , she was fine.
She ate dinner and complimented my father-in-law on the delicious meatloaf.
My mother-in-law had not been ill, but she was frail;
and over the last couple of years, my father-in-law had taken on more of the household chores, the cooking, the laundry, the dishwashing, that require standing.

So, she enjoyed the dinner her husband had made.
That was Sunday evening.

But Monday, she woke with severe abdominal pain and asked him to call the doctor.
The doctor said he should call 911.

Many hours and tests later, she was taken in for emergency surgery.

My husband flew out.
We live in Indiana and they live in New York; so he flew out
and he spent Tuesday with his father, at her bedside in the hospital.

Close to midnight, she died.
After the funeral, they came back here for shiva.
Shiva is the Jewish mourning ritual.
The immediate relatives, parents, siblings, spouses and children, stay in the house for the week and people come to visit them.
They come to cheer up the mourners, to listen to them, and to eat.
Hey, we are Jewish, eating is always on the list, except for Yom Kippur and a few other fast days.

So, they are here, and my father-in-law is understandably depressed having just lost his wife of 62 years.

Being depressed, he makes mention, every few hours, of wanting to join her.

This is a bit upsetting for my husband and my son, but I actually think it is pretty normal.
I think that many people feel that way when they lose the person with whom they have spent so much of their life,
but they do not always say it out loud.

In my father-in-law's case, however, he went so far as to ask my husband what would happen
if he took all of his almost full bottles of prescription medicines at one time.

My husband told me this a few hours after his father had asked him that question.

I said to my husband, " I hope you told him that it would give him terrible diarrhea!"

He did not.

My husband told his father it would case terrible constipation.
Apparently, that is even a bigger threat to an 88 year old man.

My husband is so brilliant!

Wednesday, July 2, 2014

Story of the Day 6/ 15/ 2014


My kid asked me if her textbook had come.
We ordered it almost 2 weeks ago.

Her calculus text ( ordered at the same time) came, and the companion book- and she has been working away at the problems, but her Biology textbook seems to be coming via a slow boat from China.
I went into my Amazon account to see if there was a tracking number for the package.
There wasn't. Instead, there was a mysterious message. The message said that the order had been "Cancelled."

It was cancelled?
I didn't cancel it, and I clicked for the explanation and there wasn't one.

Normally, when there is a problem, I have received an email from Amazon telling me that the item is now " out of print" or "out of stock."
Eventually, the money either gets refunded to my card or , if I am very lucky, they have cancelled it before the charge went through and there is no waiting for a month to have it credited to our account.

When I get a notice that something is cancelled, assuming it something we actually need,
like a textbook for one of my kids' classes or a Mother's Day gift,
I go back and find the same or almost the same item and make a new order.

But, that didn't happen, this time.

It didn't happen because I didn't get a notice that the order had been cancelled.
So now, when wit is needed, we dint' have it.

There was also no information on my account that indicated it had been cencelled right after the order was made, or , perhaps, early this morning.
I am far from perfect, so far that I cringed and thought, " I must have overlooked that email."
So I checked my inbox.
Nothing.

I checked my junk /spam box.
Nothing.

I had this idea I might have accidentally deleted it, so I checked the deleted file.
Nothing.

Apparently, I was supposed to know that it had been canceled because of my very well developed telepathy.
Only I don't' have that, either.

I spent a long time looking for another copy.
The copy we had ordered had been $30, for a new, somewhat dinged copy, with an intact access code.

If you have not been a college student during the last decade, or have a kid making their way through college, you might not know what an access code is.
It is a code that comes with the textbook.
It allows the student to access things like homework and quizzes, online. And to then submit them electronically.
Some professors do not like that and request the old fashioned stuff- an email.
Or the really really old fashioned stuff,
like the work on a memory stick or even, gasp, printed out.
Yes, on real paper.

But most math and science classes use an access code systems.

So, I have spent quite a while looking at various textbooks- the same textbook we had ordered, but different copies frm different vendors.

I am cheap, so I started with the used textbooks.

Many of them, not most, not half, not a quarter,
but since there were 1,186 used copies, a large number were actually listed as " New" but slightly damaged , or had shelf wear or something of the sort.
And they all were priced much cheaper than the new copies.
So, I started sending messages and asking each of the sellers if the access kit/code was unused.

You see, the code can only be used by one student, so, while you can sell your used textbook, you cannot sell the code , once you have used it.

Why would this be a concern with a book listed as " New"?
Because , as one seller emailed me back , " I don't' know, it looks new, but I bought it with a group of other books from a storage unit."
Or , another seller who told me that the book was new , " but the access kit had been opened"
And another who told me that the access code was missing.

So, I went to the copies listed as new for quite a bit more money, and started sending messages to those sellers.
Again, the first response stated that " the access kit looks as if it has been opened."

Frustration .
Then, back to the computer, after dinner, trying to get this book.

I also decided to contact Amazon.
I sent them a message that I felt this was dismal customer service, not to have let me know the order was cancelled.
Was I supposed to wait and wait while my kid didn't have a textbook for her class, thinking it was coming any day now?

A while later, Amazon's customer service emailed me .
They let me know that they were sorry I was disappointed, but they HAD emailed me that the order was cancelled.
They gave me the date of the email.


I had already checked, but I went back again and rechecked my inbox, my junk/spam folder, my deleted folder.
Nothing.
Absolutley nothing on that date or the day after.
I checked the later date since, occasionally, an email will be held up. Something I have never exactly figured out.
What makes an email occasionally take half a day to arrive? I would probably have to go to graduate school to figure that one out...

Irritated to have been lied to, I contacted Amazon, again.
I requested a phone call, since I had a very bad review of their service.

Amazingly, they called me less than minute later.

Brook took my name and my email address, and then she disconnected me.
I waited, but she did not call me back.
And she obviously had my number, since she had called me.

Back to the website; again, I requested a call.

This time Cocco called. I told her that I was very irritated.
I was irritated because I had been lied to and hung up on, and I told her the whole long story.
She was apologetic.
She checked, they had sent the email. Oh, wait, maybe they hadn't.
I could have told her that.
Oh, wait, I did.

She wants to know what they can do to help. can they locate a copy for me?
"No!"
I explain about the access code.

It is not good enough to get book, even with a "new" book you need the code or you have just wasted your time and money .
I had to explain what the access code was, and why new copies would be missing it.
In fact, I told her, there was a small business, a little enterprise in just selling the codes.
Only, it wasn't all that little.

She brightened up upon hearing this.
She told me that, in that case, Amazon probably sold them and she could locate that for me.
I had to burst her enthusiastic bubble by explaining it was a business that usually represented a kind of theft and I did most definitely NOT want to buy an access ceode without a book.
Yes, some were valid, not products of theft, but since I couldn't' know for sure, and a lot were, I did not want to support that "industry".

And, as for getting a textbook, I only wanted one with the code; and her locating copy was useless without knowing if the access code was intact.

She looked over the emails I had been sending through her system asking sellers if they had the access code to go with the book.
She was amazed.
I'd had a host of replies to my inquiries from the sellers of "new" books that these texts no longer had intact access codes, or that they didn't know.
I explained to her the few ways that I know by which the codes can get separated from new books.
I explained how you even had to be careful buying copy a new from a reputable bookstore.
Students had been known to buy the book and return it , still new, the next day- just missing the access code, or with the access kit opened and the code used or about to be used.

It makes me long for paper workbooks.

It does not make me long for Amazon.

At the end of the evening, I am still upset about the email they hadn't sent.
I told her that if they had said, "Oh gosh, we goofed and didn't send an email letting you know it was cancelled!" I would have understood that.
I also understood that sometimes things are sold that do not exist- they have been actually already sold or removed from stock for some other reasons, and that is life.

I told her that I normally check Amazon out first when looking for things like this to buy, but I think that i will not be doing this.
I also told her that I will be writing story about this for my blog in the hopes that,
by the time I have reached the end of writing it,
the incident will seem humorous.

Except it still doesn't.