Accidental Website

I ordered an elliptical from NordicTrack just after New Year. When I placed the order, I was told the elliptical would be shipped via UPS Freight and they would contact me directly to coordinate the delivery. I received a call the following week from a horrid woman at UPS Freight who informed me that I had to select a delivery date between Monday and Thursday, the week of 1/11. I selected January 12th for my delivery date and asked if the item could be left outside of my house. The horrid woman stated, rudely, that it could not be left, it required signature and the window of time for delivery was 9am-4pm. Here in lies my first problem; a SEVEN hour time window. This is less of a window and more of a gaping fucking black hole. There is no way to narrow that down at all? That is whole work day. People who purchase ellipticals don’t have jobs?

Annoying time “window” aside, I accepted and set the delivery date. Today, the elliptical was set to arrive. I called UPS at 12:30pm and asked if they could give me any indication of when the item would arrive. They tracked the item and stated I was next in line for delivery and it should be at my house within 15-30 minutes. Forty-five minutes later, the delivery truck pulls up in front of my house…

The truck has arrived, however it seems to take the driver about 15 minutes to bring himself to exit the vehicle. At this point, he still has to lower the back of the truck, go into the truck, locate my merchandise and bring it down from the truck. This process takes thirty minutes. It probably would have been faster but he was deeply immersed  in a phone conversation regarding which road to take during high traffic times and what show he watched on TV last night. Once I saw the box was out of the truck, I went outside to meet him.

The driver greeted me and stated, “I need you to move your car out of your driveway, and when you’re done, I need you to help me push the box up the driveway into your garage”. I thought he was joking, so I laughed at him. He wasn’t joking. When I realized he was serious, I stated, “You’ve got to be kidding? Did you just ask me to push that box up the driveway for you?”, to which he replied, “It’s 300 pounds and your driveway is steep, I can’t push it up on my own. You have to help”. WHAT THE FUCK?

To make an already long story short, he wanted me to stand at the bottom of my steep driveway while he pulled the 300 pound box up and I stood under it pushing. Where he logic was coming from was probably the same place his deodorant was located; not with him. I proceeded to tell him it was absolutely ridiculous that UPS was send a freight driver out who clearing was not able to unload the freight in his truck alone. He then had the audacity to tell me that he was a delivery company, not a moving company. My response to this was, “At what point did I ask you to bring this box into my house, unpack it and move it around until I found the appropriate place for it? That is what a moving company would do. I asked you to do your job and bring the fucking box off the truck and put it in my garage without asking me, a woman, to lift a 300 pound box FOR YOU.”

Still, he stated he needed my help or he could not leave the box. I told him to push the stupid box on the same side I am pushing, that way if it falls, I can move out of the way and let it crush him, rather than me. We got the box into the garage (I did most of the pushing, by the way). He asked me to sign the paperwork and then asked me what my name was so he could tell me that his name was “Vin”. I looked at him and said, “I really don’t give a flying fuck what your name is. Are we done here?”.

I got in my car and headed to work—extremely pissed off and full of adrenaline from just competing in the “World’s Strongest Man Competition”. I called UPS and explained the whole story to the supervisor.  ”Mike” told me the driver should have never requested I help him. I think he thought that statement would settle me, it just fueled the fire…

Here is the quote version of what I told Mike from UPS:

• “UPS is the worst company in the world”
• “Is it common practice to employ weak men who require the strength of women to help unload freight?”
• “What if I were a minor, pregnant or handicapped, would the driver still have requested my assistance? Is it the practice of UPS to request the help of young, pregnant, special needs customers to unload their own freight?”
• “I hate UPS so much that if I were poisoned, and the only way to send me the life saving serum was via UPS, I would rather die”

That’s my story. That’s why UPS can suck it. I hate them. I hate Mike and Vin. I hate UPS.

My new elliptical arrived today (which I had to help the UPS guys carry into my garage-whole other issue; see later post titled, “UPS Can Suck It”).

It should be said that I am considerably out of shape, however stepping on an elliptical is like looking into a fun house mirror that shows you what a fat fuck you really are. I set the program for thirty minutes, fat burner, hill interval. Everything started out fine until I started becoming extremely fatigued and out of breath. I thought to myself, “Wow, this really works” and “Time must be moving really quickly—I must have been on here for at least ten minutes judging by how tired I am”. I looked at the clock and to my surprise I had been on the stupid machine for three fucking minutes!

After much foul language, I continued the program and finished the thirty minutes. It is amazing I am still alive. To be honest, I am not sure I really am alive. This could be a whole Beetlejuice thing (although I did draw a door in sidewalk chalk on the brick wall in my house and nothing happened). I guess I’ll know tomorrow if this paralysis in my legs is permanent…

I have always had a problem waking up early. As far back as I can remember, I have been a chronic over-sleeper. I am the type of person who, before going to bed, has to set five (yes, five) alarms to ensure I wake up. I set my alarms for two hours before I actually have to get up because I know I will hit snooze for about two hours.

It is actually surprising to me that I have continued to be gainfully employed in my adult life. If I count the number of times I have been late to work, it would probably outweigh the number of times I have actually been on time. I have, rather than focussing on waking up earlier, made it my goal to become super efficient in the workplace. This way, when my boss tries to say to me, “You’re late and unproductive”, or, “Everyone else comes in on time and look how much more work they get done”, they can’t. I think my bosses have just marveled at the fact that I am consistently late, yet more productive and efficient than those who arrive at the office on time or even early. If that is the case, they probably feel that addressing issues of production and efficiency with their on time employees would be cumbersome and awkward, so in turn, they just leave me alone.

For what it’s worth, I do have constant bouts of insomnia and apparently lack the ability to sleep soundly for more than two consecutive hours. I think this has a lot, if not everything, to do with my inability to wake up early. This appears to be a genetic issue in my family as my mom and brother seem to suffer from the same sleep issues. My mother, formerly a chronic over-sleeper (for the first fifteen years of my life), now cannot sleep past 8am. Consequently, she now falls asleep at 5:30pm every night. My brother seems to share the same sleeping cycle I have, if not drastically worse.

The above being said, I vowed in the new year to try and change this trait. I searched the internet for articles and ideas on becoming an early riser and stumbled upon a blog by Steve Pavlina conveniently titled, “How to Become an Early Riser”. What I found most exciting about Steve’s theory, is that you don’t have a bedtime. In all of my other attempts in the past, I was going to bed like a sixth grader at 9pm because I thought going to bed early was the only way to wake up early. According to Steve, you can become an early riser in two simple ways; wake up at the same time every day and go to bed only when you are tired.

On Monday of last week, I started this journey. I have to say, it went pretty well during the week. I was awake at 7am each morning and went to bed at varying times depending on my level of sleepiness (but never later than 1am—which is big step up from my past bedtime of 3am). Today, I ran into a problem. I knew I was going to have an issue when I did not fall asleep until 3am last night. I woke up this morning at 9am and instead of getting up, I fell back asleep and woke up at noon.

So, for now, I am a sleep failure, but I will not give up - I will begin my journey, again, next week. This time, actually following Steve’s instructions of waking up at the same time for 30 consecutive days. Hopefully, this will be just what I need to become an early riser, once and for all. Or, it won’t and I will eventually lose my job and become a homeless woman living in an alleyway sleeping really late. One or the other…

Since the accidental creation of this site, I have really enjoyed posting interesting pictures/videos and reblogging the crap out of other people’s sites, however I find it increasingly difficult to keep up with creating posts.  To be honest, I’m not sure how people find the time?  I keep the thought in the back of my mind, but never seem to get around to actually blogging.  My last entry was months ago, and a depressing entry at that.  How can I become a better blogger?

Something my brother wrote about our family cat, Spot, who died last night at the age of 17.  I couldn’t have written a more perfect eulogy for Spot than what Garrett wrote below…

maniacalrage:

In 1992, our family cat (who my sister had been allowed to name Catwoman) gave birth to a litter of five kittens. We gave four of them away, but I was allowed to keep my favorite: A black-and-white-spotted male cat I named—quite ingeniously—Spot.

Aside from Spot’s mother Catwoman, who, after giving birth, turned into quite the little jerk, we had a sheltie collie dog named Augie and so Spot spent most of his kitten age playing with the family dog. He would climb on Augie’s back and ride her around the house, and began to pick up dog behaviors like licking faces and standing up with his front paws on your leg, begging for attention.

When we moved to New Jersey in 1997, we left our dog behind with a family friend but we took Spot along for the adventure (quick aside: We had to give spot children’s cough syrup to keep him calm on the plane and just before we left for the airport we had to chase him around the house for 45 minutes while he foamed at the mouth trying to spit the syrup back out). When I moved out for college in 1999 I left Spot with my mother where he lived from then on.

Over the last year or so Spot had been getting thinner and weaker and, while he still meowed at you when you walked by and enjoyed being petted, he looked exhausted and worn out. Earlier this year one of my mom’s other cats, Gary, died relatively suddenly. It was an extremely rough time for my mother and when my sister and I went to her house that night, while everyone was in the kitchen, I walked over to Spot and said, “Do me a favor, buddy, and stick it out for a little while longer. Let her get over Gary first, okay?” Spot seemed to take this request to heart. A few months later my mother adopted a puppy and had finally gotten used to Gary being gone.

Last night my parents called me to let me know Spot had died. He was 17.

We grew up with Spot. He was a member of the family. We brought him across the country with us, we moved him into many different homes. While his last year wasn’t as energetic as the previous 16, he didn’t suffer and he lived a long life. I’m sad he’s gone, but it won’t really hit me until the next time I visit my parents and walk into a house that, for the first time in 17 years, Spot won’t inhabit.