we just saved 28% on our car insurance by switching Frank to GEICO! no kidding!

i’ve been very happy with GEICO.

Razor has a blog now. something like Razor with an Edge, but lots of pictures of Razor.

btw, did i mention that i’m soooooo excited that hockey’s back?

i am…. really…. can’t wait…. poor Frank…. we met August 21, 2004, and there’s not been NHL hockey since, so he really doesn’t understand… i keep warning him. when hockey’s on, hockey’s on. i hope you like hockey. you’ll be a Stars fan. you have no choice. no, i don’t care that you went to CMU, you don’t get to be a Penguins fan because that’s the one hockey game you’ve been to. i’m a Texan. because i’m a Texan, my sports teams become your sports teams… i still have to work on him, he’s a Y**kees fan (i cringe to see it in writing).

in other Stars news, the Stars are going to buy out Pierre Turgeon’s contract. that’s good for the team. i liked Pierre very well, but he just didn’t have it in Dallas. i wish him the best, unless he ends up with the Crude or the Wings. or the Ky-yotes. or the Avs. or any other team i don’t like.

in better Stars news, which i hope is not the management blowing smoke…

First, Stars General Manager Doug Armstrong is talking with the agents of Mike Modano and Sergei Zubov, who can both become unrestricted free agents on August 1. All teams have until July 31 to talk exclusively with their free agents.

“We’ve made it our top priority to focus on Modano and Zubov this week,” said Armstrong. “We have a lot of decisions to make and we would like to have both of them back with us. We’ll see what we can work out.”

This week is also important in that the Stars have until Friday to make qualifying offers to any of their restricted free agents they have the rights to. That group includes forwards Jason Arnott and Brenden Morrow, among others.

yes, i’d like all of them back, please, thank you. especially Mo and Morrow. please please.

and in the draft, we got 5 forwards, a goalie, and a D.

and you’ve gotta be kidding me. blah blah blah, focus on conference and division play, blah blah blah, and they’re playing the Tampa Bay Lightning and the Atlanta Thrashers and the (Ft. Lauderdale) Florida Panthers at home. which means my closest opportunities to see the Stars in person this year are going there instead. stupid schedulers!! i shake my fist at you!!

Against Eastern Conference opponents, the Stars will host teams from the Southeast Division (Atlanta, Carolina, Florida, Tampa Bay and Washington), while playing on the road vs. the Northeast Division (Boston, Buffalo, Ottawa, Montreal and Toronto). Dallas will not face the Atlantic Division this season (New Jersey, NY Islanders, NY Rangers, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh). The NHL will rotate inter-conference opponents each season by division.

i wonder if Frank would like to move to Texas, now that hockey’s in…

oh wait!!! we have a wedding there December 10!!!! let’s look…

Dallas’ longest road trip is a six-game odyssey comprising of 5,040 total miles over 12 days (Dec. 10-21, at Toronto, Buffalo, Ottawa, Chicago, Minnesota, Columbus). (sic)

how ’bout a nice papercut while you’re at it??? hmmmph. we arrive a few days early, though… and i think we’ll be there for Thanksgiving… so Stars v. Panthers (the Florida variety, which we could see at home any ol’ time) 12/7 it is. better than nothin’ i suppose… November prospects are better, though… conference play….

ok, more on this later, but yay! hockey!

Christina is the gracious host of the Carnival of the Recipes this week. Miss Feisty did a great job, and yummy recipes include one for crab cakes and lemon dill sauce (though i’d use canned bread crumbs over Stove Top, but only because Stove Top reminds me of my former MIL) from WillyShake, a couple of scrumptious sounding sauces from Technogypsy, Splendiferous Chicken Burritos from Sun Comprehending Glass, and Grilled Raspberry Pork Loins (YUM!!) from the Countertop Chronicles.

next week, the lovely and talented SarahK will host the Carnival, so please please please get your recipes in muy pronto!! send your recipe (if you’re blogless) or your link (if you’re blogful) to recipe [dot] carnival (at) gmail {dot} com before Thursday at midnight… i think i’ll post the latest thing added to our “list” — Coconut Shrimp Curry.

over on IMAO, Frank has an ad for Conservative Match.

go look at the ad. come back when you’re done.

is that girl’s tongue an unnatural color of red? or does she just clash heavily with her shirt?

as it has been pointed out, i tend to make blogging promises that i can’t keep. see, when one is sick, one tends to not do the optional things such as blogging, posting pictures of space shuttles, writing about concert weekends, brushing hair, shaving legs, unpacking boxes, paying bills watching movies, looking pretty and punching the evil fake sarahk. wait, i’ll make time for that one. ;-D

anyway, your unreliable, wishy-washy host with unshaved legs is finally posting space shuttle pictures. i hope they’re up to everyone’s standards, and if they’re not, i’ll puke on you.

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just watched Discovery lift off in person (well, from my office, but in person no less!). it was amazing, and yes, i cried a bit. i have pics, will post tonight.

please please please… if you ever call me, don’t put me on hold!!! if i call you, you can put me on hold, because i just might be interrupting you… but if you call me, don’t put me on hold. you may say goodbye and we can hang up. please please please don’t call me and then put me on hold. ESPECIALLY to take another call. the only exception to this rule is if you have small children who require your motherly attention. then, putting me on hold or talking to your children is acceptable (until they’re about 5, then no more!). but i just realized that this is one of the main reasons i hate talking on the phone. i hate being put on hold. hate it.

so this morning… i awoke at 4:50-ish feeling very nauseated. tossed and turned for a while, which made it worse. finally i had to get up and go puke. i yelled for Frank and he got me a hair clip, nice boy that he is, because i really just didn’t want to throw up in my hair… puked until i dry heaved, hoorah. asked Frank for orange juice, because that was the absolute only thing that i could think of that didn’t make me want to barf even more. that seemed to make it better, so i went back to bed, until about 6:30 when i was up again, puking up orange juice and cursing Frank for bringing me that putrid, awful drink.

more and more puking later, i didn’t go to work, nauseated all day, lay on the couch reading when i wasn’t sleeping, my trusty trashcan right next to me. but my stomach muscles were so tired from the heaving that i slept most of the day, on the couch. through the whole day, i was able to eat 1 pickle, about 5 slices of bread, 1 Fla-Vor-Ice pop, drink a little Coke, and then when Frank got home with saltines and 7-up i was able to have that.

i think my stomach still has a lining.

one for the list… i pulled out one of my trusty favorite cookbooks yesterday and we decided on Coconut Curry Shrimp for lunch. Frank finished his and licked the plate. i asked if he wanted to finish mine (as i had been lapping at the sauce as i cooked), and he said, “GIMME!” or something like that. he usually at least says, “are you sure you’re not going to finish it?” but with this, he apparently didn’t want me to have a chance to change my mind! so we’re putting it on the list. :)

… at least i hope so…

i went to the endocrinologist this week, and she sent me to the lab for more bloodwork. asked me a bunch of questions. looked at my MRI results and agreed with the radiologist that i do indeed have a teensy tumor in the pituitary.

i’ve researched quite a bit on the whole excretion of excess hormones thing caused by this tumor… and i might just be wishfully thinking, but it sounds to me like i could have excess prolactin floating around in me… symptoms of having too much of that include:

swollen boobies - check (they’re huge right before periods, and that never happened before last year)
excess weight gain - i’m reluctant to blame that on hormones, but yeah, check
migraines - check check check
irregular and infrequent periods - check (man, i hope if she fixes my levels, that doesn’t stop, ’cause it’s great to get them for 1 day every 5 to 6 weeks)
temporary infertility - that one i’ll have to leave blank for lack of knowledge and lack of opportunity to use my fertility

this excess prolactin thing would make complete sense, given that 1) i have all of those things. 2) prolactin is controlled by estrogen. the more estrogen you have, the less prolactin you have is usually how it works. birth control pills are estrogen & progesterone. i was on BCP for 7 years, and stopped taking the BCP when i left the Psycho May 2003. 10 months later, the migraines started… which would make sense, if the estrogen took that long to “get out of my system”, then once the estrogen levels die down, the prolactin goes up… now, whether the prolactin boost caused the tumor or the tumor was already there and was in essence unleashed when the estrogen levels dropped, i don’t know. i don’t know any of this anyway, i’m just speculating.

so 10 months after i stopped taking estrogen, the migraines started.
not long after, my periods started moving to 5 or 6 weeks apart.
a couple months later, i started putting on weight, even though i was actually exercising when i lived in Amarillo. but this could just be because i’m a woman, don’t eat so healthy, and don’t exercise regularly (another thing: prolactin can be produced when you exercise, but excess prolactin can cause weight gain, which seems completely backwards to me.).
a couple months after i started gaining weight, i started getting the significantly painful swelling in the chestaceous glands right before every period (speaking of that, oh man, they’re painful and huge right now).
and for all i know, i couldn’t have babies if i tried right now. but i’m not gonna test that.

so i go back to her in about 10 days, and i’m hoping she tells me that i have too much prolactin and is able to control that. it would be really nice if that was at the bottom of all of this and my migraines could be relieved…

oh, on the migraines, one thing i’ve noticed is that a lot of the foods that seem to be triggers are high in potassium. the ones that give me worst migraines are super-high in it. bananas kicked my butt the other morning, and i’m quite convinced about avocados.

we just finished watching it. pretty dumb, but funny and parodyable. i’d say watch it for making fun of it and rolling your eyes.

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i’m having chips and Rotel for dinner tonight while Frank eats McDonald’s. i love this dinner!

H
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birthday dinner… Frank got me two tickets to Toby Keith (i think I’ll take him along), ordered the Paullina Simons book from Australia and gave me a deluxe super-fancy Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. then he took me to eat at Yellow Dog Cafe, and oh wow, if you ever have a chance to eat there, do it. here’s the menu; the Louisiana Style Shrimp and the house salad were both awesome. we both had specials (i the stuffed shrimp, he the pompano) and they were both excellent. their bread pudding is a cross between bread pudding and creme brulee, the best bread pudding i’ve ever had… and i’ve had a LOT of bread pudding.

that Supreme Court nominee… John Roberts sure does look young. and i’m glad the President didn’t pick a woman or a minority just to appease anyone. he picked who he wanted. oh, and can everyone please stop calling the Supreme Court SCOTUS? every time i hear that or read it, i read “scrotum”, and then i get grossed out, so please. STOP!

Mancow on my un-heart list… i normally like the guy, but i had no time between the time he said, “Harry Potter!” and the time he told the end of the book that had been out for 3 days on Fox & Friends yesterday. i sent him un-heart mail yesterday, thanked him for ruining the book and my birthday. punk.

first chapter good, second chapter very interesting thus far… i would have read more last night, but after dinner i was exhausted. all that good food.

they say it’s my birthday… contrary to what the evil fake sarahk would have you believe (warning, Frank is shirtless in that photo), today is my first 29th birthday. tonight my sweetheart’s gonna take me to dinner, we’re going to try a little fancy restaurant we haven’t tried before (at least the website makes it look fancy).

presents! it’s all about presents, right? Frank has ordered me the Harry Potter book, which should arrive today. i talked to Sa last night, who was shocked that i wasn’t already finished with the book. i told her i’ve been trying to get a lot done the last couple of days, because once i get started, that’s all i’ll do until i finish… bad news, though. Sa called me when she finished the book last night, and she was almost inconsolable. i know J.K. Rowling has said that a major character would die. apparently the one i figured it would be is not the one, because when Sa called, she was sobbing. she said it is sooooo sad. i consoled her, then reminded her that it’s fiction and asked that when i call her in a few days bawling my eyes out, she remind me that it’s fiction.

i think that Frank also ordered the latest Paullina Simons novel for me. but i can’t be sure that he got the hint.

and yesterday he asked me when my sister is coming to visit, because on a certain date there is a timed event that he wants to take me to for my birthday. i know he wanted to surprise me, but i recognized the date as the date of an event i would love to attend. so wheeeee!!!!

walking and breakfast… wow, yesterday we actually went for a 45 minute walk after work. and this morning, i made oatmeal. mmm, with butter, sugar and bananas. healthy breakfast i say.

weekend fun… we did go to the Dave Matthews Band concert this weekend, and i’ll have a big post on that in the next day or so. i will say this: some people should drink less beer or take their wives along to concerts with them, and all DMB fans should get to hear “Granny” live in concert at least once. * sigh * it was great.

we’re headed to West Palm Beach later to see Dave Matthews Band. we did that on our first 5-day-long date, too. :)

yesterday i emailed Paullina Simons, author of my all-time favorite book, The Bronze Horseman, and asked if she had any other novels coming out soon… she’s such a nice woman, always responds to my emails. anyway, it turns out that she already has a new one out that i haven’t read, but like the last one, this one is only available to order from Australia (come on, American publishers!). good thing my birthday is Tuesday and my man is a sucker.

but she gave me even better news: a third part to the Tatiana and Alexander story is to be released this winter (again in Australia). when i read that, i wanted to turn cartwheels into Lake Ilmen!!

UPDATE: i called Frank yesterday, and we had the following conversation.

SARAHK: guess what!!!
FRANK J.: ummm, you bought me a German Shepherd.
SARAHK: no, you goofy goof! i emailed my favorite author today to ask if she had any new novels coming out…
FRANK J.: what does that have to do with German Shepherds?
SARAHK: nothing! and neither will you if you don’t listen! anyway, she has a new novel out that i haven’t read!
FRANK J.: oh yeah?
SARAHK: and my birthday is Tuesday.
FRANK J.: i know. i’m still trying to figure out what to get you.
SARAHK: yeah. well, you can order this book only from Australia. it’s called The Girl in Times Square.
FRANK J.: okay…
SARAHK: it’s by Paullina Simons.
FRANK J.: uh-huh.
SARAHK: are you paying attention?
FRANK J.: yes.
SARAHK: The Girl in Times Square.
FRANK J.: The Girl in Times Square. [repeats slowly, as if he’s writing it down]
SARAHK: by Paullina Simons.
FRANK J.: Paullina Simons.
SARAHK: yep.

so this morning, we had this conversation:

SARAHK: hey, Sweetie, have you ordered the book from Australia yet?
FRANK J.: book from Australia?
SARAHK: for my birthday? yeah, i just noticed there are 2 different book sizes, and i wanted to tell you which size i wanted, if you haven’t already ordered it.
FRANK J.: book from Australia?
SARAHK: remember when i called you yesterday and told you about my favorite author writing a new novel… and that it’s only available to order from Australia?… sound familiar?
FRANK J.: yeah, i remember…
SARAHK: remember how i had you repeat it back to me, and told you my birthday is Tuesday?
FRANK J.: oh.
SARAHK: you forgot?
FRANK J.: no, i didn’t get that it was a hint.
SARAHK:
FRANK J.: i was sitting there thinking, ‘ugh! quit talking! i’m trying to figure out what to get you for your birthday!’

he’s kinda dense sometimes. but i do love him. :-)

we bought our wedding bands today. we had to order mine, because it has diamonds and they only had yellow gold. Frank didn’t want any frills, so he just got a plain white gold band.

and i’m getting more diamonds. hooray!

ladies, take note if you’re ever out shopping for wedding bands. start talking about the bands with diamonds before you ever get to the jewelry store. “well, they do have plain gold girl bands and those are very pretty, but you should see this one band they have. it’s beautiful and compliments my gorgeous engagement ring so well.”

and have a lady jeweler helping out.

actually, i’m sorta kidding. Frank liked the one with diamonds best too, because it really looks cool with my ring.

sweet sweet man, i do love him.

WARNING: IF YOU’RE MADE UNCOMFORTABLE BY SUCH THINGS AS GYNECOLOGISTS AND THEIR… UM… CRAFT, YOU’LL WANT TO SKIP THIS POST.

so i went to the gyno today for my first visit in 2.5 years. ya know, for the big checkup and papsmear and booby check. all the stuff we chicks look forward to year after year. party time.

brand new gyno, never know how those are going to go. and today, i had one of my worst migraines ever. so while i felt like someone was jamming needles into my brain and my right eye, i was also going to get the shoehorn and brillo treatment!! what fun.

anyway, when the doc got into my room and saw that i had buried my head from the light, i told him i had a migraine so he turned off the lights. first time i ever had a gynecological exam in the dark. it surprised the assistant, too. but it helped with the migraine.

you know what else helped with the migraine? once they shove that shoehorn in so they can take a look-see around your uterus, you’re not so focused on pain in other parts of your body. there’s just something very distracting about body parts being cranked, literally, open. and then there’s the steel mascara brush that they scrape the sample with. i’ll tell ya, whoever named it a pap”smear” has never had one. they should have called it a pap”scrub” or “scrape” or “unpleasantness” if they really wanted to be accurate.

stinkin’ men.

anyway, my girl parts all checked out. and i hope to not see that nice man again for at least another year.

is hearts of palm. i’d never had them until the first time i dined at Texas de Brazil (a churrascarria, or how ever you spell that). they have a very elaborate vegetable bar that you visit before you ever get visited by the skewers of delightful meats, and i had hearts of palm there, not knowing what i was eating, only knowing that i really liked them.

every now and then i go on a major hearts binge and have to eat them every day.

we had them last night in our salad. we had them tonight in our salad. we’ll have them tomorrow in our salad.

oh yeah. i’m a fat cow. there’s a reason i cropped the previous picture that i posted. even though i’ve lost 8 pounds recently, i am an absolute snuggle bunny. 100% all-American heifer.

since i’ve got 5 months to lose about 22 pounds (at least), i’m giving up white other-than-sugar carbs, at least in the evenings. any white stuff will have to be eating breakfast or lunch.

it worked before and i lost 21 pounds. i can do it again.

[please no one tell me i’m not fat.]

isn’t he handsome all dressed up?

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Publix makes awesome cake.

i’m not a big fan of romano cheese. it smells more like stinky feet than the Official Stinky Feet Cheese, parmesan.

yucky yuck.

today my boss and i went to a client’s office on one end of the county (office is on the other end of the county). on the way back to the office, i passed her, so she was behind me. for a while, she was at a good distance, but when traffic started to slow a bit, she was right up on my tail. bad boss, bad!! :-)

so first i clocked her. picked a landmark and counted off to see how close she was. then i called her.

YVONNE: how are you ever late for anything? you drive so fast!!
SARAHK: haha. well, i was just calling to tell you that you’re following me too close. you’re less than one second behind me.

we laughed a good while, and she backed off.

i wish i always had the phone number of the person tailgating me.

the other night, we were watching one of our CSIs on the DVR, and the New York cops were searching their crime database, and they found a suspect who was wanted for…

… homocide.

we rewound just to make sure, and yes, either they spelled it wrong, or their suspect was wanted for killing a homosexual.

Frank’s been delivering the funny for 3 whole years now!!

congratulations, and happy International Link to IMAO Day, sweetie.

and don’t miss the Alliance’s crazy related antics…

so i finally got back to the neurologist today, several weeks after i had my MRI and my bloodwork done. i was hoping that something would show up on the bloodwork that could easily be fixed with meds, and my headaches could go away.

as it turns out, my cholesterol is at 145, and though i’d like that number to be lower, the doc says it’s good. the rest of my bloodwork was perfect and all that.

the MRI came back, and most of my brain is perfect (unremarkable, to quote the radiologist), except for the tumor.

the brain doc said that the MRI indicated a “pituitary microadenoma”. i asked what that is, and he said that’s the endocrinologist’s area, so he’s referring me to one of those. he said that i could have some kind of hormonal thing going on (such as being a woman?) in my pituitary and that the hormonal thing could cause the headaches. well, that’s good, i thought.

then i asked him to show me where on the brain the pituitary is, just so i’d know where they’d be operating if they ever decided to open up my head. of course, on the bottom of the brain, right in the center. not nearly as “on the edge of the brain” as i’d hoped. poo.

anyway, i got in the car, and when i got back to work (on my lunch break, of course), i googled pituitary microadenoma. that’s when i saw this:

By definition, a microadenoma is a tumor less than 10 mm in diameter.

oh, tumor, good to know. but the next part is better.

Pituitary adenomas may secrete hormones, or they may be clinically inactive.

clinically inactive would be nice, but so would be finding out that hormones are causing my headaches. and apparently, mine is an “incidentaloma” because it was just discovered incidentally while i was having my head checked. the stuff about morbidity is good though:

Microadenomas do not cause directly attributable *excess* mortality. These tumors generally are too small to cause bony erosion or to put pressure on the optic chiasm. Any morbidity is caused by excessive hormone secretion.

so as long as i’m not super-hormonal (i.e., a woman), i’m fine, or at least won’t get “excess” mortality. my tumor is 4mm, btw. i did some more checking and found that the dangers, being in the excessive hormone secretion, can be tested through more bloodwork. so i’ll go to the endocrinologist, and he’ll check and see if i have big hormone fluctuations (like females have) and if so, he can get me on some meds to control that issue, and maybe my headaches will go away. the only other problem would happen if it became bigger than 10mm, which would make it a macroadenoma and increase the chance that it’s bad.

i don’t know if the tumor goes away, though, after the hormone thing is fixed. but i suppose if it’s not deadly, it’s ok.

it’s fairly common (10% of people have it or something like that), so i’m a little less freaked about it than i was when i saw the word “tumor”.

i don’t have anything to say that Frank didn’t already say.

my prayers and condolences for all of the stricken families over there.

I hate you.

Or at least strongly dislike you.

Very much.

…

Ok, I’ll tell you why. Less than 1.5 years ago, I bought a VAIO laptop. Spent a LOT of money on it, because it would also function as my home computer. DVD burner, 60 GB hard drive, 512 MB RAM, 2.8 GHz Pentium 4 (or something like that), blah blah blah. I didn’t buy the cheap model.

After owning the stupid thing for less than 6 months, a crack developed around the AC adapter port, and no, not from being dropped. Just from being a crappy piece of machinery. It looked like just a tiny little crack, and nothing was wrong with the computer. Other than the fact that I couldn’t run the Wi-Fi without the fan running constantly and that the battery lasted about 20 minutes unless I only ran the program “Notepad” and typed very slowly; then the battery might last 1.5 hours, if it was a good day, and if the sun set at exactly 7:47 p.m., and if the Teapot constellation could be seen in the late night sky. And if I happened to be wearing red.

Ten months after I bought the computer, the little crack started causing problems. Now I had to fiddle with the AC adapter if I wanted to charge the battery (though why I bothered is a mystery). I knew I should get the machine into the shop, so I took it to Circuit City, where I purchased the machine, and guess what. It was close to Christmas (yep, still under warranty, that computer was), and they would have to send the machine to Sony. Ok, go ahead. Well, the service center shuts down for inventory right about now, so we can’t even send it in until the 18th and you’ll get it back around New Year’s Day.

Tough luck, as I was packing up to move to Florida and just couldn’t let them have it for an entire month.

So then by the time I was all settled in here in sunny Florida, where the battery life isn’t any better and the fan still ran constantly, my warranty was up. No problem. I figured it’s just one teeny little part and can’t be that expensive. When things settle down, I’ll be glad to jump through whatever hoops need to be jumped through to send off my computer and get it fixed.

After trying a few times with your worthless website, which first off told me that my fancy schmancy super charged expensive laptop was no longer supported (mind you, this is only 1.5 years after I bought it), I dug around and found a phone number to call and talk to a live person.

Except not. I called and tried first to talk to your worthless voice response system, which reaaaaalllly has a hard time with 3-word street names. So whatever you do, never live on Treading Trodden Trail, especially if you expect that you’ll ever need to talk to Sony’s virtual idiot. You know it’s bad when the virtual idiot tells you for the third time, “I’m sorry. I do not understand your street name,” and you reply with, “that’s because you’re an idiot.” One of the first things I learned from Virtual Dufus is that if I want to talk to a real live person, it will cost me $19.95. And that in order to get me through to a real live person, VD is going to need my credit card billing information. I guess it does pay to live on Treading Trodden Trail after all, because I got to talk to Skippy the Wonderkid for free.

By this point in the grand scheme of rotten laptops, it’s very hard to even get this machine to stay charged/connected to power for long enough to open up Notepad and type “SarahK + Sony = Hate 4Ever! XOXOXO”. Much less back up the entire system. Remember that point for later, because it’s important in my world.

Skippy the Wonderkid, who reads his pre-printed Sony material to me word for word in robotic voice, tells me that Sony has a pricing structure for all non-warranty repairs. For minor parts replacements, that will be $249 + 16.60 shipping, which is a total of $295.60, ma’am. I, of course, have quickly done the math in my head (because I’m an auditor, that’s why), and I tell Wonderkid that the math doesn’t work out. “That’s only $265.60,” I say and then think, holy cow, did he say that minor parts replacements cost almost $300? While Skippy has me on hold so he can punch the numbers into his calculator before agreeing with my audit math, I start wondering how much a brand new Dell would cost.

Skippy returns and tells me that if I have a major repair, it will cost $14,000 plus tax. And if it’s just something tiny, it’s $104 plus parts. Okie dokie. Now Wonderkid already knows why I’m calling, as I’ve explained it to him in detail. So after he tells me the entire pricing structure so I can rejoice in the great deal I’m getting by having just a minor parts replacement, he says that my repair falls in category #1. Yay for me! I’m having a hard time containing my joy and thankfulness to Sony.

So I tell Skippy that I’m going to discuss this with Frank and why don’t you give me all the instructions for sending in my computer and if I decide to do it, I’ll do it. Skippy tells me that I have to include a list of accessories that I’m sending in the box with the machine. Hmm, Skippy, I’m not even sending you the whole machine. I’m going to take out the harddrive and keep that here, so why would I send you any accessories. (I say this nicer of course.) But then Wonderrobot tells me that I have to send the harddrive and I should back up my files first. The technicians will need that so they can comment on how lovely it is while they work on a part that isn’t connected at all to the harddrive. Okay, no thanks, I’ll send it without the harddrive. Skippy finally says ok, send it without it, and they’ll fix the computer if they can, but really you should just back up the computer first. “I can’t get the computer to stay on long enough to back up the files, and I’m really not a fan of the idea of sending you my only copy of everything.”

The rest of the conversation was more of the same, except I laughed when Skippy read my tracking number to me. “W as in whiskey…” I giggled. I guess Sony has driven him to such things, and I can see why.

Anyway, Sony, I hate you, and I’m not going to pay you $12,247 to fix my computer. Dude, I’m gettin’ a Dell.

Tough love,
SarahK

they did something really great for me today, made me cry & all that mushy girl stuff.

well, we had a great weekend. it started Thursday with my boss telling us we didn’t have to work Friday. i spent all day Friday getting ready for an event that Frank and i had. Friday evening we went to the man suit store, and as soon as Frank walked in, the word “sucker” was stamped on his forehead, and he bought one of each thing in the store. :-) but now he won’t have to go shopping for clothes for the next 5 years, and i’ll always be able to get away with major shopping sprees. score!!

Saturday we took off on a weekend trip down the coast of Florida. it was great fun. we even went to the beach (of course, we both had to buy shorts for the occasion, because neither of us has any), and i wasn’t bored staring at the ocean!

we came back yesterday, watched some TV, listened to our latest podcast, which we hadn’t yet heard, watched I, Robot, and didn’t go watch fireworks. it was a nice weekend.