After watching the crack in my windshield slowly grow for over a year, I finally got around to calling in a claim. Evergreen Auto Glass will be coming out to my work this afternoon between 1 and 3 pm to replace the windshield. Normally I would have waited longer since the crack is not in my line of vision, but the trim along the drivers side has been popping up - it’s been getting worse every week.

Thankfully I have a credit card to throw the $100 deductible on since the insurance companies have been cracking down on places that slide on the deductible.

Also, my back hurts

Don’t be stupid and lazy like me. I went years without shopping around my insurance rates, and one day it dawned on me.. All I had to do was take 5 minutes and get some free quotes and boy, did I ever save some major $$

At my office I signed our company up for the online account because Office Depot promises ‘next day delivery’, easy online credit card billing, and their catalogs always had a lot of incentives and free gifts with orders we had to place anyway, so you might as well get cool stuff for free too right!?

Our first order was quite small, simple office supplies and no “freebies” or “buy one get one free” specials. It was delivered the next day and I was happily suprised to get service as promised.

The order was larger, now that I trusted them. I also took advantage of their ‘buy one get one free’ deals and I ordered specifically to get their “Mini Fridge” free with large orders.

I placed the order on a Monday morning. Immediately after ordering I found they had placed the “Mini Fridge” into “BACKORDER” Status. No warning, no note or email to me.

Tuesday and Wednesday passed with no delivery. I checked the status of my order and still found the fridge on backorder.

To make a long story short, I received my order in 5 days, not overnight. I never ever received the “Mini Fridge” as after 1 month of it being on ‘backorder’ THEY changed it to “DELETED” without any notice or email to me. Not one word. I had emailed and called only to be told “Well, those offers are only if we have it in stock. When they’re gone, they’re gone.” Could they tell me how many they had? No. For all I know, they had 2 for all of the United States.

I asked if they had something else to offer in its place? No.

After speaking with the office manager of the City Hall Building next to us I found out she was dealing with the same issues I had. Mainly, a week for ‘over night’ delivery and messed up orders. She had cancelled their account with Office Depot and was using Office Max instead.

We are too. Since we left them, Office Max has been terrific and we’re even saving a ton on toner and ink cartridges by using 4inkjets.com. Thanks for forcing us to find better sources Office Depot.

So, time for an update, I think. Yesterday I found something that was COMPLETELY AWESOME. Liz and I decided that we would learn properly the different parts to “For Good” so that we can be amazing in New York, so she sent me the sheet music. I was like, yeah, okay, so I can be fairly sure that I’m singing it right but how to check, ho hum… I wonder if there is a virtual piano online? AND YES FOLKS THERE IS! I had to download it to my computer to get the decentish one, but piano! Computer! I can make music! I’m still working out how to use it properly, but I know that I can play a limited number of notes from the keyboard itself which is pretty cool- I’d love to just type/play something and show my mum and be like look I CAN play the piano! Yeah, ten years of piano lessons when I didn’t practice and wasn’t enthusiastic into which I was forced are a bit of a bitter subject :S.

My church conference thing is going to be the next few days, so I’m not going to be around much- but it’s going to be awesome. There are some brilliant speakers coming and from the preparation I’ve seen it’s going to be just wow. I’ve spent a good few hours this week painting a absolutely massive mural of the design for the thing- like, bigger than a room and higher than the ceiling massive. It looks brilliant, though, I’m going to try to take some photos because I am proud of it! Not that I did it on my own- there were loads of us- but still. It was some effort.

Also, I’m preparing for scriptfrenzy, which is like nanowrimo only you write a script and it’s only 20k words long, as a 50k would be madness for a play/film. I started to try to plan out what I’m going to be doing with it yesterday, and have all sorts of ideas that I’m trying to beat into submission today. Though, obviously, not right now.

The only worrying thing is that I have an exam next wednesday, and what with all of this going on I haven’t done much revision at all. I mean, in some ways it doesnt matter as I’ve already got 40% of the module, which is all you need to pass, but then it DOES because I don’t like getting bad marks. I think that I should be okay- I’m going to try to force myself to do a timed essay today. Sadly, it’s the first sunny day in a while….

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