The Joys of Emma Sitting

So as most of you know, Hurene and Dr. Matt are in Vegas...and therefore I am looking after their little one, our four-legged friend Emma! Boy oh boy, it sure is different having a little one wandering around here!

Hurene and Dr. Matt dropped her off this past Tuesday, later on in the evening...thankfully my small ladies group was here, so there were more legs around to distract Emma. H and Dr. M snuck out of here so quietly I even barely noticed...but poor Emma...as soon as they left, the poor little dog was so confused...she kept looking down the stairs and was doing laps around my main floor, looking for her owners! She didn't really bark at all, but one could tell she was scared.

Slowly, as the small group left, I was left all alone with Emma. I had already told H that I wasn't going to allow Emma to sleep with me (I've never slept with an animal before and secondly, I am paranoid that I would roll over and squish poor Emma)! So I proceed to head upstairs.

I could hear her barking from the bottom of the stairs, and I figured she would stop barking once that routine got old (I was assuming 5 minutes or so)...but nope...it was on again off again barking for like half an hour, so finally, she won...I came downstairs and slept on the couch. Again, Emma tried to jump up to sleep with me but I wouldn't allow it. So after a night of not too much rest (every time Emma heard me move she would bark at me), I reluctantly woke up to get ready for work.

But little did I know...Emma had a surprise waiting for me...sitting in a little heap in the middle of the kitchen were 3 small chunks of poo! Ahhh, this must have been revenge for me not allowing her to sleep with me...but I guess I really can't complain as she has been using the facilities sent up for her in the bathroom to do her deeds and being in a new environment, she likely was nervous as well (although I must say she did miss hitting the paper a couple of times, but at least she went in the right location)!

Then when I got home yesterday afternoon (I only was at work a half day yesterday and I'm off today and tomorrow..yay!), poor Emma...I don't know if she was excited to see me or nervous or a combination of both. I know the garage door scares her (it's pretty loud), but she was very jumpy when she saw me. But things are all good now...

She only tried twice to jump up on my couch (yes, I slept on the couch again) last night, but she did settle in nicely on her pillow. And she didn't bark at me at all throughout the night...so I think she's adjusting nicely.

All in all, so far so good...but I'm sure she misses Dr. M and Hurene a lot, but I think she's been relatively happy being here with me...she seems content now...as she's cuddled up next to me napping :)

Rude Drivers!!!

So it dumped so much snow here this weekend...fine. The stupid condo association hasn't gotten anyone to shovel all this snow. Fine. I do my own driveway despite paying condo fees. Fine. I'm coming home from fellowship and I'm getting ready to take a left hand turn into my little crescent and there's an Explorer waiting there at the entrace/exit to make a right hand turn. Seeing as how there is so much snow I make every effort to give him as much room as poosible while trying to navigate the left turn.

I try driving in over the slight incline and I get stuck. My wheels are spinning like crazy and I can smell rubber burning, so I try to reverse a bit and try again. Again, same results. This goes on for about 3 minutes before I finally give up and gun it, finally making it over the incline.

Meanwhile this stupid Explorer makes his turn and gives me a bad look, not even considering jumping out of his piece of crap vehicle to offer help. To make matters worse, there's this mini van that pulled over beside the bus stop just outside of my crescent, sitting there THE WHOLE TIME watching me burn the rubber off my tires. Seriously, how RUDE is that, seeing that I'm struggling and again not even offering help?!?

And to think I helped a coworker out of the work parking lot yesterday seeing that she was struggling to her vehicle out of lot. In dress shoes, I got out and pushed, resulting in my newly washed pants getting sprayed. You'd think what goes around comes around, but apparently that always isn't the case.

ARGH...

Incompetence

I went shopping with a co-worker after work yesterday. We went to the big mall and surprisingly it was busy (for a weeknight)! My girlfriend had to purchase a gift for a guy friend of hers so we went into stores I would NEVER go into out of my own free will. We were in the likes of Urban Men and Urban Woman (is it 'man' or 'men' and 'woman' or 'women'?...anyways), Abercrombie and Fitch, Forever 21 and so on and so forth. Of course I got to go to my usual stores too (Old Navy, Fairweather, Gap and even Laura--since I've been teased sooo badly as of recent). But much to my dismay I didn't find anything, but my girlfriend did.

Anyways, why my title you ask?!? With Alberta being in such an economic boom, Tim Hortons and the like are paying decent money for someone to pour coffee...well, the same is true for some of these stores.

We went into a specialized car store as my girlfriend wanted to purchase some air freshener refill for her Rav 4. She's been stalking this store since Christmas and everytime she's gone to the big mall, they've been out of stock. Apparently this type of refill is in very high demand. So she asked the guy at the counter when they were expecting some more of these refills and he indicated that they order once every 2 or 3 months and so her best way of guaranteeing a refill is if she were to order it in (at no extra cost to her, why wouldn't she?)! She just had to ensure she pay for the refills up front, which are quite costly ($12 each!). So she was ready to pay for 2 refills when (who I believe to be one of the owners of the store) offered to open one of the packages and sell her the refill from that pack and he would replace the refill once their order came in! Now HOW NICE IS THAT?!? But of course, my girlfriend, pushing her luck as she always does, asked for 2 refills! Much to my shock, they guy opened another pack and sold her the refill from there! Talk about service or what?!?

Unfortunately this positive experience was quickly negated by her next experience...

After much walking around the mall, she decided to get her friend a sports hoodie...the zip up type. She went to pay for the hoodie and she specifically told the young, 15 year old, greasy, overweight boy (and I'm not even saying that to be mean...it's all true) that she wanted a gift receipt for the hoodie just in case it didn't fit or he preferred something else. This kid kept saying, "yup, yup, for sure..."...well, apparently that means, "I have no freaking clue how to properly process your request but I'm gonna pretend I know how anyways and proceed without asking anybody for help." He rang the item through and she paid via credit card. He handed her the receipt. She asked which one was the gift receipt and he says, "oh shoot...I'm gonna have to call my manager to help me." So off went this kid and he returned with the so-called manager of the store. She explained the situation and the manager says, "We can't give you a gift receipt after the transaction is completed."

So my girlfriend, still being nice asked to return the purchase and have them re-ring it into the till and then to provide her with a gift receipt. The manger then proceeded to tell her with his accented English that all of a sudden, these so-called "new tills" don't print gift receipts. For anyone who has ever bought a present for someone, you would know that this guy is full of crap! More like he was too lazy to read up on how to print a receipt!!!

My girlfriend, being more composed than I would've been, simply told him "that's stupid" and said she wanted a full refund on her purchase. The guy proceeded to refund her the funds onto her credit card and didn't even apologize. Meanwhile the original sales kid was standing around useless and watching this whole situation with his mouth open.

The point of this story is...you have good sales people who will bend over backwards to accomodate a customer and then you have these idiots at FOOTLOCKER who have no idea what customer service actually means. Maybe the stupid employees of FOOTLOCKER should reconsider their stellar choice of career...maybe instead of dealing with the public, they should be food court maids, gathering trays and emptying garbage and stuff, where you don't have to communicate with the general public . I think I saw an ad in the Journal for a food court maid...but wait a sec...I think these idiots are not qualified for those positions...

Incompetent people REALLY annoy me...can you tell??

Spoiled!

I'm so lucky to have such great friends!

Yesterday at work, as I was training another lady on how to work through a file, one of the tellers from the front found me in the very back of the building and was holding another arrangement of flowers for ME!

Much to my surprise (as my birthday was last week) I received flowers from friends in Calgary! They sent them as a "belated" birthday gift! That's so sweet as I didn't do anything for the husband of this couple (he shares my same birthday...do you all know who I got flowers from yet)?

And then all week I've been treated to hearty meals courtesy of friends. My lady coworkers took me out for lunch on Monday (we only went to Ricky's All Day Grill), but nonetheless, it was a good meal (can you believe 8 ladies came out to lunch just to celebrate my birthday)? Then for supper, my siblings and Justice and Monsieur and I all celebrated my birthday along with Mrs. L's bday at Red Lobster...again...good food and lots of it!

On Tuesday, I was greeted with a homemade cake from one of the gals from my small group...we'll call her Dr. D...which again, was sooo nice and sweet of her to even spend the time to make a cake just for me! Then on Wednesday, KEY and her hubby (sorry, I can't figure out a nickname for KEY's hubby yet...) and had a delicious supper at the Olive Garden! There was so much food I had a rather large lunch pre-made already for me today! :) One final meal awaits me this upcoming Monday as my aunt has offered to take me and Superstar to Ric's Grill for supper! Non-stop eats...

And of course in between all this eating there's been a lot of emails/phone calls/birthday cards received full of well wishes as well. I've been so blessed to have such great friends and family all celebrating with me as I turned the big 2-8!