Canada

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I Hate a Mystery*

Last Thursday afternoon, I went to start the car to find that the battery was dead. Odd; it hadn’t been that cold out the night before. I tried to charge it on the Friday, but the charger wouldn’t even recognize it was hooked up to a battery. I literally have not had the time or energy to deal with the issue, plus I haven’t really needed the car, so I let it sit for a bit. Yesterday, I mentioned to my maintenance guy that I was having trouble. He asked me for my keys and to stay away from the car for an hour. When I went to check it, it was running fine and the charger said the battery was at 100%. My maintenance guy suggested I go have the battery load tested.

Well, I went to the car this afternoon and the battery was discharged again! I obviously had a bad battery or a phantom draw. And that’s when the solution hit me. On Thursday last, I went into the car after the staff party and turned on the overhead light. I turned it back off again… or so I thought. It turns out that even though the light was off and the button appeared to be at the ‘door’ setting, it hadn’t actually switched over!

A tenant gave me a boost and recommended the same battery place. Since the load test was free, I had the battery checked out just to be doubly sure, and yeah. Everything’s fine!

*(with credit to Hal Dresner for the title of this post)

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It's Here!

UPS doesn’t deliver to Lethbridge for some reason, so Purolator does the deliveries for them. I got hold of Purolator this morning and was told that a driver attempted delivery yesterday morning at 10:30, which was horse hockey since I was in the office at that time and have a full view of the parking lot. Anyway, I could tell I was going to have several more days of waiting for the package, so I decided to just go to the depot and pick up the package myself! Well, that wasn’t without drama, because dealing with UPS is always frustrating, but I finally got to bring home my iPad!!!

my iPad "Miles"!

Isn’t it beautiful?

I had to pay UPS $48 in brokerage and other fees, which is fine, and actually a lot less than I expected. So the iPad wound up being about $60 more than it would have cost to buy it in Canada. BUT my out of pocket cost is $100 lower than if I had just bought through Apple since I got to use my Amazon gift certificates so my convoluted acquisition process makes sense.

I can’t wait to play with it, but I have a huge job to do tonight. I will let it taunt me a little longer. 😀

 

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*Hiccup*

This morning, there was a notification from UPS that my iPad was out for delivery! I went down to the office early and stuck close by so I wouldn’t miss the big arrival.

Well, 4PM rolled around and nothing, and I had to go to head office for a few matters. I locked up and decided to walk since the weather was so lovely. I was in for a surprise when I arrived. My office manager decided to get me a personal holiday gift and presented me with a lovely gift box containing an assortment of liqueur-filled chocolates! How nice of her! I was sent away with a stern warning not to indulge in them and then drive after. She was right; they are potent (and yummy!)! 😀

I got back home around 4:30 and there was another e-notification from UPS, that due to ‘external circumstances’ delivery had been pushed tomorrow. This notification was time stamped 11:30AM. So I spent all day waiting for nothing! 🙁 And I have to start all over tomorrow!

Hopefully, tomorrow I will be able to post from my new toy. In a way, it’s good that it didn’t get here today since I have a project this evening, one that I am procrastinating on right now. Maybe I should get back to work if I want to get to bed at a reasonable hour. 😀

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Kidnapped!

I received a threatening email earlier this week informing me that I would be kidnapped on Saturday afternoon. Sure enough, 3:30 came around yesterday and a crazy person burst into my apartment, tore me away from my work, and spirited me away to another location where I was tortured with delicious food. After that, I was muscled into a nondescript black car and driven outside of Lethbridge where I was robbed blind.

Okay, now what really happened. 😀

As it turns out, Jody said she had plans for Saturday evening and that I might as well come have dinner first since Gary was cooking. Since I was being kidnapped, it made more sense for her to pick me up. I went along with it and, while very curious, didn’t probe too much so I would be surprised when we got to our destination.

The funny thing is that she told me in an earlier email where we were going, but I didn’t put two and two together. She had asked me if I’d ever been to a Tupperware party…

Any other ‘party’ I would have balked, but this was Tupperware! I actually had a list of a few Tupperware things I wanted, much to Jody’s surprise. The event was fun and we all got some nice freebies. This was my haul:

Tupperware freebie haul

The long orange thing just about made me squeal. It’s an orange peeler. I used to have one and somehow lost it. Everyone got to take one of these home, so I was allowed to pick another attendance prize. I went with the clear blue item at the top, which is a grapefruit spoon (another thing I’ve somehow misplaced!). I then won a prize for finding something first in a catalogue and I picked the little clear container with the red lid (great for carrying liquids, like salad dressing). Finally, we all got a little something for playing a game and I ended up with this pretty coral pill box, perfect for carrying Advil or whatever in my purse.

As for my order, everything on my list ended up being on sale (!), so I picked up a set of two collapsible bowls, two little storage containers (a step up from the one in my picture above; just the right size to store the other half of the contents of a can), and a silicon spatula

The first Tupperware thing I bought for myself was a cracker container back in 1998. I’ve since moved to using it for storing powdered milk since it is airtight and spill proof. It is the only plastic container that has survived the upheaval of all my moves during the last 13 years. Other plastic containers crack, get stinky, melt, or otherwise self-destruct. Only Tupperware lives on. Now, I have to be careful about how much stuff I buy because of my limited space, but Tupperware fits in with my new philosophy of buying something once, for life. Can’t wait for my order to come in. 🙂