Old age

Pictures from the fair

Bernadette on the swings

Jeremy

Lizzie

What are the tell tale signs of old age? Well lemme tell ya! It's when you can't hang with the kids anymore at the state fair, going to bed around a 2:30am, not even drinking and being totally shot the next morning WHILE unemployed! That's what! So last night the NJ state fair at Meadowlands opened with a dollar night and since I have never been and am going bonkers at home T decided to treat me a night out! I paid for the parking and admission though...3 dollars! LOL! When I take my baby out for a good time, I don't spare my money!

Anyway, We got there around 9:30pm and met up with Oscar, Bernie and the kids and Chris and Mari. They were sitting by the hypnotist's stage and so we watched the show. It was hilarious! He had about 15-20 volunteers and OMG was it funny! At one point he told them and he had lost a vital part of his clothing and the people would see that whenever he says "hypnosis" and everybody except one would think it's awful and the one person would like what they saw. Then he had one person to studder, another to be attacked by the logo on his shirt, another to have a leprechaun in his pants etc...then he did a "post hypnosis" suggestions where he told people when they hear a certain word they would do something funny. This one guy when he heard the word started to walk up and down the aisles looking for his mommy! This girl thought the security guard was the hottest guy in the word and when another guy heard his word he got jealous because that was his man! LOL! But the icing on the cake was this one girl who when she heard the word "Tickets/tickets" she would come back on the stage and started to sing and dance to Madonna's "Like a virgin"! It was so funny!

After the Hypnotist we went to see the Pig races! We only saw the last one, these are the heavyweights! T told me there are many weight classes from tiny little piglets to these big ass pigs!






After the pig race it was already 11:30 so we decided to take on some rides. We were able to go on to 4 different rides and in between we were trying to win me a Winnie the Pooh from the game stands. Me and T were not victorious but Oscar was so he got me a Winnie! A Picture will follow! The fair closed at 1am and by the time we got to our car it was 1:40am. We got home around 2 and were asleep by 2:30. This morning was so hard, more to T than to me I'm sure! I had to wake up with her because I took her to the park and ride. I am going to do the grocery shopping while she is at work and she also had plans for tonight to go see her old college buddy's newborn twins but that plan was cancelled so now I need to haul ass! When I got home from taking her, I went right back to bed and slept till noon! Oops! I'm now on my second mug of coffee which is not really helping all that much and then I need to eat a little so that I am not grocery shopping on an empty stomach! This day is a total waste on my part but what can you do? We had a good time last night and that's all that counts! Tomorrow we can sleep in and go to the gym together. I am not cooking tonight (sorry babe) so it's leftover night in our household! I have a feeling that we will turn in early, watch the Mets-Yankees game and sleep like babies.
I gotta eat now! Later

Insurance companies and billing departments

I am in serious need of some human contact! And I don't mean calling to the insurance companies and hospital billing departments! I received a bill from the hospital where I had my bone scan 6 friggin months ago yesterday. The bill was for 500 dollars and said my insurance company has paid a portion of it. So today I went online to see the claims submitted on my behalf to my insurance company and surprise surprise did NOT find the claim anywhere. So I called my insurance company to verify the claim and they said they hadn't received it. I call the hospital billing department and they say they sent it in December, we went through my insurance information and everything and it all matched. So I call the insurance company again and they give me a fax number to give the hospital for re-submitting the claim. I call the hospital and they say they wanna do a conference call so if I can call my insurance company back and have them call the hospital while I'm on the line so we can conference. I ask her if she is willing to re-submit the claim by fax and she tells me no because they already did it twice and got rejected twice so if we could just do the conference call. I call my insurance company again, for the THIRD TIME, and they tell me that they are not able to make outside calls so if I can make the conference call happen, that's fine. I try but don't know how to use my phone for that so I call the hospital again if they are able to do that...so this 3rd lady calls my insurance company, keeps me on the other line and gets the whole thing fixed. She was awesome! And very apologetic about the whole thing. Said they had basically send my claim to the wrong place which is why my insurance claims did not show on my account. Says she's sorry for the inconvenience, she's gonna explain the whole thing to her supervisor and to disregard the bill for now. Aww, what an awesome customer service person. The other two can go to hell!

This country is crazy bureaucratic! Takes me 6 friggin calls to get my issue resolved! If I ever (again) need to work in customer service, I am gonna try to remember this day and try to be a better customer service person than I was before. Although being nice when the customer is being nasty to you is not easy. I was a nice customer though, even though I felt like screaming and cursing!

I have another call I need to make. When my foot injury was going on, when I was able to walk again, I was given this walker boot that I used. That was submitted to my insurance company who paid for it and then the company sent me a bill for it too and I paid for it so now I need to call them and ask for my money back! nobody messes with a broke Finn!!!

I am not sure if everyone has heard but our brand new 10 month old TV is broken. Did you hear about that? No? Well let me tell you...It broke last week, does not turn on, blinks green for awhile and then turns red. I called the customer service, they said they were gonna send a tech today between 8-12 so I had to wake up early to come downstairs to be ready for him. Mind you, our TV does not work so I'm here with no entertainment. Then the house phone rings at like 8:20am and since I'm waiting for the guy to come, I answer it. It's the Sony guy telling me they've tried calling since Monday to figure out what the problem is...I've been home every as I don't have anything better to do or places to go as (some of you may know) I haven't found a job yet and it's been raining every day so I would know if they called but that's beside the point now...The guy asked me to turn the TV on and to calculate the red blinks...there were 9 blinks which according to him means that the ventilation is broken, he's gonna order the new parts for it, it should take like 2 days and when they have them, the repair guy is gonna come. So awesome. I woke up super early for the guy to call me little after to tell me he's not coming! awesome! I'm super happy. Oh yeah, the reason why I needed to stay downstairs to wait for him? Our AC is very loud, and to top that off with the TV being on upstairs, I wouldn't have been able to hear the door bell ring. So there!

Another thing...NEVER call insurance companies and such places on an empty stomach! I had to submit my insurance info and account number every time I called these places electronically so I had to sit in front of my computer where I had the info and then you never know how long it takes for your call to go through so I couldn't even eat while waiting...I was starving by the time I was through with all these calls. Now I need to digest a little and then I'm going to the gym! Today I'm actually gonna do it!

Have a better day than I am having!

Later

Much to blog about nothing

I'm still unemployed.
I'm still bored.
I haven't won the lottery yet.
Cats don't speak either Finnish or English and my cat is kinda limited so it's very quiet here during the day.
I am sitting on the bed because the upstairs TV is working.
Sony guy is coming tomorrow between 8am and noon. Talk about early wake up for me!
It's raining. What else is new?
I was supposed to go to the gym today but then it started to rain.
When the rain stopped I wanted to go to the pool (sunny and hot) but then it started to rain again. So here I am blogging.
I need to make better plans.

But we have great plans for the next few weekends and weeks.
This Sunday is NYC pride which we are OBVIOUSLY going! Gonna be awesome!
The NJ state fair opens tomorrow so we might go ride some rides, win some teddy bears and eat some cotton candy. The weekend after that we are heading to Rehoboth Beach in Delaware to spend the 4th of July weekend with Colette and Paul. That's gonna be good times!We're taking our bikes with us, lay in the sun, go to the beach, drink and eat and relax! Then the following Tuesday we have a Mets game to go to! Awesome!

Later

Technology SUCKS!!!

It totally does! We had a power outage on Tuesday and after that the upstairs cable box wasn't working so we had no TV for few days until T asked me if we could just attach the cable from the box to the TV and get the basic TV...so I did that on Wednesday night and we had TV upstairs again. We called Comcast on Tuesday to see if they could do something remotely but it wasn't working so they sent a tech today and now we have a brand new box upstairs and the TV is working again.



I had to get up super early this morning because I had to make sure I was up when the guy came. His allocated time was between 11am and 1pm but he was here little after 10am. When I say early I mean early for us unemployed people who do not need to get up at 5:30 am to go to the gym before work like my lovely, awesome dedicated T does. I can sleep in late and stay in bed for as long as I want or for as long as the cats let me, which ever comes first. So i came downstairs and turned on our brand-spanking-new 10 month old Sony frigging Bravia 46 inch wide screen TV...the green power sign blinked and blinked and blinked and it made the "on" sound and then it went red...it's blinking red...red...red and some more red and nothing happens! AWESOME! So I fought with the TV for 40 minutes before the Comcast guy arrived AND are you ready for this? My almost 2 year old Dell fucking computer with Windows the-best-ever-user-system-Vista froze on me! It got to the point where it shows the icons on the desktop and messenger screen appeared but then nothing. Mouse wasn't working, the Control-Alt-Del command wasn't working so I turned it off and then back on...and this comes on!



I've had so many problems with this computer and it's soft and hardware...my last computer had every imaginable problem you can name!

When the C guy came here I asked him if he knows anything about turning TVs on and so he tried and then he told me it looks like it's busted. It's so funny how we have a TV that's probably older than me upstairs that's working, and a new and supposedly better technology TV downstairs that just crapped out. After the Comcast guy left I called Sony help center to see if there was anything I could try. I read my owners manual and the troubleshooting section there but they didn't even have "TV does not turn on" as an option there! WTF?!?!?

The lady on the phone was nice though and she scheduled a tech to come take a look at our TV next Thursday so until then we have no TV downstairs. We bought a 4 year extended warranty on our TV so at least it's covered. But I gotta tell you, I'm getting pretty frigging tired with all these problems. T pointed out that it's probably me because her old big as TV was fine before we moved in together and the it died...which is why we bought this Sony in the first place...her old small TV which is upstairs was fine before we moved in together and now it's showing signs of old age...(although I think it's Comcast and not the TV)...my first computer had battery, charger, hardware and blue screen of death problems...and now I have this lovely Dell with Windows Vista...need I say more?? Although it's the Vista, not me!

Yeah, so that's been my morning and week so far. I have been applying to jobs all over the place but no bites. I'm not even getting the insurance company calls and e-mails anymore! I'm going crazy...as nice as the cats are, they don't talk to me...this is a picture from this morning when we came downstairs and I was fighting with the TV and my computer. It's a sad sad existence for the cats!





T suggested that I'll go take a walk so I'm gonna go to our neighborhood Dunkin Donuts and get a FREE large caramel latte and maybe a donut to go with it. The gym can wait for few hours. If you wanna know about the Philly parade, go to T's blog. This weekend we are gonna see T's family, it's a fathers day here on Sunday so we are having a breakfast at Johnny's house on Saturday and then spend some time with Carly and who knows whats going on on Sunday. Next weekend is NYC parade and we are gonna have so much fun! There is obviously no midsummer festivities here as we are much more south than Finland is...We are hoping that we can spend next midsummer in Finland and I can show T the nightless night. But before that I need to get a job so that I can save for that trip! Keep your fingers crossed!
Hyvää Juhannusta!

Later

My luck

Since I prematurely predicted Finland's win over Russia today and said a day cannot get any better than going to the gym, getting Dunkin Donuts coffee and Finland beating Russia, I got what was coming to me! The coffee was terrible and Finland definitely did not do what I said, quite the contrary...so, since that didn't come true I think I am definitely getting a job in the next few weeks AND winning the lottery! Whether that is the green card lottery or the monetary one, I don't care! But stay tuned, I have some BIG news coming soon!

It's been almost a month since I had my last class and I am fast becoming a desperate housewife! I even made a weekly schedule for myself so that I don't go crazy just yet. It includes the gym (my only human contact beside T these days and the weekends full of exciting plans), laundry, cleaning, job hunting...and T has probably never been fed so well in her life! I am becoming a master chef! Awesome, right?

The cats are also happy that I'm home...they nap, nap, nap, eat, poop and nap some more. I also brush them every day, play a little with which ever cat seems interested and disturb their naps whenever I can. They try to get me up and feed them every morning so it's only fair. As Finland now lost 3-0 to Russia, Sox slept through it but Bailey decided it was better for her to go nap upstairs as she was kinda scared of me yelling to apparently no-one. It is not like I would have wanted to see Finland play in South-Africa...I have a feeling we will not reach Euro or World Cup tournament in my lifetime. And once Jari Litmanen and Sami Hyypiä retire, we are gonna suck even more.

This weekend we are heading to to Pennsylvania and the Philly pride parade. It's our first time ever in that pride and we're hoping the weather is gonna be sunny cuz it sure hasn't been that way this week. Then in 2 weeks we're going to the NYC parade.

Hope ya'll are having a better week and a month than me! Later