A lot of people tell me that maintenance/extended warranty plans are a gimmick and a waste of money, but I have found that when I pay for when, I usually end up using the service and it ends up paying for itself several times over. In this day and age of “planned obsolescence” I find that most products die within a week of the warranty period being over! So, I buy the maintenance/extended warranty if it is available and the item is expensive.
Making old pets comfortable
by Mary AnnePoor Squeaky is getting so old and uncomfortable with her arthritis that I decided that we really needed to buy her a couple of memory foam dog beds to use. One in the living room, and one in the bedroom. That way she can sleep near us and be more comfortable while doing it. Unfortunately the durn cat has decided that he wanted to use them as supplemental kitty litter boxes, and after several attempts to clean them appropriately and prevent the cat from repeatedly soiling them, we determined that we needed to replace them with waterproof/weatherproof orthopedic dog beds.
Our hope was that the waterproof dog beds would be able to be washed off easily enough for the odor to be eliminated, but that was not to be. After a couple of weeks of constantly cleaning those dog beds, we ended up just putting them outside in the hope that the sun and the rain would deodorize them.
You may suggest that we “get rid of “ the cat, and although we did discuss that as an alternative solution, his advancing age was also something we had to consider.
Credit reports/identity theft?
by Mary AnneA short while ago I filled up my gas tank at a Texaco station. I saw that they were running a special rebate promotion for new Texaco credit card holders, so when I got home I went online and applied for a new Texaco credit card for myself, and a separate one for my hubby.
I got my card a few days later, but I noticed in my email in-box was a rejection letter for my hubby’s card. It turns out that he was rejected because they don’t think he is him! They said that they rejected him based on information from a credit report company. So I printed it off and gave it to my hubby and told him to call the credit report company, which he has been trying to do all morning long. I am concerned that this may have something to do with an identity theft attempt!
How much longer can it last?
by Mary AnneWhen I listen to the news about how the U.S. Postal service is struggling to stay afloat, I think about all of the competition that it faces – the UPS and Fed Ex are the largest competitors for packages, and for letters and documents the competitors are fax machines and the World Wide Web. People nowadays have a lot of options to choose from when it comes to delivery services. Sometimes I start to wonder if actually putting mail in our residential mailboxes might become a thing of the past.
I wouldn’t be terribly surprised if home delivery of the mail was cut down to only a couple of days a week, or even eliminated completely in favor of people having to pick up their mail in a central location like cluster mailboxes at the intersections of their roads, or like commercial mailboxes in a post office or a general store, like in the old days when the post office was just delivering mail by pony express. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that we would revert back to ponies, just that the mail delivery would end at the posts office and people would have to come get it from there.
Apparently didn’t get the new job I applied for
by Mary AnneI applied for a different job this week, and was hopeful that I would get it. It would have meant more money, and better working conditions, which would have been nice. They told me that they would call me back in for a second interview this week, but it is the end of the work week, the end of the work day and I haven’t heard from them, so I am assuming that someone else was given the job. I’m disappointed.