The General Point.

A brief white whine

I am in a battle of wills with Sephora’s customer service department. Last week I placed an order online with a 15% discount coupon. The website immediately rejected my order saying “Authorization unsuccessful.” (There was of course no information about why.) I called them on Monday to ask why this happened, and they said they needed to do some more research and would call me back the next day. So they called me back the next day telling me that it was merely rejected because there were “so many orders going from Sephora being mailed to that shipping address” in a certain time period, so I should just go back online and order it again and it would work. Right. But I want my 15% off, and the code has expired since last week, so I called them back today to place the order that way. They were like, sure, let’s put this order through. That did not work. So we tried another credit card. No go. So then we tried another SHIPPING address. Also no go. Online shopping fail. They put me on hold for a while and then came back to tell me that they needed to call me back the next day AGAIN at which point they will theoretically put my order through, IF they figure out a way to do it. Note that at this point it has literally been a week since I placed the original order, and it’s not entirely because I kept waiting to call them back by a day or so. I could have this crap in my hands by now. 

My favorite part is the claim that so many packages are being shipped from Sephora to GOOGLE HEADQUARTERS that they have flagged that address and can’t ship it. 

Beauty is so hard.

</whine>

And so April has passed as quickly as March. 

Tonight Peattie is at the A’s/Giants game, and I skipped Burn and stayed home and bought plane tickets to Wisconsin for August (2011 seems to be another year in which all my vacations will be within the continental U.S.; I’m actually excited about the trips but it does make me feel guilty or envious or something when friends are going to interesting places like Colombia and Turkey and Namibia). I made one of my go-to dinners, which is sausage (easy to buy at bodegas) with some veggies (mushrooms and peppers), sauteed spinach with cherry tomatoes (love the burst) and polenta. I have yet to crack the secret of making polenta that doesn’t turn out dry and crumbly. I follow Mark Bittman’s instructions, but every time it’s perfect for about three minutes and then it’s a letdown by the time I finish eating it. Mysteries of supposedly simple cooking. 

Last night we flew back from Boston, which was a great trip except too short, and made shorter by the fact that jetlag made it virtually impossible to get up before 11am Eastern, which shortened the days a bit as you can imagine. The flight home felt like the longest cross-country flight in a while; it felt like I was flying back from Europe. When we finally got off the plane my wrists hurt, like I’d slept and pushed them against something. They still hurt, which is kind of freaking me out, like I have RSI or something that’s been activated by the crappy way I slept on the plane. I assume/hope they feel better tomorrow, but who knows. This was my semi-excuse for skipping Burn. Also, I’m exhausted. I had a few days of horrible sleep due to, of all things, wacky allergy attacks in the middle of the night, and it’s set me back. 

I’m trying to catch up on Friday Night Lights. I never watched season four and then we got it on DVD and Peattie watched all of it sometime when I was busy, and now season five has finally started on regular TV again and of course I have to catch up. I spent tonight watching the two episodes I already watched when we first got the DVDs but forgot, and finally got to the third one. This feels somewhat like a metaphor for my life at the moment: a giant game of catch-up. 

I’ve decided I’m going to try to post things here, just randomly, just so I have some fraction of a written record of my adult life that’s not in my email. I have the problem with this blog that people have with phone calls to friends that they don’t talk to much… you put off calling them because you feel like you have to set aside a whole hour to call someone because you will have so much to cover, but really you would probably be better off calling or texting someone like a half sentence once a week or something just when you had the time, because then it’s more efficient AND you actually do it. Anyway, blogging is a lot like that. I said in January when this silly year started that I was going to do a better job keeping in touch with people and with blogging and so far have performed pretty dismally in both categories, but it is sunny outside today after a week of gross rain and so I’m going to be positive about all of this. 

Obligatory resolutions post

…because if you don’t write it down somewhere, you get to back out of it. Nevermind that it’s already January 5. These are, naturally, in addition to those things that are always under-the-surface resolutions, like “lose 10 pounds” and “run half marathon” (which I just realized is in a month and a day, yikes!). 

• Take more vacation. Actually take it (no work email). And more travel. Get out of the country at least once; either revisit (a new country in) Europe or hit up Asia or South America for the first time. 
• Take more pictures. Maybe suck it up and buy one of those fancy digital SLRs all my friends have. 
• Hike more, camp more, bike more. Perhaps these don’t all belong together, but they are all sort of semi-ambitious weekend activities. Unless I manage to bike to work some day, which would be awesome but which I am reluctant to commit to.
• Stay in better touch. I can’t tell you the number of people I’ve felt bad about not calling or texting or emailing in the last year, for whatever reason. It doesn’t have to be exhaustive. Just not nonexistent.

I’m trying to cut myself off here, because I feel like I always come up with massive lists of goals I’ll never have time to achieve. But I also have a kind of “household” resolutions/to-do list with Peattie, which include things both semi-ambitious and small. So I’m cheating a little. But whatever. 

Oh. And—surprise!—I’d like to write/blog more. Whatever form it takes. 

Here goes nothing.

TNT

Those of you who have been reading my blog know that this whole half-marathon thing is really a bee in my bonnet. I think I first started talking about doing this about two years ago, or maybe a bit earlier — I think the first half-marathon I seriously considered was in November 2008. And no one can forget the saga that was pseudo-training for the SF half this year. I bored you to death about it, I think. Well, here we go again. 

A month or so ago, I bit the bullet and signed up for The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society’s Team in Training. I thought everyone knew what TNT was but turns out they don’t, especially if they don’t work at Google or live in SF, and sometimes even then. So for those of you who don’t already know, it’s a non-profit group that trains people for endurance events (marathons, century rides, triathlons, etc.) while raising money to fight against blood cancers like leukemia, lymphoma and myeloma. 

I’ve known tons of friends who have done events with TNT, and they all tell me that it’s an awesome way to get started with your first endurance event. So despite a few reservations, I signed up. Next February 6, Super Bowl Sunday 2011, I’ll run the Kaiser Permanente San Francisco Half Marathon. At least, in theory — but we must be upbeat, right?

Now comes the fundraising part. My personal fundraising commitment, which I need to raise by Jan 20, is $1,800. The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society has invested more than $600 million in blood cancer research since 1949. Every four minutes someone is diagnosed with a blood cancer, and every 10 minutes someone dies of one. Every donation made to Team in Training helps accelerate finding a cure for these cancers. Plus, advances in treatment of blood cancer can help in other cancer research as well.

So… I hope you will consider helping me reach my fundraising goal and my goal of running this damn race. It’s hard for me to ask for this type of thing, but I’ll really appreciate anything you can do. You can do it in a couple of ways:

• If you want to double your donation, you can donate directly to me (everyone reading this has my email, anyway — you can paypal me, or give me a check or cash next time you see me, or if you don’t have my email somehow you can post a comment and we’ll get in touch) and I can donate in my name, and then I get matching gift from the Googs. This is totally kosher, turns out. 
• Or you can donate at my personal fundraising page: http://pages.teamintraining.org/sf/sfhalf11/ewoodz