Jessie’s class has been learning to write essays over the past couple weeks. That girl loves to write and I’ve read several of her stories that she’s written on her own. She has a great imagination, and I told her that she should keep writing even if it’s just for fun. (after all, I got my poetry and for a short time did write several short stories and published two of them)

So far, for her assignments, she’s written about karate and cartoons — two subjects she knows very well. LOL! Her assignment this week has been to write a description 5 paragraph essay. She was showing it to me last night — she wrote about dogs. She mentioned that her teacher encouraged her to write about something else (as the majority of the class wrote about animals!), and she was stumped and out of ideas.

I named off several things that she knows well: her various video games (UT!!), Harry Potter, Webkinz (too much like animals she said), Neopets, … she rejected them all and I was running out of ideas. Looking over across the den, we have a box of wedding stuff waiting to go into storage. I suggest writing about her part in the wedding. No dice. My next suggestion: How about the honeymoon?

“Huh?” LOL, she gave me a puzzled look that made me laugh, “You know, Disney World?”

Her face lit up like the 4th of July. Eureka! I hit gold.

She scrapped the paper she had previously written and started at once writing a new one. She let me read it just before bedtime last night and she wrote more about the hotel cafeteria and pool than the Disney World park itself. LOL!

Good thing we went there instead of the royal caribbean cruise I had been eying, hehe.

So my little budding writer was all happy and giddy when I left for work this morning. She was still talking about the paper she wrote last night and can’t wait for her teacher to read it.

That’s my girl!

I’ve been spending a lot of time lately thinking about how I can improve different aspects about myself and my life. I’ve taken up meditation again, and am attending a class at UAB specializing in shamatha meditation. I’ll also be taking a tai chi class starting next month. I still haven’t found a new place to workout. I would like to pick up yoga and/or pilates again, but the places where I used to go are either closed or not having those classes due to lack of instructors.

Oh well, hopefully something will come along soon. I figure, if anything, it’s warmer now and I can take up walking and running at the civic center again. That’s free. Free is good.

I want to lose a little weight, not much, but close enough to my pre-wedding weight. I can really tell a difference with the amount I’ve gained back and the lack of consistent exercise/activity … I ache more and generally don’t feel as well as I did. (and it doesn’t help that my meds make me want to eat EVERYTHING in sight!)

The other day when Jim and I stopped by Wal-mart, I stopped to look at a hoodia display. I haven’t seen a whole lot about this particular supplement, but I do know several people who swear by it. Part of me (the logical part) tells me that I need to talk to my doctor and see about getting something that she recommends, but another part of me wonders if it really works and maybe I should try it …

Of course, every time I bring up my weight with my doctor, she tells me that I don’t need to lose any.

Widgetize Me

Ok, after fighting it for at least a year (maybe two?), I’ve fully widgetized my theme. It wasn’t nearly as bad as I expected, but then again, once I figured out how to re-write things in the functions.php I started zooming right along!

I’ve been playing with a few widgets here and there. I found a Twitter one that works ‘ok’ … but I’m a bit annoyed because I had to tweak its code in order to get it to display the way I wanted. I haven’t been able to find a recent comments widget that I like (yet), so I guess I’ll keep looking for that.

I updated the WP Plugins in Use list on the Links page. Looking at it prior to updating, I hadn’t realized how many plugins I had deleted until seeing that list. I think I got it down to about half of what it was before.

I’m already working on another plugin for WordPress … this time it’s an XHTML 1.0 Strict friendly alternative to target="_blank" for opening links in new windows (many thanks to Mark @ Weblog Tools for the idea and code to get me started!). Hopefully I’ll have that done soon.

Married Life

Something that a lot of people have asked me lately … “How’s married life?”

I didn’t think it would be much different, and mostly it’s not. Sure, I have a new name, a different tax filing status, and small legal changes here or there, but I didn’t think it would be too different. In a way it’s not, but there are times when I find myself marveling at having to call Jim my ‘husband.’ Not ‘boyfriend’ or ‘fiance,’ ‘HUSBAND.’

It’s hard to explain … but it’s cool. Things are good. Money’s tight, but at least we’ve finally paid off the last of the wedding debts. It’s good. We’ve bought furniture. We’re looking forward to maybe going back to Disney World for our anniversary. We’re looking forward to buying a house.

It’s nice.

Of course I’m still getting wedding advertisements and bridal magazines. Part of me misses that craziness — but then I remind myself of how neurotic the whole thing made me. Heck, we’re still getting brochures from various places all up and down the east coast (from back when we were still shopping for honeymoon spots). The place that runs Branson condos is still sending me stuff once a month, LOL.

I think I’ll call this weekend and let them down easy.

I’m sitting in class and Jim texts me just now, realizing that at this very moment 5 months ago today, we were getting ready to leave our wedding reception and pile into our (heavily “decorated”) car to head down to Florida for the honeymoon.

It took him all day to realize it, but he remembered.

That’s the question Twitter asks me, as do a few other social networking sites/services … what are you doing?

My last Twitter (prior to this post) pretty much summed up my day:

I hate hate HATE hsbc auto, I swear this company employs the most moronic imbeciles on the face of this planet.

Over the past 3 months, I have tried to get my name and contact information corrected on my account with HSBC. They have had our email addresses and phone numbers wrong ever since we bought Jim’s car. I put off correcting that information because I knew I’d have to get my name changed after the wedding.

November: I called and requested the procedure for getting my name and other account information corrected. I was told to mail in a copy of our marriage license and an outline of what I wanted changed, and sign and date it, and a confirmation letter would be sent to me when the account is updated. So I did. A month later, nothing updated in my account, no letter from HSBC. So I called, and was told that they must not have received my letter. So I sent another with another copy of our marriage license, even included a screenshot and highlighted the information that I wanted changed. I waited another month, heard nothing, account still not updated.

I called in just after the new year. I was told that “something was received” but there were no changes to the account and the CSR couldn’t tell what had been sent in. I explained my frustration, and was transfered to the clerical department. I was then asked to fax in a copy of the letter that I had already sent in TWICE and wait another week to check back on my account.

So a week ago, I faxed it in. I checked my account this morning and my name was finally changed, but NOTHING else had been touched. At this point, I was beyond aggravated. I called HSBC Customer Service. I explained why I was calling and quickly summed up my previous efforts to get my account updated. The first person I spoke with was not helpful in any way. She told me that my account had previously been updated, I asked why the updates were not reflected in my account online. She said she didn’t know. I also asked why I didn’t receive a confirmation letter stating that my account had been updated. She told me that they don’t do that. When I asked to speak to a supervisor next, she wanted to know why I wanted to speak to her supervisor.

Why the hell do you think?

I told her that I had a grievance and wanted to speak with someone who could help me. It wasn’t my intention to complain about her, but that didn’t stop her from putting me on hold and transferring me back to their AUTOMATED MENU SYSTEM. I was furious. I called back, and got her again. When I told her that I was still waiting to speak with a supervisor, she hung up on me.

At this point, I was livid. It was bad enough I had to keep calling back, and each time I had to hunt through their automated menu system to find an option that would get me through to a real person — they removed their “speak to a customer service agent” option some time ago. I have not spoken to a CSR that actually SPOKE ENGLISH in over a year. On top of that, that pinhead was not only being non-helpful in the worst way, she was PISSING ME OFF!

I called back again and finally got through to a CSR. I explained who I was and why I was calling and that I needed to speak with a supervisor. I finally get through to a supervisor and of course his English is broken. I explained why I was calling and the trouble I had been having trying to get my account updated. I think I frustrated him as much as I was frustrated by the previous CSR because I had a hard time understanding him and kept having to ask him to repeat himself.

In the end, he agreed to get a letter out to me confirming the account updates. I’ll tell you this much, I will not ever again use them as a financing institution. I get letters all the time from them for things like auto insurance promos, offers for home insurance quotes, and so on. They won’t get any more of my business — as soon as we’re able, I’ll be re-financing with someone else.