I didn’t want to get out of bed today. Maybe it’s the rainy weather. There’s something about rain that makes me want to snuggle deeper into my warm bed. I guess it makes sense— stand on the train platform in the rain or stay in bed? Hmmmm, that’s a tough one! As the minutes passed by, my goals changed. If you get up now, you can take a nice long shower. Now you can take a real quick shower. Now you can wash your hair in the sink. Now you can put you hair in a bun and hope people don’t know you didn’t wash it this morning. It’s true, I am one of those people who MUST wash their hair everyday. It’s not a weird compulsion on my part. My hair just looks plain bad if I don’t wash it. I attribute it to my Italian side. I wish there was something I could do so I didn’t have to wash it every day. It seems like such a huge waste of water.

As it is, I am dressed and ready to leave. The last day of the week. Time to go.

I need to calm down. I am feeling great anger towards my bank, Wachovia. Going forward, I willl refer to them as Wa-Caca. Wa-Caca closes at 3:00 everyday except Friday. Friday it’s open a little later. That’s because they know that people who work until 5:00 like to go out and do things on Fridays. They want their hours to be as unfriendly to their customers as possible. On my lunch hour, I went to my local Wa-Caca branch. The man who said he would help me was unable to because his system was down. He promised to call me when it came back up. He didn’t. Finally, I decided to call Wa-Caca on the phone and get help that way. HA! I asked questions about their Crown Banking account and I could tell the girl was reading from the same pamphlet that I had in front of me. She transferred me to some man who insisted upon calling me Ma’am. He asked me why I would even bother with the Crown Banking account— sure it wouldn’t charge me a hundred dollars annual fee and I would get free atm withdrawls but otherwise— it’s the same. I finally just hung up. Then I remembered I had forgotten to setup my account so I could download transactions with Microsoft Money. I called back and was told it was 10.00 a month for that service.

I am at the point where I want to withdrawl all my money and go elsewhere.

Anyone know of a good bank?

I’ve made some huge strides today. I consolidated my stocks into one account and I rolled over my 401K from my old company. I even stopped the automatic deposit that was set up back 10 years ago. The automatic deposit dumped into two mutual funds neither of which ever took off. I remember the “Financial Adviser” showed me this sliding card that supposedly proved that I would become ridiculously wealthy through compound interest or something. The thing is, I have less money in the account than what I deposited! Tomorrow I am going to liquidate the funds and not cry over the 5% sales fee they will charge me. I think it’s the best thing for me to do. I want all my investments in one place and in a way, by liquidating these funds I am flipping the bird to my bank who recommended these crappy money holes.

I am finally getting my finances in order. Thank goodness!

Donna:

We’re sorry you have been having trouble preparing Quaker Oatmeal in the microwave. Believe it or not, the problem may be due to something as simple as the type of bowl you are using, not necessarily the size of the bowl.

When preparing Quaker Oatmeal in the microwave, we recommend using a bowl with sides that slant outwards, such as a pasta or soup bowl. This will prevent the steam that develops when cooking the oatmeal from pushing it up and over the edge of the bowl.

For your inconvenience, we’d like to send a coupon to you in the mail. This coupon will arrive in about a week.

Donna, we appreciate your business and hope this information helps.

Brandon
Quaker Consumer Response

I feel almost guilty writing this but… I had a great weekend! I forgot what it was like having oodles of time all to myself. Normally I am waiting for Rob or waiting on Rob or doing things with Rob… this weekend was just me doing things for myself. It was very nice.

This morning I attempted a small scale experiment. I used less water in my oatmeal AND I reduced the heat to 60% but increased the time by 30 seconds. I also covered the bowl in saran wrap. AND GUESS WHAT? The same thing happened. The oatmeal spilled out and over the sides. This isn’t a 100% failure because since I used less water the oatmeal was pretty thick and I was able to scrape it off the paper towel that I used to line the microwave and back into the bowl so I didn’t lose as much as I usually do. I really hope Quaker Oats writes me back with some better suggestions.

I just submitted this to the Quaker Oats Contact Form on their Web site:

Hello! I am hoping one of your Oatmeal experts might help me. I recently decided to add a morning bowl of oatmeal to my breakfast ritual. I am having massive trouble getting it to cook right. I follow the directions on the container exactly yet each and every time, it spills out of the bowl onto the floor of my microwave! There is usually about 30 seconds left on the clock which means, it’s still quite watery and a little tough AND half of it is gone because it escaped over the sides of the bowl. I recently bought a bowl with higher sides thinking this might help but it hasn’t. I don’t have time to test using less water or a lower heat so I am hoping maybe one of your oatmeal chefs may give me an idea of what to try to make perfect oatmeal in my microwave.

Thanks so much! I do appreciate it!

Hugs and Kisses,

Donna

Let’s see how they respond!

Donna, it’s 1:00! Why are you still in your jammies? Why are you laying in bed eating heavily buttered slices of baguette? How come?!? Well, Rob is in Maryland this weekend and that means I have loads of time to do absolutely NOTHING! It’s wonderful! I am enjoying it.

Maybe you remember the entry I wrote just a few days ago in which I stated: “One day Robert is going to read this blog and realize that each time I write, “I really wish Rob and his band would play a song I know like something from the Monkees or Elvis, it’s really a very very very subtle hint that I would like him to play a song that I know, like something from the Monkees or Elvis.”

Well, the strangest thing happened right before Rob left for Maryland. He was telling me how his band will be playing at the Whitpain Tavern on April 17th and he’s trying to get his band mates to decide on some songs. He then looked at the floor and quietly said, “I, uh, asked Guitar Mike if he wouldn’t mind playing a, uh, Monkees’ song and he was okay with it– kinda.” When he said, “The Monkees” he contorted his face like he was embarrassed to be even uttering the words. “Uh, now I gotta check with the other guys, I am not sure how they are going to react.” I could tell this was difficult for him and he was embarrassed to ask these tough, long-haired, Heavy Metal-loving dudes to play Pleasant Valley Sunday. I put my arms around him and I said, “Look, if your friends don’t want to do it— I understand. You can just do a solo of it all by yourself.” 🙂

When I was in Vegas, I was invited to do some user testing for a new Web site. It didn’t take very long and I love giving my opinion so I enjoyed it. The other day I got a thank you card from the company and along with it was a 100.00 Amazon Gift Certificate! ONE HUNDRED DOLLARS! I feel positively rich. I decided I would definitely buy items that I normally take great pleasure in denying myself. (Audra recently put it best when she said to Lisa, “You know how Donna always talks about things she wants but she never ever gets them for herself”) Now I just need to determine what to spend this 100.00 on. I could buy a ton of DVDs—

Leopard in the Snow DVD ~ Keir Dullea
Sledge Hammer! – Season One & Two
The Best of Donny and Marie: Volume 1
Dark Shadows The Revival – The Complete Series
Mercy (2004) DVD ~ Ellen Barkin

But if I do that, I would watch them once and no more. That’s such a waste.

I would really love to spend my gift certificate on wireless speakers but they do not apparently exist in the way I am thinking of them. You see, I use Rhapsody for my music. This means, all my music comes out of my laptop. My laptop’s speakers are okay but they aren’t the greatest. A few years back I went to Radio Shack and I bought a cord that goes from my laptop’s earphone plug into my stereo’s input jack and that works okay except I am now tethered to my stereo. I have a laptop because like Davy Jones, I want to be free! Like the bluebirds flying by me. Like the waves down on the blue sea. So what I want is this: A device that sends my music from my laptop wirelessly to my stereo or a set of relatively good speakers (I may be a semi-music snob but I am still cheap). Years ago I bought a Netgear Wireless Digital Music Player Model MP101 but this doesn’t work well for me because the device itself controls the music (I had to scroll through this hard to navigate screen on the device to find the music and it really only works on already created playlists) and I want to control the music from my laptop.

I found something that seems close to what I want: Logitech Wireless Music System for PC – 980414-0403 / 9804140403 but the reviews are horrible and it appears to no longer be available anyway.

So this is what I ask of thee, dear Internet…

Do you use an Internet music service with a laptop and if so how do you get the music to flow through quality speakers?
Am I simply dreaming when I wish to be untethered from my stereo?
Is there another solution that I am completely missing?

You can email me or just leave a comment– I hope to hear from you guys! I need help in spending my 100.00 Amazon Gift Certificate!