Nutritional Info WORKS

Grabbed lunch at Chipotle today... they put nutritional/caloric info on their menus - *very* helpful.

You can pick & choose any combination of things to put into your taco/burrito/bowl and know exactly how much you're eating. (The link is not on Chipotle.com but the values are the same as what's printed on the menu - check out the sodium [!])

Helpful and frightening - the calorie listings for chips & salsa and chips & guac. Always seems like a small thing to add to a stripped down chicken bowl - until you see that just chips & salsa adds over 600 calories to your meal. Because who eats just half the small bag of chips?

Holy. Shit. One order serves two, and it's 295-325 calories per serving. If you inhale the whole thing, which of course I've never done... it's 590-650 calories. The chips & guac is 720 calories! Sweet fried corn christmas.


So I didn't order that. Thank you, Chipotle. My ass also thanks you.

Dysfunctional Pet Drugs

What a pleasure it's been doing business with this company. Though I'm not sure if they really are a company or just a guy in his mother's basement with pallets of stolen pet food.

Now that Ninja/Mr. Bitey needs special, kidney-friendly food, I have to find it online or else pay out the ass to buy it from the vet.

I found a couple of vendors - Pet Food Direct and another outfit, Discount Pet Drugs. Pet Food Direct was super easy - found the food, entered the vet info, checked out - package arrived a few days later.

With Dysfunctional Pet Drugs, I found the food, entered the vet info, checked out, and waited. And waited. In a day or so I got a cryptic email:

Hello,

You have not selected the food order option for shipping. Your shipping cost may go up. The shipping cost is $12.99 determined by weight. This only applies to pet food orders as stated on the website.

Please reply to this e-mail for your order to ship Shipping process will takes 7-8 business days for Food Items. If any questions us a call at xxx-xxx-xxxx

Thanks
Petrick

Never even noticed a "food order option" in the check out process, so I replied to ask for more information. I received this response:

Hello

We apologize
You have not selected the Food Orders option in Shipping method as below :

Via Food Orders
Your current invoice is as below :
[boring invoice info]

Please reply this email to ship out your order.
Thanks
David

As shown below. Below what? Where? There IS no "Food Orders option" to select below, you jackass! Nevertheless, I replied and approved the order for shipping. That was on February 7th.

I received this response the same day:

Hello

Thank you for sending the approval. Shortly, we will ship your order and send you the tracking number by email. Shipping process will takes 7-8 business days for Food Items.

Thanks
David

I'm still waiting for the email with the tracking number. Yesterday I sent an email asking for a status update. I received this response:

Hello

We apologize for any delay. Shortly, we will inquire your order from shipping department and inform you by email.

Thanks
David

When I didn't hear back from "shipping department," I sent another inquiry this morning:

Hi again…
Still waiting for a status update - or the product – really, I’d rather have the product I’ve already paid you for.

This is not good. My cat needs this food – I can’t just run down to the store to get it. Please let me know when this will arrive and why it’s taken so long. I have to say, I won’t be ordering from you ever again. This is totally unacceptable.

You charged me $13 for shipping which is already an astronomical charge, then the product doesn’t arrive for weeks.

How do you stay in business? This *is* a business, isn’t it, or were you going to donate the food? Because if you’re going to make it a charitable donation to my cat, that’s very thoughtful, but not worth much if it never arrives.
-J

I haven't received a response, but I did get a call from a wonderfully polite UPS robot letting me know that I'll be receiving a shipment tomorrow that someone must be present to sign for.

No idea if it'll be the pet food or a multi-million dollar check from an anonymous patron of snarky blog writing. To be totally honest, I'm hoping for the latter.

Update 2/25/10: Turns out, the UPS Robot Call was for something else. Still no word from DPD about where my order is. Complete and total failure.

Syrup Shampoo

Yesterday I jumped in the shower but forgot to grab the new shampoo - I'd left it in the kitchen with the other Trader Joe's stuff.

David came into the bathroom to wash his hands, so I asked him if he could bring me the shampoo off the kitchen table.

He came right back and handed me this:

I Love Moo

Every time I do business with Moo I'm reminded of why I love them so... just this confirmation email - it's the best I've ever seen:

Hello

I'm Little MOO - the bit of software that will be managing your order with us. It will shortly be sent to Big MOO, our print machine who will print it for you in the next few days. I'll let you know when it's done and on its way to you.

You can track and manage your order at: [URL goes here]
Estimated Arrival Date: Fri 26 Feb 2010

Remember, I'm just a bit of software. So, if you have any questions regarding your order please first read our Frequently Asked Questions
at: http://www.moo.com/help/

and if you're still not sure, contact customer services (who are real people) at:
https://secure.moo.com/service/

Thanks,
Little MOO, Print Robot

MOO
"We love to print"

That's some nice customer service.

The Penis Mightier

It's true.

I did a silly thing a couple of weeks ago. I wrote a scathing post about a shady, former client who stiffed me on an invoice. I was livid. I lost my mind for a minute. It happens.

A little while after I posted it I took it down. I don't want to put that kind of energy into the world. Amazingly, during those 15-20 minutes it was live she found it. It's like it was meant to be. (Evidently, I know a little about SEO and it helps that she loves to Google her name every five minutes.)

Regardless, the only thing I regret about it is letting myself get into such a negative place. It happens every time I have to deal with her and she's not at all worth it.

She was never worth the effort it took to write the post. She's not worth any of the effort wasted on her from the beginning. I'm looking forward to forgetting I ever met her.

Resolution Recap

Even though I was done with my New Year's resolution on January 21st, I thought I'd officially sum up the experience. All in all - meh.

To be honest, it was sort of a sandbag resolution. Except for the holiday cookie binge I stupidly took part in just before the New Year, I don't eat that much sugar on a daily basis.

Sure, I worship at the House of Pancakes, Doughnuts, Scones & Cookies, but I don't take communion but once in a great while. I rarely drink and I've been gradually decaffeinating myself for months, just to break the morning grogginess cycle.

The idea was to see what it might be like to avoid these things all at the same time, for some length of time and see if it made any difference in my energy, auras, chakras, gravity or gas mileage.

I did feel some nasty depression early on & had a few minor headaches. I think that was purely from the sugar detox after the holiday cookie binge. That passed and hasn't happened again since. So, that was educational... If you eat your weight in biscotti & chocolate chip cookies every day for a week and then quit cold turkey, you might experience some "withdrawals."

Toward the end of the month, I didn't feel any marked difference. Maybe more irritated, in general, and that's not what you want. I'm not sure I can recommend it unless you're really a sugar-booze-caffeine-aholic and need to give your system a break. Everything in moderation - even moderation.

24 Hours of Ass

We *were* watching the last season of 24 and it's so bad, it's not even a fun bad. The writing is still terrible, but this season the writers seem to really hate women - even more than before. Seriously.

Cherry Jones, who plays what you'd think would be a super strong female character - the president of the United States - was slapped in the face last season. When have any of the male presidents ever been slapped? Sure, one was shot in the neck, but I'll take a bullet in the neck any day over a slap in the face.

Now this season all her top advisors are men. Can't have a woman running the country without a shit ton of advice from a stable of stallions - men know best. You just keep your skirt suit straight - we'll handle the rest. There isn't one woman in her executive team. None. And as David just reminded me, last season her daughter turned out to be a traitor.

Then we have another super strong actress, Katee Sackhoff, who kicked all kinds of ass on BSG, in a role where she's emotionally and physically abused by a former boyfriend. W. T. F.? And don't even get me started on how she could possibly work for CTU and lie about who she is. Come ON.

Also returning from last season is Renee Walker, the tough, now-former FBI agent who had some sort of "breakdown" as a result of being undercover with the Russian mob. So destroyed, she tried to kill herself, as we were shown by the scars on her wrists.

Later we get to see her shower and then endure some friendly rape by her former Russian mob contact all in the name of helping her country. Who, by the way, is also a BSG alum. 24 has become the Love Boat of anti-terrorism dramas.

Jack never had a breakdown and he was tortured in China - for an entire off season. Why isn't Jack a cutter? Or at least a chain smoker? Are you kidding me? Jack's also never needed to shower during any 24-hour period. Ever.

And Chloe - hilarious Chloe - kept around for the comic relief we've come to expect. Love her, but she's not respected by her coworkers or her boss. She might as well be a bumbling secretary.

Even Kim, silly, leg-caught-in-the-cougar-trap Kim, wasn't given anything to do other than get a kid into and out of a car and tell Jack to go fight the bad guys. So lame.

I stayed with the show this long because it was fun to watch Jack Bauer holler his way through every show and see hilarious pseudo technology in action. But now I'm done. I couldn't give two shits what happens to Jack Blower or anyone else in the show.

They had some good years. There were a few good female characters in years past, but they were all killed off or put out to pasture. This season the writers have serious mommy issues and might be keeping their girlfriends in deep wells telling them "It puts the lotion in the basket."

I suppose we can blame Kiefer Sutherland for this season - he's the exec producer. It would seem it's Kiefer who has the mommy issues.

Cannot watch this shit anymore. What a waste of time. Obviously I'm the idiot for tuning in. G'bye Jack.