Christine the Curmudgeon

Now, Christine the Curmudgeon spends most of her time on this blog complaining about assorted crap.  But it’s nice to give credit where credit is due, so I’m going to do so now.  See, I’m not such a Negative Nellie ALL the time!

Mr. Curmudgeon and I were out and about today, and one of the things we wanted to do was get flu shots.  The Hamthrax vaccine is now widely available, as is the seasonal flu shot.  Mr. C was able to get the seasonal vaccine through his work, but I had to go without for a long time because NOBODY had any.  It’s seriously a miracle that I didn’t get sick this year, as I have in the past before I wised up and started getting flu shots.  When I catch the flu, I get it BAD, I’m flat on my back for WEEKS.  No fun at all.

The commercials on TV tell us that flu season is NOT over, people are still at risk, and doctors are advising everyone that it’s still a good move to get vaccinated now, if you haven’t already.  With my kind of luck, without the vaccine, I might end up getting sick right when baseball season is about the start.  I’ve been waiting a long time for it to start up again, I’m not about to miss out on any of the fun if I can help it!

So we decided to go to the CVS Minute Clinic to get the shots.  I misread the website and thought they closed at 7PM, but it turned out that they closed at 5:30PM on weekends.  We had first gone to eat, at the 99 Restaurant up the road, and thought we had more time.

We got there at about 5:20PM, and figured it was too late to sign in to get the shots today.  But Julie, the nurse-practitioner on duty, told us that since we were just getting flu shots, that she’d take us anyway.  At first, the computer would not let us sign in due to the time, but she took the time to make it so that we could.  She spent a good amount of time typing gobbledy-gook into her computer, such as ls2208, etc. We did offer to leave and come back tomorrow, but she said no, she would be happy to give us our shots today.

It was really nice of her to do this for us, she didn’t have to, and we would have left and came back the next day if we’d had to.  But it was very much appreciated that she did, and now it’s over and done with.

CVS emailed me a survey about the services we received at the Minute Clinic, and I filled it out, giving the Tewksbury, MA location top marks, and putting in a note for Julie, thanking her again for going out of her way to take us, even though we showed up late.

So, definitely let people know when they screw up and you are not happy…but don’t forget to give people praise when it is deserved!

Why is it that all of the assholes of the world go to the Stop & Shop near us?

Christine the Curmudgeon and the Mister went there for two reasons.  First, I wanted to buy either veal or lamb shanks for an osso buco recipe.  We had gone to the Market Basket next to the CVS Minute Clinic where we got our Hamthrax and my seasonal flu shots today.  Not a shank in sight, except for beef.  We still have leftover beef stew, I wanted something different.

We were gonna go to this Stop & Shop anyway, because Mr. C had in his possession a coupon for a free dozen eggs from there.  However, when we got there, I asked him to produce the coupon to see if there was any specification on the eggs, as in size.  Sure enough, it said WHITE eggs.  White eggs, believe it or not, can be a bit hard to find in the New England area.  There used to be a commercial jingle years ago that went, “brown eggs are local eggs, and local eggs are fresh!”  The only time we ever see large amounts of white eggs in the stores around her is around Easter time, when they bring them in for egg coloring needs.  I’ve never tried to color a brown egg, but I bet it would look rather fugly if I did.

Stores do carry white eggs here, but about 90% of the eggs on the store shelves are brown.  So WHY give away coupons for free white eggs, when they know damned well that there won’t be enough for all of the people they gave these coupons to?  I’ll tell you why…because they don’t WANT to give anything away, they WANT to get you into the store and buy stuff.  Sure, people could just leave upon not seeing any white eggs and shop elsewhere.  But you have to deal with so much assholery in that store on the way to where the eggs are, you are tired and frustrated and you just want to do the rest of your shopping, pay, and get the hell out of that cesspool ASAP.  They make it so that you don’t feel like getting back into your car and driving to Shaw’s.  Sometimes I wonder if the idiot customers there who block the aisles and annoy me are actually paid employees, designed to make me too tired and frustrated to go elsewhere, after being cheated out of free eggs.

So I go to the Meat Counter From Hell to look for dead animal shankage.  You’d think that this meat counter had a bunch of laptops, all lined up there, given the number of bimbo teenagers congregating there, you’d think they were busy checking their MySpace and Facebook, not shopping for actual meat.  There was this one skanky looking teen mother there, who was looking at a very expensive beef roast.  But the rest of them weren’t buying anything, they were just standing there, blocking my way, yapping with each other, and using their cell phones.

I finally found veal and lamb shanks.  The lamb shanks were half the price of the veal, so that won.  Finally, I had everything I needed, it was time to pay and get the hell out of Dodge.

But I had to see one more thing that pissed me off.  Remember teen mom, who was looking at a $12.99 a pound beef roast?  I saw her buying it, and paying with a food stamp card.  I could tell it was a food stamp card, and not a regular credit or debit card, because she was trying to buy cigarettes, too, and the cashier made her whip out cash for those.

Sheesh.  I have no problem with people needing to be on food stamps.  But jeez, they should not be allowed to buy luxury foods, this roast probably cost almost half her allotment for the month!  And then these are the people who whine when they have no more food stamps, and there’s most of the month left!  No sympathy from me!

And I bet the stupid chick will not know how to cook this roast the way it deserves to be, she’ll burn it and it’ll mostly end up in the garbage.  Our tax dollars at work!

Yep.  They are doing it in Indianapolis on Monday – Indianapolis settles on one-hour school delay on Monday after Super Bowl.

Christine the Curmudgeon thinks that this is absolutely ridiculous.  Where are people’s priorities?  School should be more important than football, even if it IS the Super Bowl.

Who is this really for, anyway?  If it’s for the kids, well, if they are too young to stay up that late, too bad.  When I was a little Curmudgeonlette, kids had bedtimes, and the only way we were every allowed to stay up late for anything was if it was held on a non-school night.  Super Bowl goes on past Junior’s bedtime?  Too bad.  School comes first.  The NFL puts out Super Bowl DVDs every year, let the kids watch those on a weekend or holiday afternoon.  School vacation week is coming up soon, anyway.

If this is more to keep the school bus drivers from calling in sick, too bad once again.  They signed on for this job, they need to do it.  This is a case where paid sick leave should not be allowed.  Call in sick on the day after the Stupor Bowl, your pay gets docked.  If it turns out that you were really sick (and I don’t mean sick, as in caused by consuming too much beer the night before), provide some kind of proof, and you get the pay for the sick day back.  If an employees is known to do this regularly, calling in sick the day after late-night events, then they need to be fired.  Too bad if they lose their benefits, too bad if they have to look elsewhere for health and life insurance rates.  There are plenty of other people who’d love to have their jobs…okay, driving a school bus has to seriously suck, but if you have NO job, the pay from this is better than nothing.

As far as I know, they have never done this sort of thing in any school in the Boston area.  In recent history, we’ve had two World Series wins, three Super Bowl trophies, and one NBA Championship victory.  All of these games were played at night and ended very late.  Okay, there probably were parents who called in sick, or kept their kids out of school the next day…but there were never any official school delays the morning after the big win.

What are we teaching kids these days, by saying that it’s okay to adjust the school schedule over a football game?

…Christine the Curmudgeon would like you to leave her alone, once and for all!

Srsly.  Yes, Proactiv is a good product that works very well for clearing up acne.  But it’s too expensive, and there was no way to slow down the shipments, so I wasn’t stuck with stacks and stacks of unused product at home.  Okay, so according to the “we want you back” emails and snail-mails I’ve gotten, that’s supposed to change, and people will be able to have full control over the frequency of shipments.  But please forgive me if I don’t quite believe that!

Also, after all the crap I went through to cancel the shipments, do they REALLY think I’m dumb enough to sign on for this AGAIN?  Sorry, I think not.  I’ve recently started using a product called AcneFree, which is very, very similar to Proactiv.  Only it’s less than half the price ($20 as opposed to $50 for the same sized containers of product), and it available at local stores like CVS, so I save even more by not paying outrageous shipping fees.

And I’m not stuck with an auto-ship plan at all.  When I’m about to run out of the stuff, I can just go to CVS and buy more.  Around here, you can’t swing a dead New York Y*****s fan without hitting a CVS store.  Mr. Curmudgeon practically lives in CVS, he’s a geezer who takes all sorts of meds, so he’s there at least once a week picking one med or another up.  No problem at all to ask him to swing by the skin care aisle of  the store and grab me a new AcneFree kit.

And if we fall upon hard financial times, I an just opt not to buy the stuff.  When I was trying to cancel Proactiv, I actually did cry poverty…a lie, but they deserve to be lied to, for making it difficult to cancel.  The lie didn’t work, but a veiled threat to take legal action did.  And they want me back WHY?  Dumbasses.

I’m one of those people who speaks with their wallet when a company or brand pisses me off.  For example, we’ll never buy a Dell computer again, because their customer service sucks, we’ve had nothing but problems with them over a laptop that Mr. C bought years ago.  If he ever does buy himself another laptop for his own personal use, he’ll look to Samsung, or any other company BUT Dell! He’s already stuck with a work-issued Dell laptop…but if something goes wrong, it’s up to the work IT guy to deal with Dell’s crappy customer service, and NOT Mr. C.

Anyhoo, I sent an email to Proactiv demanding that they remove every trace of my curmudgeonly existence from their computer system.  I told them that I am NOT interested in their product, I hate their marketing practices, and would sooner allow myself to have ginormous, oozing, festering zits all over my face before I’d sign up to get their product again.  Any further contact will be considered harassment, and appropriate action will be taken.

We shall see how it goes.  In any case, if you are thinking of trying Proactiv…DON’T, not unless you want to deal with having them charge your credit card every month, until you have to threaten them with death to make it stop.  Go to CVS or whatever chain drugstore is near you and pick up an AcneFree kit for just $20.  I swear, it is almost the EXACT same product as Proactiv, only without the hassle.

Christine the Curmudgeon just got an email from someone who wants to post some of their own articles on one of the other Curmudgeon blogs.  DO NOT WANT.

I mean, when people read my blogs, I assume that they are there to read what I write, not what someone else writes.  If I let this person post stuff on that other blog, it might look like I am too lazy to post on my own blogs.  I just don’t think it’s a good idea.

I’m also not sure how much control I’d have over the content.  Would I even be able to pick and choose articles?  What if someone wanted me to publish an article about cigar smoking, when I’m not a smoker and would never write anything positive about it?

Nope, I’m not even going to respond to this email.  These are MY blogs, 100%, all opinions written on them are mine, and I’m not about to change that any time soon!