It's a Beautiful Day in the Neighbourhood!

***post started xyz days ago***
Oh my, for some reason I decided that I would make a button for my blog today. I've seen them on other pages and I really like the look of them. Boy oh boy is it not as easy at meets the eye. Or at least, not for someone as technologically inept as I am. After much googling and lots of photoshop (I'm just understanding how it works) I came up with a design that I liked. I am still struggling with how to get the actual link to post below the picture...as well as how to make the image itself smaller. 
For tonight, I have given up. I am a quitter. Perhaps I'll look into it again on Tuesday.
I spent the whole of today doing pretty much nothing, I guess that's the luxury of having the day off. I am back to work tomorrow afternoon so at some point during the day I have to try and squeeze in doing some laundry, which I hate.

***ta da! Magically, it's Tuesday and I've made my buttons and with a little help from Free Bird Train I managed to get it all figured out. So please, if you're into displaying buttons, snag one of mine. After all the stress it took me to figure it out, it would make my day to see one displayed on a blog I read.


Today I had the most stressful conversation with my phone service provider. Obviously, with the husband being overseas I need an international call plan, which I signed up for three months go. We talk every day, sometimes multiple times a day and I need a plan that won't charge us a fortune for this. Well, from April to June this plan suited me just fine. We spoke all the time and I didn't face huge charges. Then all of a sudden, when I checked my account online, I could see charges for the calls I was making. It wasn't that much but it wasn't free either. 

When I called them, they said that I only get 600 minutes to use each month and after that I would be charged. 600 minutes equates to 10 hours per month. Which is ridiculous. Adam and I will talk for anywhere between 1 and 5 hours a day. And I know for a fact that in the previous months, I used way more than 600 minutes so how come I wasn't charged then and I'm being charged now?

Well, they were useless. I talked to four different people and they all had something different to say. I attempted to be patient and try to explain myself clearly but with English not being their first language (I hate outsourcing) they didn't seem to understand me. I had the first guy put me through to his supervisor who then tried to inform me that June 21st to June 28th is one calendar month! Seriously? For real? I then wanted to talk to his supervisor and he said he'd put me through but instead he sent me back to the main automated message. So I had to start again. The third person I spoke to put me on hold and after 15mintues I realised he wasn't coming back and hung up to start all over again.

Fourth time lucky I actually managed to speak to someone from England, hurrah! Of course, she couldn't explain it either but recommended I don't take the risk and use a phone card until the bill could be generated and we could look through it properly. 

I refuse to pay £5 per month for 600 minutes because I could get a better deal with a phone card. I know companies like to outsource their call centres but seriously, sometimes you just want to talk to someone in the same country as you who understands English when it's spoken to them. So glad to get that off my chest.


My husband makes me laugh sometimes. He says the funniest things and thinks about things that are just so odd. BTW, he informed me that "Asia is going to take over the Internet and I won't be able to blog anymore" I guess I'll just have to cross that bridge when I get to it.

Tonight we were talking about this new "superbug" strain of gonorrhea because Adam gets all freaked out whenever a virus or bacteria becomes resistant to Western medicine. The whole idea of MRSA has him so freaked out he won't go to the gym until the cut on his hand is properly healed...because MRSA can kill.


Now, I don't know if it is because I'm uninformed or because I've never needed such information but I don't actually know much or anything about gonorrhea. Other than the obvious that its a sexually transmitted infection. So I Wikipedia it, I Wikipedia everything. Just love it. I also read the USA Today article to him and went through the info on Wikipedia. I actually ended up learning a lot, like a woman can pass it onto her newborn during childbirth. And learning a lot of things I didn't want to know about...penile discharge...I really won't say more. And whilst Adam and I won't need this information, he reminded me that one day we could have sexually active teenagers who would need to know the facts. Anyway, my point to discussing gonorrhea? Check out this little pic they had posted on the Wiki page:

I actually love it! Just because it is such a bloody cheek! Could you imagine if they had adverts like this today! AND I just love the Axis of Evil reference, never gets old it seems.


Another reason the husband made me laugh my hiney off tonight, his hatred for Paula Deen. Now he really doesn't like her and I wouldn't even dream of repeating some of the things he said about her. Despite her being a Southern Bell he just hates the way she says y'all all the time. In his own words: "It's like she doesn't know any other pronouns" and the fact that she adds half a dozen sticks of butter to everything.

And as he went on...and on...it got me thinking that he really doesn't like any of the female TV chefs that I like. I'm a huge fan of Ina Garten, The Barefoot Contessa and he can't stand her either. Calls her creepy like Mr Rogers (yeah, I didn't know who he was so I googled him) and ended up with this video which did actual creep me out within the first 30 seconds. 

I guess maybe its an American thing but I couldn't imagine watching this show as a child...but I sure am glad to know its a beautiful day in the neighbourhood!