My shoulder still bothers me, and I have another gripe for the doctor

 

The more I hear about the Snowflake, the more I feel that the man is completely evil. If I were religious, I might think he's the Antichrist himself.  Today (as I write this, you'll see this post a bit later), the Snowflake is blaming Autism on Tylenol.  Remember, this is the same man, a non medical professional, who said that Hydroxychloroquine, a drug to treat Malaria, would cure Covid-19.  One thing I learned about him is that if he asks you for the time, just make sure your watch is still on your wrist and your cell phone is in your pocket (or purse) before he leaves.  

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When I went off on my recent cruise, my left shoulder was bothering me.  I could barely stand the pain, but did my best to not let it bother me.  (I felt it was one hell of a pinched nerve.)  The pain has subsided, but has not completely gone away.  So I'll talk about this with my doctor when I see him next.  But this isn't my only problem that I have to see my doctor about.  Again, it seems as if the wrong insurance information was fed to the lab test company, and I will again need to fix things with them.  So, I will need to bitch a little with the doctor's office, as they were supposed to fix this several weeks ago.

Since I will likely have to visit the doctor's office with my insurance card, I will likely dress as Mario in the morning.  I'll be able to kill two birds with one stone, as I have a package supposedly waiting for me at the post office, and I don't remember buying anything that needed shipping while I was on the cruise.  RQS has an idea from whom this package could come from, but I doubt it.  We'll find out when I visit the post office next.

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Today was a low energy day.  Although I continued some work on my de-cluttering project, I didn't do that much.  Instead, I took a drive to Poughkeepsie to try on new dresses at Lane Bryant and then have dinner. Well, the dresses looked nice, but they were not worth $100/ea.  Dinner was better - a bowl of clam chowder, followed by a pastrami Reuben.  Yum!  (The waitress had one of the most pleasant voices and demeanors I've come across in wait staff lately.  If I were only a 30 y/o male....)   

And then, it was the drive home for the night. Tomorrow, it will be warmer and wetter.  So, I might as well get some Mario Mode things done in the morning, so I can enjoy transforming into Marian for a Mani-Pedi in the afternoon.

Setting up a new blog for the co-op

 

 

Years ago, I decided to set up a blog for my co-op.  I maintained it for a while, and then let it go fallow.  Covid had gotten in the way of things, and then we had no one interested in showing up for our annual meetings.  Realizing that no one cared that much about communications with our shareholders, so I dropped work on the bog.

Recently, my co-op got into a financial bind due to no fault of our own (I can't go into details here), and we've had a minor shareholder revolt caused by a maintenance increase and an assessment to pay for some bank imposed costs.  One shareholder (the apartment below me) is demanding to see all of our co-op's records to determine whether some fraud is occurring (it is not).  Another shareholder sent a letter to all residents - but did not pay postage, as s/he either paid off the postman to insert these letters into our mailboxes, or had an illegal copy of the postbox key.  But I digress....

One of the good things that has come of this is a recognition from our co-op president that we need better communications with our shareholders.  So, I dusted off the blog I let go fallow and brought it up to date.  I'll admit that I back filled some entries, but I made no effort to do a detailed back fill which would take a lot of effort.  I figured that I might need to delete most of the prior posts, so it wasn't worth it so say much other than to mention that shareholder meetings were held, quorums were not achieved, and the prior board remained in power, because not enough people were interested in participating in the election.

To safeguard things, I have decided to make the co-op blog an invite-only blog, so that only shareholders have access to it.  When the board gives its OK, I will begin the process of getting a domain name fr the co-op, and attaching the blog to it.  Eventually, I will flesh things out a little more and have something which will be useful to our co-op's shareholders.  Until then, I will work on convincing the board that we need to communicate better, and that this blog will be one of the tools we will use to do so.

I gor my first mystery box of the year

 

This picture does not do the contents of my latest Universal Standard Mystery Box justice. Hanging these dresses on cheap coat hangers, and not put on a body makes all of them look lifeless.  However, they feel great.  And one of them I had planned to purchase the next time that their dresses go on sale.

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I stumbled onto the Universal Standard brand a few years ago, and I found that their goods were of higher quality than I was finding in the plus size stores I was shopping in at the time.  Two of the three plus size stores are now gone, with their brands absorbed into the "Full Beauty" group.  This leaves me with only the Lane Bryant stores and various online merchants such as Ulla Popken where I've made my online purchases over the years.  Universal Standard is one of these online stores.

Before Covid, Universal Standard had one store in lower Manhattan.  After Covid, they had both trunk sales and on-premises sample sales, from which I have bought many garments.  But my favorite deals tended to be the Mystery Boxes, where one garment could be worth the price of the box.  In this case, all 3 dresses look like they will be keepers.

With this being said, I am hoping that they will resume sample sales in their new DUMBO location.  Yes, getting to DUMBO is much less convenient than getting to the southern part of midtown.  But it's worth it to be able to try on clothes and get steep discounts at the same time.

Often, great deals are too good to last.

 

Woot.com is one of those sites that offers deals that are too good to last.  But it illustrates why one should be able to spot a good deal when it is available and pounce on it if it fits your needs.

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Over the years, I have learned that really good deals do not last long. For example, near the end of 2021, I found a great deal on a cruise from NYC to the Bahamas and back. It was one of the first cruises to take place after the Covid-19 Suspension, and had a price that could not be beat.  There was no single supplement, and I snagged a mini-suite for $1,400.  How could I beat that?

Now that I am comfortable going out in the world as Marian, I will occasionally buy a "Mystery Box" from Universal Standard.  It is like buying a pig in a poke, as you never know what you're going to get until you get it.  There are some items I am comfortable wearing, and others that I don't have the occasion to wear.  On the whole, I have broken even on my mystery purchases from Universal Standard, and will consider buying more mystery boxes in the future.

Years ago, I was hunting for a dress I could wear to a wedding and found a dress that looked good on me. I found it listed on Roamans.com for $140.  The same dress found be found on Amazon.com for $120.  But, on another onestopcom's site, it sold for $50 as long as you purchased a total of garments whose price totaled $75 or more.  That was a great deal on a dress which I've only had the occasion to wear only once.   

Bargain hunting can be fun, as well as addictive.  Now that I'm retired, it pays for me to search for bargains, but not always jump on them.  Luckily, I have the option to buy (or not buy).  And I'm glad I can enjoy bargain shopping to its fullest.

Cruising to New England and the Maritimes

 

RQS and I were looking at this itinerary, and we decided to take a Summer/Autumn cruise. We normally would follow the advice of Gary Bembridge and use a travel agent to book our cruise.  However, we encountered a situation where the travel agent we selected couldn't provide us the option we could get by booking directly with the cruise line.  

But first....

Last night, we planned to book this cruise when I got home from dinner with DPV .  However, Vacations to Go (VTG) closes its lines at 10 pm, so we figured we'd book the cruise tonight. Well, things didn't work out as planned.

RQS was visiting her cousin in Philadelphia, and brought her new Chromebook along for the ride.  Around 9 pm, RQS called me and tried to connect me in for a 3 way call with VTG. We couldn't get that working.  Unfortunately, VTG couldn't give us the booking we wanted - they could only do an all or nothing regarding the "Free at Sea" offering.  We wanted everything but the "Free" booze package (we don't drink enough to make the $200/pp gratuity charge worth the price), and VTG couldn't or wouldn't do what was needed to uncheck this option.  So RQS and I decided to contact the cruise line directly and see what we could do.  And we had more success here, as the cruise line's agent had no problem making this happen.  Sadly, we couldn't get the room I found online, but we got a good room for the same price.  (The agent made a mistake at first, not realizing what we would accept a cabin in the aft part of the ship, and thinking we wanted an aft balcony.  He corrected this quickly, when I told RQS what I think happened.)  

Would I do the booking this way again?  Maybe/Maybe Not.  I have found a local travel agent specializing in cruises that I may try out for our next cruise together.  Hopefully, I can get better results from someone local than from an organization which may be experiencing Covid-19 related personnel churn.

So, now we are committed - we will be spending time with each other where we have to see each other for 10 straight days.  This will tell us a lot about how we get along together.  Keep your fingers crossed.

 

PS: This is a cruise I'll be doing as Mario.  It won't be as much fun, but.....

Cancer Sucks!

 

As I was parking in my usual parking spot, I saw a neighbor walking with a cane.  Normally, he's in the best of health and able to take on an army without showing any stress.  So what gives?  Since he was having trouble getting out of his friend's car, I couldn't help but ask him "What happened?"  And the answer surprised me - he has lymphoma.  Since I don't want to give out any information which can identify him further, I will say nothing about the type of work he does, save that it requires him to be in the best of health.

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This development explains why his car hasn't moved in days.  Luckily, this form of cancer has a 92% cure rate.  But he is worried.  He wants to make it to retirement age, sell his apartment, and move to where his money can go a lot further than it does here.  While we chatted, he mentioned the board member who had been treated for cancer, then died of Covid-19 at the beginning of the pandemic.  I mentioned that my late wife died of cancer.  But I stopped short of volunteering any help.  There is not much I could do for him, save to drive him back and forth between his apartment and medical appointments.  Given that I have little energy these days, I'd be a lousy person to give him much help.

Obviously, this man has at least one friend nearby that can help him.  TCL and I have the same problem - we don't have the friends who could help us if something like this happened to us.  There is no way that I could call on FCP or an ex-girlfriend for assistance, and I don't think I'd want to even consider them even if we were still friends.  (The ex-girlfriend showed her true colors when we had our kerfuffle, and FCP would use it as a cudgel to get what she wants in one way or another.  It's better that I remember all the help I gave her with getting to hospitals, etc. than to let her say it was a one way deal in my favor.)

I'm rooting for this neighbor.  Hopefully, he'll be one of the 92% who live more than 5 years after diagnosis.