First Time Around

It is better to do something on the first request than trying to catch up on the second one. This happened to my husband the other day. He made an eBay purchase and while the item came in as expected, he found out that the price was not fair. He ordered an item that he thought was hard to find and when he received it in the mail it came from Walmart online. He never thought that Walmart would have this item. The seller bumped up the price by almost 100% when he sold it. If the item had been sent from the seller it would have been okay, but to have it come from Walmart directly was like rubbing salt into a wound. He wrote the seller and asked for a small refund and said that if he did not get it, he would leave a negative feedback explaining what happened. The seller said that he would not give back any money. A negative feedback was left only saying that my husband asked for a small refund due to a problem, but the buyer refused. He never said what happened specifically. The next day the seller wrote that he would give the refund if the negative feedback would be removed. My husband agreed. The money was refunded and my husband went on eBay to remove the negative feedback. It could not be removed or changed. It seems that eBay limits the amending of feedback and the seller already had the maximum amended. My husband's negative feedback would remain. He wrote to the seller saying he tried but eBay would not allow changes. If the seller had done the right thing the first time around he would not be stuck with a bad review now.

Happy Birthday Barbara

It's here! Your 70th birthday is today. The number looks strange on paper when compared to the person that you are. You are 70 in years but 20 in spirit. We met forty years ago but it seems like I know you forever. As I get older, I find that birthdays mean more in some ways but less in other ways. It is not the number of years you are, but the accomplishments you achieved within those years that really matter. On the scale of accomplishments your are over 100.You have a husband that is devoted and loving. You have two beautiful daughters that anyone would be proud to call their own. You have a son in law that was meant to be in our family. You have friends that have been there for you since kindergarten. Whenever my family gets together with you we are guaranteed "lots of laughs". That is a lot to pack into only 70 years. You are not only my family, you are my friend. I wish you the best birthday ever and many more to come.

eTroubles

This morning I wanted to do an online task. I chose my option, personalized it and began the checkout process. The site asked for a password, but the last time I used it had been so long ago I did not remember it. I tried to do a password reset. I waited and waited for the reset email to arrive and one hour later it was still not here. Maybe it is stuck in internet traffic. I then decided to just open a new account with an alternate email address. I put in my information and the site froze. I x'd out and tried again to no avail. I was now sitting here for 45 minutes to do something that should have taken five. I closed out the site entirely and chose another company. I finished what I needed to do in a few minutes, but it was not what I really wanted.

Musical Loop

My mind has been in a musical loop since yesterday. I was driving home from work and heard a beautiful song that I had only heard once before. My car has a replay option and I put the song on replay. It played continuously for 21 minutes until I arrived home. I then played it on my phone. The words were very touching and for some reason I just needed to hear them over and over again. All through the night, the song played in my mind and when I got up this morning it was still there. It is like a limerick. The first line of the song says, "If you say my eyes are beautiful, it's because I'm looking at you". How could a song with that line not be touching?

The Ladder

We all know the expression, "Watch who you step on, on the ladder going up, because you may see them on the ladder going down". I think I paraphrased the saying but the thought is the same. Sometimes the trip down the ladder comes faster than you think. This is happening at my husband's old job. One of the supervisors very recently trained a new hire. The new guy was young and without much experience but he did have a college degree in science. People referred to him as "the kid". The supervisor gave him a hard time and did not make the training period easy. The kid started his job as a technician a few months ago. Last week the top supervisor decided to leave for a better job and guess who was hired to replace him? The kid. Now the kid is a supervisor over the man who trained him. No one saw this coming. The moral of the story is to be nice to everyone or suffer the consequences.

Thank You

Sometimes all you need to say is "Thank you". Whether the other person is right or wrong, as long as they meant well thank you covers it all. I will give you an example of where those two words, left alone,  could have avoided a confrontation. As I left work yesterday, people said, "Have a happy New Year" to me and I wished it back to them. I am not in work today and neither are the people that said that to me since it is Yom Kippur. A person in the waiting room, who is not Jewish, said they wished us all a happy day with our families. We responded by saying thank you. That is when another person in the waiting room piped in. They told the well wisher that today is a sad day and she should not have wished us a happy day. The well wisher said that she is not Jewish and had no idea about the holiday and now felt bad about what she said. Other people chimed in that the woman meant well and nothing should have been said to criticize her good wishes. All of that needless conversation because an ignorant person could not just leave the words "Thank You" alone.

Yet

Every situation has a "yet". A yet can be positive or negative. The statement that I have not won the lottery, yet, gives me hope for the future. Another statement, I did not get test results back, yet, can be concerning. A person waiting for a relationship, has not met the right person, yet. It is the same thing for someone looking for a job. They have not found one, yet.  The three letter word, "yet" holds a lot of power in our lives because it looks towards the future and has not decided if it will point to the positive or negative.