Five on Friday #100

I've missed my Friday posts.  Friday posts often become a catch-all for what happened during the week and things I've been pondering.  These may be intermittent, but my blog, my rules.

EINS

I used to pride myself on only attending one university from start to finish.  I'm an idiot.  I attended 3 colleges for my Bachelor's.  1 in high school, NC State, and then a community college for a summer.  So this great idea of going back to school means requesting transcripts from all the schools I've taken classes.  Great.  I start the process of getting some transcripts.  This is 2017.  This should be easy, right?  HAHAHHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHA.  (That would be the sound of the world laughing at me since the mid-1980s.)

I attended Appalachian State University during high school.  NC State accepted whatever transcript I brought with me for orientation.  Fast-forward to 2017 and I'm trying to request my transcript and I put in my info to find my username/password and my info cannot be verified.  I called and spoke with a really nice lady.  Nice lady informs me that my birth year is wrong in their system.  FANTASTIC.  She did break the rules and tell me which year it had so I was able to request an unofficial transcript.  But to order an official (which is now a requirement because fucking cheaters) transcript I have to have the information corrected.  I need to fax/mail the form in, or email and get a link to upload an encrypted file to a file system.. blah blah blah.  A fucking hassle.

Fun discovery: ASU still had my mom's PO box as my mailing address.  That address was 17 years old and not correct when it was put into the system. 

So then we move on to the request from the community college, CVCC.  I go to their website and unless I've been a student in the last 3 years, I have to request a transcript via mail or in-person.  BECAUSE THIS IS 1999!  Faack.  I call and leave a message for someone to call me back, there has to be some other way.  Lady calls me back.  Nope, nothing.  They upgraded their system and something messed up so now every student enrolled before 2013 has to go through this bullshit process.  Ya'll, my high school even does online requests.  Also, over the phone is not an option.  There are no words.  I could ask someone (Teh Dad/Stepmom) to get them, but that requires a notarized form...  I just CANNOT.

Why schools don't just have a way to request transcripts from each other is beyond me.  This is why people don't go to college!

ZWEI

Teh German's birthday is this weekend and we're having a gathering at Teh Ville.  He wants to do hamburgers and hot dogs.  I tried to talk him into bratwurst, but he insisted on hot dogs.  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

We'll be having a fire and I'll be roasting marshmallows/making smores.  #priorities

Technically, for his birthday we "exchanged" presents.  I was allowed to buy Roomy the Roomba and he was allowed to buy a new after-market grill for his truck.  He hasn't done that yet, but he has been distracted by other "upgrades" which haven't went through my approval process.

A few weeks ago he mentioned that he'd like to have a programmable coffee maker and since he never asks for in-the-house things, I was all over that.  I actually bought one for him from Bed Bath and Beyond since we had a gift certificate from our relator from when bought the house that I had forgotten to use when we purchased curtains.  BBB price-matched to Amazon, so I paid the same price I had originally planned on (coupons cannot be used with price-matching, otherwise I would have got it at a super discount) and I saved some dollas by using the gift certificate.  $100 coffee maker for $30?  Yes, plskthx. 

It's a Cuisinart with a 12 cup carafe and a hot water dispenser on the side.  As if I was going to get him something for the kitchen that I couldn't make use of... I opted for a coffee pot because the brew stations mean you have to wait on coffee and usually most people in our house are drinking their coffee at the same time.  I didn't want to have to deal with the waiting.  Teh German's only requirement was that his coffee would be ready in the AM when he goes downstairs to leave for work.  Done.

I actually had him open it when it arrived on Tuesday afternoon.  He is big on not celebrating his birthday until the day of because of bad luck or something German and I just didn't want that huge box sitting around so I told him to open it and then said it was a birthday-not-birthday/house present that he could use for his entire birthday week. 

I'm pretty sure he loves it.  He is now able to leave 5 minutes earlier.  We did have a dilemma when Teh German realized that he couldn't program the machine if he ran the dishwasher at night, so we adjusted our schedule to run the dishwasher in the morning when we leave for work and he can just put the coffee stuff straight in the dishwasher instead of leaving it in the sink for the entire day.  This works best for me because I hated coming home to see the dishes in the sink.

DREI

Here is the link so you can be horrified by the comments like I was.

A FB friend shared this and I couldn't control myself and typed a 3 paragraph long response.  While I hope she doesn't take it the wrong way, I had such strong feeling about it, I needed to just put them out there.  It went like this:

Ok, I'm taking the bait because I just can't stop myself.

Christians have discriminated against people based on their status, color, and birth place since Christianity became a thing. Sadly, they often haven't just stopped at discrimination. Because most Americans are Christians we use a syntax to make atrocities committed by Christians less demonized as those committed by other religions. If you want an easy example: Dylan Roof.

Until Christians stop believing that they are innocent and follow the ultimate religion, we won't achieve anything, just as Muslims who do acts "in the name of Allah" aren't really helping their cause. It doesn't matter what the Pope does or doesn't say/do. It's easy to criticize, but has "Uncle Ted" (as so many of the commenters refer to him as) fed the hungry or clothed the poor as Jesus called for in the bible? I'll just assume he's met with immigrants as we are pretty much all several-generations worth of immigrants (unless you're 100% Native American). Has Uncle Ted ever met with a recently immigrated Muslim? If so, did they try to blow up his house or harm him?

Having lived in an Islamic country for a year, I was never afraid that a "terrorist" would attack me. Muslims aren't any worse than Christians. It's easy to vilify an entire religion because of events that have been done "in the name of" a shared religion. But if we are going to call all Muslims terrorists, then in my opinion all Christians are racist murders.

This came right on the heels of me reading Steph's post (linked below) and like I commented on Steph's post, I wish I could wrap my head around WHY people see the world like "Uncle Ted".  What huge thing happened to them that they feel like an entire group of people should be turned away/not helped because they happen to share the same religion as a growing number of individuals who feel justified in committing atrocities?  I really just want to understand.  I know that I will never agree with this mentality, but I just feel like if I can understand then I can speak to these people in a different way to make them see how blind their viewpoint is.  I mean, probably not.  But damn, a woman can wish.

VIER

Random things:

-Steph wrote this post about humans and it spoke to all the words in my heart.

-Last week I paid an appliance repair person $55 to tell me that I was doing laundry poorly, which was causing the washer to be off balance.  But also that our washer has a brake issue that costs more than it's worth to fix.  Just to keep using the washer until it finally gives up.  While it saved me $2300 (the cost of the new washer and dryer I had in an online shopping cart), the lesson I learned was to always wash a 2nd load before calling the repair man.

-I'm a sucker for a cute mug.  I bought 2 on this list.  It was a moment of weakness.  (I'd do it again, Edna Mode is my hero.)

-Kathy's tips for saving money came at a good time for me (after being a sucker for those cute $10 mugs).  I would add:
1.  Unsubscribe to those advert emails or send them to a separate email address you do not look at regularly and only visit it when you have something you need to buy (or would like to buy, whatevs).  Essentially remove the temptation.  This also goes for TV if the advertisements affect you like they do me (I never want fast food unless I've been watching tv). 
2.  Make a list.  Stick to it.  No excuses.
3.  Refuse to pay the convenience fee.  If you know something you want costs less somewhere else, go there to get it.  If it's not worth the savings to go somewhere else, you don't need it.  This applies to everything from candy bars in the vending machine to tickets to an event. 
4.  Prioritize. Know what is important and what isn't.  Mileage may vary on this one, but no one knows your habits better than you do. 
5.  Know the difference between your needs and wants.

The biggggggeeesssttttt thing ever that helped me control my spending was learning the difference between a want and a need.  I need vegetables for dinner.  I want a Reese's at the check out.  I need laundry detergent.  I want new hand towels.  I want a massage.  I want a new shirt.  I need dog food.  I need to pay my power bill.  It makes things very black and white, which makes the decision to splurge easier.

-Verizon made me laugh this week with this mess:

I'd say with one week left in my cycle, I'm doing better than "okay" on data use, thank you very much.  I roll over a little under half of my data per month, on average.  Things I don't miss: Teh German being on my data plan and having to "budget" data.  What a nightmare.

-This.  No matter which side you stand on, this conversation was respectful and how I wish we could talk to each other always:

FÜNF

10 things that made me happy this week:

1. Visitors
2. Deciding on/purchasing a dress.
3. Getting rid of the flower graveyard.
4. Completing TWO wedding tasks (save the dates, dress)
5. Going to some of my favorite restaurants in one weekend (Spero, Mex 1, Willie Jewell's, Sesame)
6. Decent weather.
7. Finishing a book and only having 2 more books to complete to finish the challenge.
8. My new Stingrays Turvis.  Now I can alternate between my RunDisney and Stingrays Turvis'.  I consider this more sanitary.
9. New shampoo and conditioner, which smell delightful.
10. Just hanging out with Teh German.  In good news, he just makes me happy, still.

Happy Friday, Gentle Readers.

Linking up with these ladies since it's FFFFRRRRRRIIIIIIDDDDAAAAYYYY!!!!!!!!!

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