Hi,
The Canadian banking system rocks... But it is a secret, so don't tell anyone.
While shopping in India a couple of months ago, not only did my US VISA card get declined because I hadn't notified them of our travel plans (at least the shop owners knew enough to call VISA, have me identify myself, and get the transaction to go through) but when I got the bill a month later there was a 3% 'up charge' for all purchases made outside the USA. Holy crap Batman, that starts to add up quickly. I was able to call VISA, bitch, and get the charge reversed this one time. Fine, but what happens when I leave the USA and have to use a credit card to pay for a hotel, food, travel, chachkas? Time to shop around for a different card.
VISA said it was a Wells Fargo charge that they had no control over. Wells Fargo said its a VISA thing they have no control over. They both give me a headache. Marshall's credit union that he banks with only charges a 1% up charge for purchases outside the USA. Better, but still annoying. I call my bank manager in Canada. Silvana knows everything. She has never heard of this 'up charge for forgein purchases on a VISA and is pretty sure VISA in Canada isn't doing this. I call VISA in Canada this morning and get it straight from the horses mouth (my phone contact is really a very sexy sounding French Canadian guy named Patrick) who says quite definitely there is no charge for using my VISA anywhere in the world other than the exchange rate for the purchase. I do get charge $5 for every cash advance at an ATM outside the country and the late payment interest fee is 3% higher if I am late in payment. Pay the VISA in full on or before the due date and there are no extra fees at all. Yeah Canada!
I do hope that more VISA customers in the US complain about this up charge, otherwise the credit card will continue on its merry way abusing its customers. Remember Bank of America backed down from some user fee after millions of people threatened to drop their service? It can be controlled, but only if you kvetch a little... Or a lot. Complaining is not fun but sometimes it is necessary not to just lie down and take it. You can always move money into Canada and set up an account there, tell them 'Marilyn sent you'. Canada, the nice country.
Xox
M
Day Lily!
Wednesday, September 25, 2013
Wednesday, September 18, 2013
Five Years, almost....
Hi,
I just finished my last round of PET scans at UPenn and nothing showed up. Yippee! This means I am still cancer-free and have remained so for the last five years (I am just shy of that exact date but close enough to brag).
It is traumatic to go and have these tests done, to say nothing of the costs. I do not plan to do this any more. Five years is plenty of time for the melanoma to grow back and it hasn't so I am not going looking for it again. I see my dermatologist regularly and even he hasn't found anything to snip off me in over a year. I now not only see the light at the end of the tunnel, I feel the fresh air too.
Yes, I am a ticking time bomb, but we all are in one way or another. I heard a doctor talk about how cancer is not a noun any more, it is a verb. Our bodies are 'cancering' is how we should be thinking and discussing the whole issue of the illness. We don't catch it like the flu, we produce it ourselves. This is now causing the medical profession to think about how cancer is being delt with and treated. Maybe they will really start looking for why our bodies start to 'cancer' themselves.
All I know is that mine has stopped cancering for the time being. If I could figure out where the switch is I would shut it off permanently. I think that is the key to the whole problem, finding the switch. The rest is just treating the symptoms and fallout thereafter. My residual issues of osteoporosis, neuritis in my neck and a dropping shoulder from the surgery, chemo and radiation treatments seem like a small price to pay for beating the cancering in my body, but they are no fun to live with either. Fix one thing, break two others.
Looking back is easy. Would I have made the same choices knowing what I do now? Probably not. Would I have been able to look back five years? Maybe, maybe not. I don't get the crystal ball to look ahead either. One day at a time.... Just keep the keel in the water and head toward the light.
Xox
M
I just finished my last round of PET scans at UPenn and nothing showed up. Yippee! This means I am still cancer-free and have remained so for the last five years (I am just shy of that exact date but close enough to brag).
It is traumatic to go and have these tests done, to say nothing of the costs. I do not plan to do this any more. Five years is plenty of time for the melanoma to grow back and it hasn't so I am not going looking for it again. I see my dermatologist regularly and even he hasn't found anything to snip off me in over a year. I now not only see the light at the end of the tunnel, I feel the fresh air too.
Yes, I am a ticking time bomb, but we all are in one way or another. I heard a doctor talk about how cancer is not a noun any more, it is a verb. Our bodies are 'cancering' is how we should be thinking and discussing the whole issue of the illness. We don't catch it like the flu, we produce it ourselves. This is now causing the medical profession to think about how cancer is being delt with and treated. Maybe they will really start looking for why our bodies start to 'cancer' themselves.
All I know is that mine has stopped cancering for the time being. If I could figure out where the switch is I would shut it off permanently. I think that is the key to the whole problem, finding the switch. The rest is just treating the symptoms and fallout thereafter. My residual issues of osteoporosis, neuritis in my neck and a dropping shoulder from the surgery, chemo and radiation treatments seem like a small price to pay for beating the cancering in my body, but they are no fun to live with either. Fix one thing, break two others.
Looking back is easy. Would I have made the same choices knowing what I do now? Probably not. Would I have been able to look back five years? Maybe, maybe not. I don't get the crystal ball to look ahead either. One day at a time.... Just keep the keel in the water and head toward the light.
Xox
M
Thursday, September 12, 2013
Kiddie Couture
Hi,
I have been knitting for over 40 years. I got started because my mother and grandmother always sat and knit in the evening while watching TV. I loved the sound of the needles clicking away. The problem was it never seemed to be 'my turn' to get a sweater. There was a pecking order depending on who grew out of what... and I didn't grow much so it was never my turn to get a new sweater since last years sweater still fit me just fine. Rats! So I decided to make my own sweater. I snuck a pair of knitting needles out of my mothers collection with a ball of yarn and found a book that showed how to get started, and off I went. A week later I was showing my mom what I had managed to figure out on my own. She then took up fine tuning my craft. How to hold the wool to even out my tension, how to read a pattern, casting on and off stitches and the tricks to finishing up a piece so that it looked as good from the inside as it did on the outside. The toughest lesson of all is how to rip out. Ripping out, what you have just spent hours creating, is the hardest part of learning to knit. It is painful to watch all that time and work unravel, but as any great knitter will tell you, it's a way of life for a true crafter. Leaving in mistakes, dropped stitches, or funky mishaps are the ultimate sin. Each piece needs to be perfect or the whole project looks like crap. You learn to rip, fix the errors and move on.
Knitting for children is the most fun. The funkier the piece the cuter it looks. Colours can be wild. Ears on hats, faces on mittens, bobbles, bells and whistles, they all work on kids clothes. Fun, fun, fun and it's fast work. Knitting a man size sweater is several months of labor, a sweater with a hood for a two year old I can knock off in a week or two of casual knitting. Three days if I really put the pedal to the metal. Hats or baby mittens can be finished in a few hours. I can get a a whole ensemble done during a marathon of Law & Order episodes. Lennie Briscoe inspires me to knit faster, I have no idea why.
Kid couture is my latest passion. One-of-kind children fashions. I fancy myself the Coco Channel of the under 5 set, without the little black dress. My audience is small and I like them that way. I have my own label that I sew into every garment with my name on it. I am my own brand and a select clientele own and wear my pieces. Total couture in every way since each garment is unique and made completely by my hands. Bring on your best Baby Gap, you can't hold a candle to me and my knitting needles.
xox
M
Monday, September 9, 2013
Fresh Garden Ganooshe
Hi,
I love to cook and create in the kitchen. It's a hobby, a passion, a tension release and it's a cheap way to stay fed as opposed to eating in restaurants three meals a day.... yes, there are people out there who choose to eat like that, you know who you are and so does your doctor.
Todays' recipe is straight from the garden. Not mine, but I do belong to a CSA group (community supported agriculture) and Wednesdays' I pick up fresh produce. Every week is a little different variety, the selection last week included:
tomatillo
small tomatoes
Chinese eggplant
onion.... and some other stuff.
I decided to roast it all with a head of garlic that was on it's last legs.
I split everything open, covered it in a little olive oil, salt, pepper and dried garden herbs from last summer and threw it on a cookie sheet, into a 400° oven for 30 minutes.
When it had cooled, I then put everything into my Cuisinart plus a little more olive oil and some sorrel from my garden, pulverizing it all to a mush. It came out fabulous!
It's a cross between a salsa verde and baba ganooshe. Totally yummy as a dip, a spread, a condiment or just on it's own.
Eating healthy is what it is all about. I try. I do have my downfalls like chocolate or rich desserts but they are a treat rather than part of my diet. I have my fill of green leafy vegetables daily, bread less than once a week, my choice of dairy is a yoghourt or occasional hard white cheeses. No red meat, lots of fish and chicken once a week. I like to stick to grains like quinoa or buckwheat. I could be the poster child for healthy dieting. I even make a conscience decision to use smaller plates so that my portions are controlled..... you would think with all this effort I should look like a skinny-mini but I am far from it. My weight doesn't fluctuate much, 3-5lbs up in the winter, 3-5lbs down in the summer but it's because I watch everything that goes into my mouth. It's a constant battle.
Cooking helps me keep my weight under control and make smarter eating choices. Try it, you may like it.
xox
m
I love to cook and create in the kitchen. It's a hobby, a passion, a tension release and it's a cheap way to stay fed as opposed to eating in restaurants three meals a day.... yes, there are people out there who choose to eat like that, you know who you are and so does your doctor.
Todays' recipe is straight from the garden. Not mine, but I do belong to a CSA group (community supported agriculture) and Wednesdays' I pick up fresh produce. Every week is a little different variety, the selection last week included:
tomatillo
small tomatoes
Chinese eggplant
onion.... and some other stuff.
I decided to roast it all with a head of garlic that was on it's last legs.
I split everything open, covered it in a little olive oil, salt, pepper and dried garden herbs from last summer and threw it on a cookie sheet, into a 400° oven for 30 minutes.
When it had cooled, I then put everything into my Cuisinart plus a little more olive oil and some sorrel from my garden, pulverizing it all to a mush. It came out fabulous!
It's a cross between a salsa verde and baba ganooshe. Totally yummy as a dip, a spread, a condiment or just on it's own.
Eating healthy is what it is all about. I try. I do have my downfalls like chocolate or rich desserts but they are a treat rather than part of my diet. I have my fill of green leafy vegetables daily, bread less than once a week, my choice of dairy is a yoghourt or occasional hard white cheeses. No red meat, lots of fish and chicken once a week. I like to stick to grains like quinoa or buckwheat. I could be the poster child for healthy dieting. I even make a conscience decision to use smaller plates so that my portions are controlled..... you would think with all this effort I should look like a skinny-mini but I am far from it. My weight doesn't fluctuate much, 3-5lbs up in the winter, 3-5lbs down in the summer but it's because I watch everything that goes into my mouth. It's a constant battle.
Cooking helps me keep my weight under control and make smarter eating choices. Try it, you may like it.
xox
m
Monday, September 2, 2013
...but it's not a 'time-share'
Hi,
We had a weird sense of the ridiculous... We like to torture ourselves by sitting through the "90 minute presentation" in hopes of getting great free stuff. The Time-Share Scam is our chosen form of comedy entertainment for this purpose on occasion.
Our honeymoon in Key West Florida scored us $100, dinner at a nice seafood restaurant and a kayak ride around the island, all for spending a couple of hours not being impressed with the concept and frustrating the poor saleswoman who needed to fill her quota of suckers for the day.
A tip to Las Vegas got us a tour of the property, yet to be built, of the Hard Rock Cafe time-share where for $500,000 you got a glitzy shoe box to stay in. We walked away with $200 in casino chips for our effort which Marshall then turned into $175 in cash at the blackjack table... The glitch was you had to use the $25 chips at their casino, you couldn't just cash them in, so he had eight hands of blackjack to play and in 15 minutes at the table we had cash, and split.
Last week I received a letter looking like it was from US Air telling me we were elidgable for two free airline tickets. I called to see what the deal was to redeem this fabulous offer..... The very nice young man I spoke with told me it "was not a time-share", but a new concept in travel agency looking to promote itself. Austin repeated "It was not a time-share" at least four times in our conversation, so I knew it was some sort of time-share, me thinks thou doest protest too much, came to mind.
Off we go 2 nights later, to the wilds of north-east Philadelphia to a commercial business park with bad lighting. No signage on the door at the address is my first clue to this fly-by-night operation. Sure enough, its a time-share show! I have to say the presentation was more entertaining than most. Our group of elidgable couples was more than willing to play the game and the two men making the pitch were completely believable in their senserity.
The product, for $159 a week, gets you into a vacation property, it its not a time share. A one bedroom condo unit of at least 1200 sq.ft., not right at DisneyWorld but close enough for us to shuttle you there. Las Vegas only gets you 3 nights for the $159 and you lose the rest of the week but hey, it's Vegas! Oh, and did we forget to mention the $389 yearly membership fee, but you only pay that if you take a vacation, its "optional". Air fare? Yes we can book it all for you, no savings there but your week away will only cost you the $159 dollars for your room. Wait, now we need to hit you up for the 'joining ' fee. $11,900 gets you up to four week of vacation spots and your life time membership and its FOREVER. Your kids and grandchildren with love you eternally as you saddle them with this thing when you pass on.
But wait, there's more!
Our special offer tonight bring the membership fee down to our reduced rate of only $8,900 if you
will sign on the dotted line right now!
By the time we left, the price had shrunk to $6,900, for the first two new members to sign on, just because we all were such wonderful people. We even had the VP presenter personally do us a big favor by offering a special one week deal for $2,900... You do the math.
The only bummer was once I read the brochure on how to collect our free airline tickets for participating, it wasn't anywhere near free. A $4.95 processing fee was listed up front, but on the back the fine print had a $50 fee per ticket attached, plus black out dates, restricted flight accessibility, taxes, license and everything else they could think of was not included. Hell for that aggravation I can use airmile points and get where I need to with less hassle.
Oh well
But it's not a time-share.
M
We had a weird sense of the ridiculous... We like to torture ourselves by sitting through the "90 minute presentation" in hopes of getting great free stuff. The Time-Share Scam is our chosen form of comedy entertainment for this purpose on occasion.
Our honeymoon in Key West Florida scored us $100, dinner at a nice seafood restaurant and a kayak ride around the island, all for spending a couple of hours not being impressed with the concept and frustrating the poor saleswoman who needed to fill her quota of suckers for the day.
A tip to Las Vegas got us a tour of the property, yet to be built, of the Hard Rock Cafe time-share where for $500,000 you got a glitzy shoe box to stay in. We walked away with $200 in casino chips for our effort which Marshall then turned into $175 in cash at the blackjack table... The glitch was you had to use the $25 chips at their casino, you couldn't just cash them in, so he had eight hands of blackjack to play and in 15 minutes at the table we had cash, and split.
Last week I received a letter looking like it was from US Air telling me we were elidgable for two free airline tickets. I called to see what the deal was to redeem this fabulous offer..... The very nice young man I spoke with told me it "was not a time-share", but a new concept in travel agency looking to promote itself. Austin repeated "It was not a time-share" at least four times in our conversation, so I knew it was some sort of time-share, me thinks thou doest protest too much, came to mind.
Off we go 2 nights later, to the wilds of north-east Philadelphia to a commercial business park with bad lighting. No signage on the door at the address is my first clue to this fly-by-night operation. Sure enough, its a time-share show! I have to say the presentation was more entertaining than most. Our group of elidgable couples was more than willing to play the game and the two men making the pitch were completely believable in their senserity.
The product, for $159 a week, gets you into a vacation property, it its not a time share. A one bedroom condo unit of at least 1200 sq.ft., not right at DisneyWorld but close enough for us to shuttle you there. Las Vegas only gets you 3 nights for the $159 and you lose the rest of the week but hey, it's Vegas! Oh, and did we forget to mention the $389 yearly membership fee, but you only pay that if you take a vacation, its "optional". Air fare? Yes we can book it all for you, no savings there but your week away will only cost you the $159 dollars for your room. Wait, now we need to hit you up for the 'joining ' fee. $11,900 gets you up to four week of vacation spots and your life time membership and its FOREVER. Your kids and grandchildren with love you eternally as you saddle them with this thing when you pass on.
But wait, there's more!
Our special offer tonight bring the membership fee down to our reduced rate of only $8,900 if you
will sign on the dotted line right now!
By the time we left, the price had shrunk to $6,900, for the first two new members to sign on, just because we all were such wonderful people. We even had the VP presenter personally do us a big favor by offering a special one week deal for $2,900... You do the math.
The only bummer was once I read the brochure on how to collect our free airline tickets for participating, it wasn't anywhere near free. A $4.95 processing fee was listed up front, but on the back the fine print had a $50 fee per ticket attached, plus black out dates, restricted flight accessibility, taxes, license and everything else they could think of was not included. Hell for that aggravation I can use airmile points and get where I need to with less hassle.
Oh well
But it's not a time-share.
M
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)