BUZZURRO

Yesterday, one of my favorite musicians died of leukemia. I remember his amazing concert I attended in Piazza Anfiteatro in Lucca, Italy, a few years ago.
Rest in peace.

One year ago today Buzzurro and I relocated to the United States. While no place is perfect, we are both very happy to be here.
Happy anniversary to us !

Dear Ms. XXXXXXXXXXXXX,

I just spent the worst night of my life at the XXXXXXXXXXXXXX Inn.

Over the weekend I made a reservation on your internet site to stay the night of XXXXXXXXXXXX at your hotel. My husband and I called in the morning of XXXXXXXXXXXX, and told whoever answered the phone that we would definitely be there, but we will arrive late, at around 9 PM. We did arrive at 9 PM. The women at the front desk told us which room was ours and we went there. That was not the problem.

It was freezing cold that evening. It was around 11 degrees Fahrenheit outside and it was the exact same temperature inside the room. I quickly called the front desk and asked for a warmer room and she informed me of your policy to not turn on the heat for unreserved rooms. She also said that all rooms would be the same since no rooms are heated without occupants to turn on the heaters. This is the problem!

Not only did we have confirmed reservations paid for by a credit card, I called that morning and told whoever answered the phone that I would be arriving at 9 PM. Therefore I think that the heat should have been on in my room so I did not have to enter a freezing cold room.

The girl at the front desk assured me that the heater would work quickly to heat up the room. It didn’t. maybe it would in a room that was 50 degrees, but not 11 ! It was absolutely freezing. After my husband and I turned on the heater, we remained in our gloves, hats and jackets for 45 minutes and just sat around the heater. Finally we looked at the bed. The blankets were light and there was no extra blanket found in the room that even the most horrible hotel offers to their guests. we called up the front desk and then went down to pick up one more thin blanket. The room was not warm at this point, but it was late, so my husband and I just piled into bed, complete in our outerwear and did not wake up until 2 AM when it was hot enough in our room to remove our jackets and gloves.

I have never stayed at a hotel where they do not turn on the heat for rooms that have a confirmed registration. We paid our bill and stayed in the room only because it was too late by then to cancel our reservation, but I do not feel that we got even a fraction of our money’s worth.

Sincerely,
J.Doe and
Buzzurro
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
XXXXXXXXXXX, NM XXXXX

Food porn: a gallery of photos of 200 calorie portions of foods. Anyone of you is on diet ?
Now, let me go to the fridge.

(H/T Lifehacker)

Today I called up a certain Walgreens at a certain address. A recorded voice answered “Hello, you have reached the 24 hour Walgreens on X street. Press 1 for the pharmacy, 2 to speak to the cosmetics counter, 3 for store hours….”

I immediately thought to myself ” Store hours ? Aren’t they open 24 hours ? Maybe I accidently dialed the wrong Walgreens by mistake. ”

There are 3 Walgreens in our town, of which only 2 are open for 24 hours. Since I was calling at 7AM I wanted a 24 hour store, just to make sure it was open.
Anyway, I hung up the phone and dialed again, making sure I had the correct number. Again I got the same message. I pressed 3 for store hours out of curiosity. The same recorded voice said ‘We are open 24 hours. ”
Yes, I figured that out after the first recorded sentence ! Why waste a person’s breath and the time to wire up a recording system to allow a caller to press 3 just to find out previously available information ? Does the usual caller to Walgreens forget the “24 hour Walgreens” given at the beginning of the message and have a need to press 3 to find out the store hours ?
I’ll never know. Or do I want to.

Today FOX news aired a story about the idiotic name calling feud between Donald Trump and Rosie O’Donnell and interviewed an ex Miss America beauty queen to ask her opions on the matter.

No, this is not an old post from the week of Dec 21, nor is it from Dec 24, 26, 29 or Jan 3.
It is from today, January 4. I am so sick of hearing about the juvenile behavior of one calling the other a name and the other responding by using a more offensive name. I thought these people were adults. They both are insults to humanity. I am also tired of hearing the opinions of ex-beauty queens on this affair. They do nothing but have pretty faces which the media can exploit to boost their ratings. (I have news for all the media: men who want to look at beautiful women don’t look at news shows to do so.)
It was bad enough the first time, but to drag the same story out for 6 times? It’s ghastly. Is there nothing more important going on in the world that the media can discuss besides such a stupid quarrel that belongs in the playgrounds of a kindergarten and the opinions of pretty women who are only asked their opinions because they are, in fact, pretty women? I mean why not have a discussion about Iraq ? Darfur ? the Democratic congress ? the Republican president ? Anything besides the same old tired story being repeated different ways with different women who happen to be ex-beauty queens giving their opinions. It really is tiring.
No wonder so many people get their news from the internet.

When I was younger whenever we saw a big car do a dumb thing,we used to say “the bigger the car, the smaller the tool” (referring to the male sexual organ).
Someone pointed out that some of the drivers of these big vehicles were women, so we slightly changed our phrase to “the bigger the car, the smaller the brain of the driver.”
That was a long time ago, but after today I am convinced that the ultimate logic of the last phrase did not change. “The bigger the car the smaller the brain of the driver.”

It snowed a lot in New Mexico last week. As I’ve mentioned in another post, the state and city officials do not clean their streets adequately, if at all.
One week after the snowstorm many roads are still snowy and icy and very dangerous.
Today I was driving on one of these snowy icy roads. I was driving very, very slow because I could feel that my car had absolutely no traction with the ground.
All of a sudden one of these big cars appears behind me. They immediately started tailgating me because not only was I not going 60 miles an hour in a 25 mile an hour zone, I wasn’t going 25 MPH either. There was ice on the ground. My car was sliding across the road. I was a little scared. After a few minutes of tailgating me, this jerk started flashing his bright headlights at me, trying to get me to go faster. “Can’t he see me slipping and sliding on this road?” I thought, and then at that moment I looked up in the rearview mirror only to see him in his big car slip and slide on the road, in fact he almost slid off it. After that he stopped tailgating. He stopped flashing his bright headlights at me. He drove slow until we both reached the intersection.
This little story should prove to all the drivers of big cars that if a road is icy, it doesn’t matter what size a car is, it will slide, but seeing as how “the bigger the car, the smaller the brain of the driver.’ is true, I’ll say it again, when roads are icy it doesn’t matter how big your car is. It will slide.