Cori’s Terrible, Rotten, No Good Day (With Surprise Happy Ending)

My day wasn’t really that terrible. It was more frustrating than anything because I felt like there were all these things I was trying to take care of and seek resolution for, and I don’t think I really got anywhere with any of them. When I took a step back, I realized I was sweating the small stuff, but I was just so tired of it all. Our day started with me running around trying to collect all the possible information and documentation we would need to register our vehicle and get Arizona driver’s licenses. Honestly, I probably should have done it the night before, but by the time we got home I just didn’t have the brain power to deal with it. It was after 10 am by the time we arrived, and we literally walked in the door and turned around and left because we could tell it was going to be a much longer wait than we wanted to deal with or had time for. This wouldn’t be a big deal, but it did mean we would be getting up much earlier the next day to get there before they opened. (By the way, I am writing this as we sit and wait at the DMV, and there was already a line of about 20 people already when we got here 5 minutes before they opened). This also caused a domino effect because our temporary parking permit expired today, and I had been waiting until we got our new tags so that I wouldn’t have to go back and update that later. OK, so it looks like I will have to after all. Again, not a big thing.. but one more thing to have on my to do list instead of making a line through it and saying DONE!

You might be asking, why did we wait until the day our permit expired to change our car registration? Well, there is a good reason for that. That whole moving thing? Not cheap!! That whole grad school thing? Not much income. I was supposed to get my vacation pay out this past Friday. Actually, I had anticipated it on July 30, but due to my change to a temporary status, I was told I would get it on the biweekly pay schedule instead. Okay, we can wait a week. Well, imagine my state of mind, when I logged into my bank account and there was no pay check. Ugh. So, I have been trying to chase down my HR contact since Friday to find out where the heck my money is. So that has been stressing me out and yet another thing to keep following up on. I better get paid on August 20 as promised or I might have a brief mental breakdown or at least a tantrum.

Then there is Geico. Remember that whole traumatic car accident and ongoing injury treatment? Well, we are still not settled on that, although hopefully close. I had to respond to a voicemail from my chiropractor who was upset at the response he got when he tried to ask Geico about the status of the claim and wanted to express his frustration on the outstanding bills from a year ago. I get it… I would like to get paid on my out of pocket expenses, too. So, had to follow up with Geico on my end. In the mean time, I discovered online that Geico had us scheduled for 3 more payments on our 6 month premium… Um, wait a minute. I have already made three, and we only make four at a time. What on earth has happened? Well, the nice lady patiently explained to me (several times, until it sort of made sense to me) that because we had transferred our insurance to a new state that our 4 month payment plan for our 6 month premium was starting over. So, instead of being finished as I had thought, we are looking forward to three more months of payments. Urgh.

The capper on the day (and still my ongoing source of frustration and angst) was my conversation with the supervisor at the post office. See, I had the booklist for one of my classes, so I decided to order books as soon as possible after having a new address so that I could get my pick of quality and price in the used books at Amazon. An extremely long story short: I ordered said books on July 18, and to date, um, those seven separate packages have NOT ARRIVED. I was able to secure tracking numbers on three of them and they were supposedly delivered on July 26 (since none of them have appeared, I have used my deductive and logic skills to determine that all seven must have been together for delivery). They may have been delivered, but they were certainly not delivered to the correct location. Fun side note, essentially the other four will probably not exist in the eyes of the US Postal Service as they can’t track them since there is no tracking numbers. Nice, eh? So classes start in about 2 weeks, I am probably out $90 and it is not looking certain the postal service is going to subscribe to the good customer service policy of reimbursing me for the mistake that they made but are unwilling to even call a mistake. Glad to know that my payment of $3.99 for each book to have it mailed to me is worth something. Anyways… fiasco extraordinaire that I am extremely pissed about.

OK, dear readers (assuming there is any of you out there!) , I can’t end on a negative note. So despite my frustrating and somewhat helpless feeling day, I did have some lovely experiences at the end of the day.

The first was suppah!

I have mentioned a couple of times about our excitement of having a “real” farmer’s market again. It brings us great joy, and as I like to say, makes my heart sing. For dinner, we used some of our bounty (Swiss chard, onion, and garlic) to make a recipe I found on Good Things Catered blog.

The original recipe is a grilled flat bread, and we went with an oven baked pizza, but still came up with yummy results. I can be a bit particular about bitter greens, but the garlic, caramelized onions and cheese helped balance out the chard for me. I should mention the chard was my idea. I am trying to branch out and eat new veggies. The only other major change we made was using Jarlsberg instead of Gruyere as it was substantially cheaper. We need to be mindful of these types of things as we are now on a poor grad student’s budget. We also changed the spices up a bit as we did not have fresh herbs. We used a dried Fine Herb mix from Penzey’s and sprinkled some crushed red pepper on it. Here are some pictures to make you jealous and hungry.

The second amazing thing of the night was the meteor we saw. We have been in awe of the many stars we can see, both because of the higher altitude and the limited light pollution due to the presence of Lowell Observatory. We decided to get out and get a bit of fresh air and enjoy the stars. We found a less well lit part of campus and just plopped down on the sidewalk to enjoy the view. Almost immediately, we saw the most amazing thing - a meteor that was almost indescribable (but is apparently called a fireball and is extremely rare). It was not the average meteor or shooting star that we are used to seeing. It was many times larger and shades of green and purple and the trail lingered for a good 15 seconds. We concluded it must have been the over achiever or early bird of the Perseid Meteor Shower that we had the opportunity to go and really enjoy the next night in the middle of nowhere. But that is another story to potentially share….