Lara Deloza

Young Adult Author

100 Things for Which I Am Grateful, Part 2.

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I’m still feeling the gratitude! In addition to the 50 things I listed yesterday, I’m also grateful for:

51. My house (even though it needs some work, it’s served us well)

52. Heat

53. Hot water

54. Clean water

55. Air conditioning

56. Toilets

57. High-speed Internet

58. Being a woman

59. Being literate

60. Being a woman in a country that grants me the right to literacy

61. BOOKS (duh)

62. Photographs of my mom

63. Photographs of my childhood

64. The ocean

65. Airplanes

66. Anyone who will either drive you to or pick you up from the airport

67. Vacations

68. Best-friend birthday getaways

69. Puns

70. Joe’s kisses

71. Mornings when I can remember my dreams from the night before

72. Really good dreams, the kind you wish you could linger in longer

73. Uni-ball Vision fine point pens in black

74. Coupons

75. Free shipping

76. My savings account

77. My mad budgeting skills

78. Long skirts

79. The purple down-filled throw that keeps me warm in the living room

80. When the scale goes down

81. Twenty-plus years’ worth of music mixes (every single one of them deeply meaningful)

82. A cappella (and a ca-fellas)

83. My sense of humor

84. Times when Joe and I narrate our lives as if we were in a musical

85. Affordable season tickets to the DuPont Theatre

86. Restaurant Weeks in big cities

87. That the people at Soybean Asian Grille will always make me the pumpkin curry with chicken even when it’s not on the menu

88. Reese’s Milk Chocolate Peanut Butter Eggs (and Pumpkins and Trees)

89. Philly soft pretzels

90. Whenever I find boneless skinless chicken breast for $1.99/lb.

91. Fireworks

92. My dog’s snorts (he’s got the best comic timing in the business!)

93. Caller ID

94. Shea butter (or, rather, my psoriatic skin is grateful for it)

95. Corrective eye wear

96. Every time Joe says, “I [bleep]ing love you, woman.”

97. How I feel after a good massage

98. Love

99. Second chances

100. New beginnings

[Read Part 1 (the first 50 things) here.]

100 Things for Which I Am Grateful, Part 1.

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Inspired by a recent post on Mostly True Stories of K. Renae P. (which was inspired by a post on a blog she follows), I present to you my own list (also in no particular order):

1. My husband, Joe, who despite driving me crazy a lot of the time also manages to keep me sane (go figure)

2. Snuggles with Scout (a.k.a. the World’s Most Adorable Dog)

3. My friends, who have always been my family

4. My job at IRA, not only because I believe in the organization’s mission but also because I genuinely love the work that I do

5. My co-workers, who are some of the smartest, funniest, most creative people I know

6. The fact that people still want to pay me to write books

7. My editor, Kristen, who believed in me even when I didn’t believe in myself

8. Friday dinners with the Rosens, especially when my cousin Josh is in town

9. My family in general

10. Weekends with Sadiepants

11. Writing dates with Carolee

12. Excellent health insurance coverage

13. Sync, the thing that allows me to make hands-free calls from my car (what did I ever do before it?)

14. Taylor Swift (don’t judge)

15. Facebook (ditto)

16. The Paderno World Cuisine Tri-Blade Plastic Spiral Vegetable Slicer (oodles of zoodles!)

17. My Koncis garlic press from IKEA (on sale this month for $2.99)

18. The Superior Auto mode on my camera (I want to be a world-class shutterbug but am not sure if I’ll ever get there)

19. My iPad

20. My iPhone

21. Google

22. LIBRARIES

23. Audiobooks in the car

24. Date nights with Jen and Brian

25. The Delicious Dishes

26. Fuzzy slipper socks

27. Trader Joe’s Pumpkin Spice Rooibos tea

28. MAGAZINES

29. Smart, funny sitcoms like The Mindy Project and Parks & Rec

30. Smart, poignant and/or thought-provoking dramas like The Good Wife and Parenthood

31. My DVR

32. Friday night scrapbooking sessions with Wendy

33. Xyron sticker makers

34. The three years I spent as a Girl Scout co-leader

35. The time I had with Marian, even though it ended much, much too soon

36. Coupland Campers

37. The self-confidence I’ve managed to cultivate, even if it took me 38 years to get it

38. YNAB

39. Alton Brown

40. The fact that I can do 4o push ups (!)

41. Natural peanut butter

42. Grandpa Witmer’s Old-Fashioned Peanut Butter Mixer

43. My mentor and friend, Cruce Stark

44. My education

45. Online banking

46. Lip balm

47. K9 Advantix II

48. Tim Horton’s Decaf K-cups

49. Days I can sleep in

50. Nights I can stay up late

To be continued…

The importance of doing nothing.

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After a long day of back-to-back meetings, the last one of which was four hours long (yes, you read that correctly – a half-day offsite during which my butt stayed glued to an uncomfortable conference center chair), I came home, dropped my things by my loving husband’s feet, and proceeded to collapse on the living room floor.

“Stick a fork in me,” I quipped. “I am done.”

Okay, so I was being a wee bit melodramatic. Or maybe more than a wee bit. All I knew is that I felt weary. Mentally, physically, and spiritually worn down.

This is what happens when you go-go-go for days without stopping.

So tonight, I forgot about my to-do list. I didn’t even attempt my 500-word a night writing goal. I sat my butt on the couch, curled up next to the dog, and shut off my brain. DVR’d episodes of The Walking Dead helped zombify me for two delicious hours.

Then I got up, put away the leftovers from dinner, packed Joe’s and my lunches for tomorrow, wiped down some counters, and retreated to my office to write this.

In other words, business as usual.

What I’m trying to say is this:

I needed those two hours of mindless being. (I mentioned the four-hour-long meeting, right?) I needed to power down, check out, and let my metaphorical batteries recharge before I could go back to the nightly routine. Even though I fell 111 words short of last night’s writing goal, and even though I desperately needed to update my YNAB budget, and even though there are a bajillion constructive things I could’ve been doing with my time –

Sometimes, doing nothing is just as important (if not more) than checking off items on a to-do list.

Sometimes, you just need to be.

The best exchange I’ve ever had with a Comcast customer service rep.

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This time I last week, I was home sick AND neck-deep in my Momma-mourning. The only thing I wanted to do – like, seriously, the ONLY THING – was to watch The Good Wife through On Demand. Some sports something-or-other had messed up my DVR recording on Sunday night, because it ran over. (Good Wife fans know EXACTLY what I’m talking about, because it used to happen almost every week.)

Anyway.

Joe left for work and I settled in on the couch. Only, I couldn’t access that episode of The Good Wife. Something was wrong, the error message told me, but it should be corrected shortly.

I went to do something else.

An hour later, I tried again. Still wasn’t working. I tried to access a different episode of The Good Wife. None of those worked either. I tried another show altogether. No go. On Demand simply wasn’t working.

I logged onto my Comcast account hoping to message with a virtual customer service rep. Instead, I was told that there was an outage reported in my area expected to be fixed by noon.

I went to do some other things.

At 12:30, I checked my online account. Still down.

At 3:30, I saw that service had been restored. I went to watch The Good Wife.

I still couldn’t access it.

A new message appeared online saying that some people were still having difficulties with their service. Unplug the box, it said. Count to 30, then plug it back in. This will restore service.

It didn’t.

Now, I was heated. I accessed the virtual customer service rep and unleashed a little of that heat on him. His responses were like nothing I’d ever seen. Here are a few choice excerpts:

Best Comcast Customer Service Rep Ever

More Comcast Chat

Even though I was being so snarky, Francis never lost his cheerfulness. In fact, he would say things like, “We will be fixing it. We are a great team, Lara!”

Eventually Francis sent a signal to the box and that woke it up. I don’t have screenshots of this next part but here’s what happened:

  • LARA_ > It works! It works! It works!
  • LARA_ > Thank you, Francis!
  • Francis > Great!
  • Francis > Heaven touches us on that part!
  • Francis > Now you will be able to watch your Good Wife episodes!

I was sending Joe the screenshots of our exchange as it was going on, in part because my enthusiastic new friend made me smile. I can honestly say I’d never had a better interaction with a Comcast customer service rep EVER.

Funny post script to this story:

When I first realized that On Demand was down, I tweeted something about it. Five days later, I got the following response:

ComcastSean

It’s an interesting strategy – having the customer service reps tweet from what looks more like a personal account.

But, um, way to be on top of things, @ComcastCares. (Five days? Really?)

 

The 7 Jeopardy! Categories of My Weekend (an homage to Jaime & Doug)

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Inspired by Douglas Coupland’s Microserfs, my friend Jaime used to post The 7 Jeopardy! Categories of My Weekend (she stopped after she hit 200).

So, as an homage to both of them (and also to satisfy my NaBloPoMo post for the day, since I almost – almost! – forgot), here are the 7 Jeopardy! Categories of MY Weekend:

  • The Blue Route Blues
  • Cats vs. Dogs
  • Speed Shopping at the Goodwill
  • Bowl Me Over
  • Can I Get a Little Whine with that Cheese?
  • The Importance of Being Hydrated
  • People Who Need a Time Turner More than Hermione Granger

And with that, I am off to bed.

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