Little brothers birthday

Today is my brother’s birthday. As usual, I forgot to send a card or a gift. I did remember to call though. (and called the other siblings to remind them too) but I got this message
“the caller you are calling is not receiving calls right now”
Is that because he hasn’t paid the bill? Or is that some sort of feature?

Doctors, dentists offices why do their rules apply?

I’m sitting in the lobby of my new dentist office. She won’t be my dentist for long. I’ve been considering why the rules of customer service just don’t seem to apply to the medical profession. My belief is that the entire system is screwed up but I do have a little bit of power here. I can do the same thing I would do in a commercial setting, take my business elsewhere. Sure, this doc is the closest to my house and they take my insurance, but she is not the only dentist.
I don’t understand how it is considered acceptable to fine me for changing an appointment or for showing up 10 minutes late (I’ve done neither but have been told of the comsequnces twice) but the can change my appointment and make me wait for an hour with not even an apology.
That was the last visit, this one was changed (without input from me) from 11 to 11:45. Then I got a call that I could come in early….at 11 if I’d like to be seen early. I arrived at 11, got in at 11:25. Huh?

This is for those who don’t live in Hurricane prone areas

I’m a born & raised Floridian who did a few short stints in a couple of other states (two were hurricane prone areas too!) so I’ve dealt with hurricanes all my life.  Today we were under a “tropical storm watch”. 

Let me tell you how it really goes.

A storm shows up on the radar somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic and the meteorologists start mentioning it.  As soon as it gets within 5 days away from a possible hit, they start covering little else.  They will run the little 5 second spinny shot over and over.

Once it gets within 3 days of possible landfall, they break into television shows about every 20 minutes to give you the latest coordinates.  I don’t watch much television so I’ve had a couple of storms sneak up on me (like where you find out 24 hours prior) but really, you’ve got to be under a rock to be anywhere in the POSSIBLE area that a storm might hit and not be aware of it.  Scares the tourists to death.  When I hear non-hurricane people talk about how bad they are, I point out how many other natural disasters are way worse because they don’t get the advance notice.  Tornadoes, flash floods, Tsunamis, mud slides, just to name a few.

Don’t get me wrong, I am well aware that there are thousands and thousands of hurricane victims out there and they have felt real pain, but I’m mainly talking about the majority of folks who go through these things.

Ok, so, back to the build-up.  The day prior to the storm they pretty much quit broadcasting anything other than hurricane stuff.  Here is where people go nuts.  There are three kinds of hurricane preparation:

A. The doomsday folks.  They run out and buy up gallons and gallons of bottled water, fill their gas tank and about 40 gallons extra, buy up an entire grocery cart full of canned foods, cut down half their trees and talk non-stop about how bad things are going to get.

B.  The nothings gonna happen folks.  They do nothing.  Well, they might stock up on beer.  This type usually tends to be big drinkers.  Or, if they do anything at all it would be to host a “hurricane party” during the storm and dare one another to run outside.  ( must admit, I’ve done this once or twice… actually got stuck in a bar once, police made us all spend the night)

C.  Realistic people (or hurricane veterans).  They are well aware of when hurricane season starts and ends and are pretty much ready all the time.  Now this doesn’t mean ready like group A, it means realistically ready.  They will have extra batteries and candles on hand all season, maybe even a few extra cans of food in the pantry too.  They will monitor the storm, bring in their patio furniture & potted plants, put the shutters up if necessary, fill up their car’s gas tank, make sure they have gas for the grill and stay home.  Prepared but calm.  (most of the recent storms this has been me)

I’ve been through about a dozen hurricanes and I’ve had some property damage but thankfully, I’ve never been hurt or ended up homeless.  Most times they hype them all up and they turn out to be nothing.  This is good but bad at the same time.  Good because it gets people aware and everyone knows exactly what to do.  They do enough media coverage that the rednecks at the bar sound like trained meteorologists when they talk to one another about this stuff.  Bad because when storms shift and go elsewhere or end up to be not very strong by the time they hit you, it makes people feel let down in a way.  Like they did all that hurricane prep work for nothing.  The bad part is when sensible people turn into dumb turkeys and quit getting ready.  That is when people get most hurt.

The current storm that we were threatened with has taken a turn and left us with just two days of heavy rain.  Great.  I’m happy for that.  No broken windows, downed trees or loss of power.  However, there were all kinds of idiots in my neighborhood that did nothing to prepare.  It is a shame that the insurance companies don’t refuse to pay for broken windows for homes that have hurricane shutters installed but have home-owners too lazy to close them. 

current predictions

 It is 11:20PM and this is the current projections from weather.com and I’ve taken the liberty of adding a little red X to indicate my location.   Good for me, bad for Disney.

JP’s beach bar (formerly Bu’s)- good & bad experience last night

Last night I met up with a few friends on Hollywood Beach and bar hopped a little.  We started at O’Malley’s Ocean Pub (love that place… worked there for years so it is like home to me) then wandered down to Tucan’s then JPs.  Tucan’s was fun, we got the spot right by the door which is great because it is the best place for the breeze but bad because you cannot hear your friends because the band is up your butt.  It is comical that the bass player had to move out of the way every time someone needed to come in or out of the door.  Then we went to JP’s (formerly Bu’s) to see the band Loose Cannon.

JP’s is a raunchy kind of place but can be fun sometimes.  The band was great, lots of high energy music and my girlfriend and I danced and danced.  The bar, very dissapointed.  So dissapointed that I woke up thinking about it and it still makes me angry.  The bartender was garbage and I am certain that I was severely overcharged.  My bill came to $51.00 and all I had was a couple of domestic beers.  Myself and two friends were on one tab together and we were only there for an hour and a half.  The beers are $4.00 a piece (WAY too much for a domestic in a dive bar!) so we would have had to have drunk 12.75 beers in order for it to come to that amount.  Huh? how are we supposed to have had a .75 of a beer?  Plus, my other friend bought us a round.  You have got to be kidding me to think we could have possibly drank that many beers in that amount of time.

I kick myself that I didn’t say anything about it (of course, she didn’t give me any reciept other than the slip that I sign for on the credit card) but it is all those years of being behind the bar that made me suck it up and keep quite.  Now, more “clear-headed” (aka: sober) I hate that I didn’t speak up.  I just pictured all of those drunks who would get their tabs and accuse me of over charging them when they had been sitting there for hours and hours on end pounding drinks & shots.  I couldn’t bring myself to say anything.

It is unfortunate that people do that.  They’ve now lost a customer in me.

I will never buy a beer there again.

I’ll go there if my friends go, but I will not give them my money.

Do you ever find yourself making up things “to do”?

Right now I should be listing items for sale on eBay.  Well, I’m not.  I’m instead writing my second post in this blog today.  I’ve already posted in my personal blog, checked all my emails, updated my cousins website, re-arranged my desk and read all the more recent blog posts of my friends. 

This is the drawback of working for yourself and making your own hours.  Sometimes I find myself making up things to do because I just don’t want to do the things that need to be done. 

I took a consignment job that I am totally not excited about.  Actually, I’m the opposite of that.  So now, in order for me to re-claim my workroom I have to sell off all of this woman’s stuff.  She’s got some good stuff and some not so good stuff.  I really need to learn how to say ‘no’ to the junk.  So, now, I’ve got to photograph, weigh, measure and write creative descriptions for stuff that I know won’t sell or even if it does sell, the money is going to be minimal.  Ugh. 

ok, no more excuses, back to work.

Blogging about south Florida

I’ve decided to start a new blog.  I have two others but just can’t seem to get enough of blogging.  One of mine is a private blog about my family where I post pictures and personal stuff for my relatives who are scattered all over the world.  Basically, it is just my way of being lazy.  I can post a story or pic once and then I don’t have to talk to anyone on the phone or send multiple emails and attach pictures of the little one.   (I must admit… I hate the phone)

Keeping that personal blog got me hooked on blogging.  I decided to start a public blog where I write about my work.  I’m an eBayer who actually does just that, selling on eBay full time.  Yes, I do it for a living and after several years of selling as a hobby, finally figured out how to actually make money doing it.  So, I blog about it.  That blog is powersellerdaily and if you are into eBay you may want to check it out.

But, I’ve discovered with my experience in keeping those two blogs, it just wasn’t enough.  I sometimes come across things that really don’t fit into the personal family blog or the work blog.  Now that I’ve gotten regular readers to both, I don’t want to bore them with random rants and sometimes the fiction that I feel compelled to write.  Thus, the purpose of this blog.

I’ve named it Sunny South Florida because that is where I live.  I figure whatever I choose to rant, rave or spill about will more than likely lead back to so Fla because I am one of those rare-breeds, a native Floridian.  A “conch” actually (that means I was born in Key West) which makes me an even rare-er oddity.

-Cheers