Frustration?

Upsetness must be going around this week.

I had an argument on Thursday with an automated answering machine from UPS. I just wanted to talk to a real person to explain to them that the 2 deliveries they made to me this week were delivered to the apt building across the street and is there someway they could let their drivers know that the back door of the building they are delivering to has the front of their building on the next street over (it’s a short block and takes up the whole short block) and could they mark this street as a problem because several other people in my apt are having the same problem.

I had this problem with the post office (who should know better, but to the defense of my reg postman it wasn’t him, it was the subs) and after losing 2 packages and almost a 3rd, explanation below, I went to the post office to complain because the person they were delivering to never returned it to me (just across the street mind you, but for the 1st two I didn’t know that at the time) and that person never sent the packages back and a friend let me know she sent me a package did I get it, and I had not and it was Sunday so not a normal day to deliver, but I had seen the postman make a Sunday delivery to the apt across the street, so I went over there to see if it was my package but there wasn’t one outside the door and people did not answer my knock so I put a note on their door to let them know the post office had delivered the package to them by mistake and would be picking it up the next day if they would leave it out side their door when they left for work it would be fine. I called the post office first thing on Monday and yep they picked it up and brought it to me, I figured fixing your mistake will help you remember the next time and things have been good since but the post office put a pink slip in the deliverer’s mail pick up box to remind them to check the address when delivering to our apt building. So when the notice came both times this week that the package had been delivered but there was no package at my door, I went across the street and yep it was in front of the apt door that mirrored my address, except for the street part, across the street and I rescued them.

I thought maybe it would be just that easy to fix with UPS too, serves me right for thinking, sigh. This helpful AI answering machine had no idea what I was trying to tell it and so I politely said customer service, but it wanted to know more so it would get me to the right place, but my problem wasn’t in it’s vocabulary. So it offered to send me to claims, nope I’m sure the claims answering machine would be just as unhelpful. So I hung up and tried again, not sure why I thought it would end up any better and it didn’t, I was finally so frustrated that I just kept yelling, customer service, customer service and it kept saying it didn’t understand what I wanted. So I just hung up. Just know UPS has no intention of letting you talk to a real person and if I ever get any more packages from UPS I’ll be ready to go across the street and rescue those too. I’ve calmed down, repented for that little burst of frustration and determined I wouldn’t let that machine upset me anymore, will try anyway ;).

Fiber Festival!

I got to go to a fiber festival in Iowa City with my son and his spouse (they sell their alpaca fiber and yarn there each year). It was so fun. In the first picture I bought a yarn bowl , (a vendor had some beautiful hand crafted pottery ones there but since I don’t use them very often I didn’t want to spend $60 on one, so I bought a a plastic one that will still serve it’s purpose. I might get one at a later date, they were beautiful!), some spinning oil for my wheels and a machine embroidered lap cloth for when I am spinning. The lap cloth helps you keep the fiber off your clothes but it’s also wonderful if you are spinning dark fiber to have a light back ground so you can see it better. I also have a less fancy one that a friend made for me that I use that also has a dark back ground on the other side for when you are spinning light colored fiber, and I love it. I bought a really pretty hand dyed skein of yarn, that I am not sure what to do with it yet, it’s a fingering weight, so maybe a pair of socks or fingerless mitts? I found and bought this lovely smelling soap and hand cream that is made from goats milk and the hand cream felt so nice on my hands, am looking forward to using the soaps. I brought home some of my son’s yarn and loose spinning fiber. All of the alpaca is soft, but the black fiber is cria (baby alpaca) and oh my it’s extra soft, I can hardly wait to spin it up. I have started another cabled hat, love the feel of the alpaca yarn when I’m knitting. I’m using a lighter shade of brown (the one in the yarn bowl pictured above, the picture looks a bit darker than the shade of brown of the yarn in rl) so the cables will show better. And my son took me over to look at a different vendor’s hand crafted diz’s (for my spinning). They were made of brass, I hemmed and hawed over which one I wanted, they were all beautiful, and when I went to pay for it my son said nope, I got it mom. So I have this beautiful brass hand made diz as a gift from my son and his spouse. How lucky can a mom get. 🙂

There will be another fiber festival that they sell toward the end of this month and I will get to go to that one too!! I’ll post about it when we get back from that one. I did forget to take pictures yesterday, but I’ll try to get a few pictures from this coming one.

Hope everyone in the mid-west is enjoying the warmer weather this year, sorry that we in the mid-west have spread around our normally ugly winter weather to other states this year and that we got milder weather, nope not sorry :P.