Bridgey Speaks

Judging by the fact that my last post was about the hope of spring, it’s clearly been a while since I posted. Now we are moving well out of summer and pretty quickly through fall. I’m not prepared for winter and will be hoping for spring again soon. So, yeah, this blog has been a bit neglected. With Twitter, Facebook, etc., it just hasn’t been the priority. l’ll work on it.

We’ve had a good spring and summer, and now fall. Not much news to report. We traveled to Seattle at the end of April/beginning of May, and had a wonderful time. I spent a few days in Tybee Island, GA with friends and then visited my mom and dad in Orlando in July. Other than that, we’ve not traveled too much other than back to Central PA and such.

I’ve been focused a lot on nutrition and fitness over the last year or so. It’s hard work at the gym, but I enjoy it and the results. I feel stronger than I’ve ever been, and that is both empowering and fun. I’ve never thought of myself as particularly athletic or competitive, so it’s been a fun side of myself to tap into and develop.

My sister is moving back to Knoxville after a couple of years in Florida. When is all up to the housing market, but I’m looking forward to it. I would have loved for them to move closer to Pittsburgh, of course, but I know they are headed home. And that home happens to be a lot easier to get to. So while they won’t be next door, I do look forward to being able to see them more often.

Since my last post was about spring, and we are now moving closer to winter, I thought I’d remind myself of a few things I do look forward to about that chilly season: not doing yard work, winter clothes, warm comfort foods, the heated mattress pad, and the holidays. I also enjoy that post-holiday time when we seem to get some down time to recharge and renew. And I’m definitely already enjoying hockey season. After winning the Stanley Cup last year, the Pens have a lot to live up to, but I’ve really learned a lot about the game and enjoy snuggling up on the couch with Dave and Leela to cheer them on. So I guess despite the cold, winter isn’t all that bad.

After this weekend, I am now more than ever looking forward to spring and warm weather. Things I am looking forward to:

1. Having the windows open.
2. Going for walks and/or eating outside at lunchtime.
3. More frequent and more pleasant walks with Leela.
4. Hanging out in our sun porch.
5. Our trip to Seattle! (Suggestions of things to do and see are welcome…)

We made a number of updates to our kitchen over the last few months. This project mostly spanned from September through November, but we are still putting a few finishing touches on, like getting things hung back up and such.

Check out the photos of our labor and the fruits of that labor. Most of the credit and immense gratitude goes to Dave for making our vision a reality. The room not only looks nicer and bigger, it’s more functional and welcoming. YAY!

So I haven’t posted in a while. I’ve been busy. I’ve wanted to post about the things I’ve been busy with, but I’ve been waiting for my significant other to give me the photos of those things. One of those things includes a brand new kitchen floor and assorted upgrades to go along with it. This made things quite interesting from October through, well, we’re still working on the details. But despite little details here and there, the kitchen is done, and I love it.

We’ve also had a number of visitors and gone on a few trips ourselves, including to Orlando for Thanksgiving. It was awesome to have my whole family together, which is something that doesn’t happen very often.

In not-so-big news, but the reason for the title of this post, Leela has discovered that the fence in our yard isn’t exactly air-tight. She has found that if she runs behind the giant arborvitaes on the side of our yard that she can, in fact, gain her freedom. This is bad for many reasons. You can guess most of them, which center around her being A LOT faster than Dave or me. It’s also bad because this particular path is home to poison ivy. I had a bad incident with this poison ivy (and this photo was just the beginning) this summer. That’s how I know it’s there. So, each time (twice in two weeks and counting…) Leela takes this trip, it requires a full rub down with Technu and a bath (for her AND the bather)!

Despite Leela’s adventures around the neighborhood and house projects, we are gearing up for a great holiday week and some much-needed time off. One of my main goals this week is to catch up on my giant pile of magazines! Happy Holidays.

These days, we all complain and hear a lot of complaints about how customer service is lacking in all kinds of industries. I’ve certainly experienced my fair share of far-too-long waits on hold, rude sale associates, and otherwise unsatisfying (or worse, infuriating) customer service experiences.

I’m happy to share a GOOD example of customer service. The company in question: The Container Store.

I recently purchased a few organizational items for the kitchen. We are working on some upgrades to the kitchen, so I thought it would be a good time to streamline a few things. I placed my order and eagerly awaited its arrival.

It arrived in a large box that was sort of mangled at one end. I tore the box open and found one of the four items inside to be completely crushed. I was bummed because the item was unusable, but also because I envisioned sitting on hold, dealing with paperwork, and other annoying chores to have the item replaced.

I’m happy to report that I was completely wrong! I found that The Container Store’s customer service hours extend well into the evening (it was after 8 p.m. our time), so I went ahead and called them up. I was connected with the service rep almost immediately, and she was pleasant, helpful, and knowledgeable. She put a new item in the mail to me right away and didn’t require that I send back the old one. I was off the phone, problem resolved, in under two minutes, and the item was on its way in about a day.

It’s probably good that Pittsburgh doesn’t have a Container Store because I’d spend way too much time and money there. But when my experiences with the store are repeatedly as good as this one, I can’t help but wish we had one locally.