Cowgrit and both Calfgrits have the flu. It started Thursday night (February 14) and just got worse last night. Ironically, all three have had the flu shot, but I haven’t (I just forgot — I always get one, every year). Fortunately, even if the innoculation doesn’t prevent someone from getting the flu, it supposedly helps make the suffering less bad.

Since I haven’t had the shot this year, it’ll be a miracle if I don’t get it. And if I get it, I could have it worse than the rest of my family. Seeing them all suffering really puts fear in me thinking that I could get it worse. This has started to become a very nasty weekend, and it has all the potential of becoming downright hellish.

And to think, I had the boys hugging and kissing on me Valentine’s Day. I bought them a bunch of super hero Valentine’s cards (like kids give out at school) and told them they could get one for every hug or kiss they gave me. They showered me with love enough to get all the cards in five minutes. Those might have been the kisses of death for me — or at least the kisses of illness.

Bullgrit
bullgrit@totalbullgrit.com

Cowgrit likes to shop. She doesn’t necessarily buy a whole lot; she just likes the shopping activity. She also likes body care and bath stuff. So I wanted to get her a gift card for a nice body care shopping day.

I went to the local mall to find a place I know she likes and get her a gift card. The first place I went in smelled really nice. The music was really loud, and the products were completely beyond my comprehension, but the air smelled good. I told the girl working in the store that I wanted to get a gift card.

“Great,” she said, and led me to the checkout counter. “How much do you want the card for?” she asked.

I told her and she pulled out a card and began ringing it up on the cash register. There was some problem, and she tried swiping the gift card again. Something was wrong, but she tried again. I gave her my debit card, and she tried to complete the sale. My card info went through just fine, but the gift card just wasn’t registering with the system.

I stood there patiently for a couple minutes while she tried to get everything to work properly. She had to get out a notebook titled “Communications Binder” and look up a code the register was asking for. When she couldn’t find it, she called another store for advice. With the help, she got the sale to go through.

I signed the receipt for the sale and put my debit card back in my wallet. Since there had been difficulty, she wanted to swipe the gift card just to make sure it showed the amount. She swiped the card . . . and nothing. The sale had not registered on the gift card.

The clerk explained that she wanted to call another store and have them run the numbers through their computer to see if the problem with the card not showing any amount was just a problem with her computer. She called the other store, told them the gift card numbers, and learned that it didn’t show anything on their computers either. So I told her to just refund the amount back to me and I’ll try again some other time.

That wasn’t going to be easy either. She tried to refund the amount, but the computer wasn’t having any of that. Then she started taking products off the shelf beside her and ringing them up. I thought that was really odd, but I wasn’t in a hurry and I was willing to give her the benefit of accepting that she might know what she was doing. She didn’t seem ditzy or anything, so I didn’t think this whole situation was her fault. I’ve had to deal with insane computers, too.

After ringing up a few items from the shelves around her, she did a return of all those items. That was her way of giving me back my money since the computer wouldn’t register the return of the gift card. The return came to 17 cents over the amount I paid for the gift card. So, in the end, the gift card was trashed and I got my money back (plus 17 cents). She gave me the receipt for the return, and since she couldn’t give me the receipt for the gift card, I had her photocopy it so I had something to show if things turned bad. She also asked for my address so she could send me some gifts to apologize for the wasted time.

The offer of gifts is a nice touch. I wonder what we’ll get, though. So for the 15 minutes I spent trying to purchase a gift card, I got 17 cents, potentially some body care gifts, but no card.

Bullgrit
bullgrit@totalbullgrit.com

I just got my flight information for my trip to Sweden. It starts with a 2.5-hour flight to Chicago, then a 5 hour layover, and finally, the 8.5 hour flight to my destination. That’s about 11 hours flight time between 4:30pm and 7:30am the next day (1:30 pm Swedish time). Sweden is 6 hours ahead of my normal time. I’ve flown in the US from coast to coast, but that’s only 3 hours difference. I had no problem with that — no jet lag or anything — but I’m told 6 hours difference, going west to east can be hard to handle the first time.

This trip is still six weeks away (end of March), but I’m really looking forward to it. Unfortunately, I’ll be by myself. I’d love to have Cowgrit with me; maybe next time she can come. Since this is not a vacation trip, I don’t know how much touring I’ll be able to do. My destination is not a real tourist area, anyway, so this will be more like just visiting the Swedish version of my US home. I’ll even be in south Sweden. (Although southern Sweden is far more north on the globe than I have ever been in my life.)

The trip back, a week later, will be all in daylight, and I’ll be arriving home the same day I left — although it will be 14 hours total time for me.

All told, I’ll need a few new books to read and a couple movies to watch on my laptop. Maybe I’ll be able to catch up on some sleep. I intend to keep up my blog postings, but my timing may be a little off because of the time difference.

Bullgrit
bullgrit@totalbullgrit.com

I haven’t been posting my “thoughts, ideas, observations, experiences, and opinions” on table games and computer games much lately. I’m so busy that I sometimes only barely have time to write a general post for this main page — writing a second and/or third post for the other sections just gets pushed to “some day.” I’m going to change this.

Table games and computer games are as much a part of my regular life as playing with my kids, going to work, and anything else I post about here on the main page. I really shouldn’t treat them like secondary sections. Plus, I’ve got a lot of things I want to say about my experiences with both.

So, from now on, I’m going to just post any stuff on any aspect of my life that I want to write about, right here. As each day passes, I’ll move the posts to the relevant section so anyone who’s interested in my thoughts on table games and computer games can find them easily.

For those of you who read this blog for my general writing, and don’t care at all about gaming in any form, I’m sorry. But hey, it’s my life, my blog, and all about me.

Bullgrit
bullgrit@totalbullgrit.com