Dance Dance Party Party

DanceDancePartyParty (who can resist that name!) We've been going semi regularly. I love it. In case you've forgotten, here's what it entails - women get together in a darkened room to dance in gym clothes for an hour, just let loose and let the music move you, with no drugs or alcohol, no men, no other agenda, just moving for the love it.

Last week I created the dance list for the first time, an hour of get up and jump music with one cool down song at the end - here's my playlist:

DDPP playlist

Pump It, Black Eyed Peas
Sexy Back, Justin Timerlake
Vertigo, U2
Harder to Breathe, Maroon 5
Beautiful Life, Ace of Base,
Can’t Get You Out of My Head, Kylie Minogue
Love is a Stranger, Eurythmics
Don’t Phunk with my Heart, Black Eyed Peas
Naughty Girl, Beyonce,
Conga Habanera, Angelique Kidjo
Mambo No.5 Lou Bega
Looking Good, Feeling Gorgeous, Ru Paul
Don’t Call Me Baby, Madison Avenue
Respect, Aretha Franklin
Knock ‘Em Out, Lily Allen
Girlfriend, Avril Lavigne
Like a Star, Corinne Bailey Rae

There's nothing I don't love about this place!

It was lots of fun, and I'm already on creating my next playlist ...

On Line Shopping

You know when you’ve been doing something for ever (cartwheels, perhaps) and someone else says they wouldn’t know where to start and you look at them, puzzled and concerned…

Well, I’ve been on-line shopping since before my son was born, so that’s over 10 years now. I did it before paypal existed. And one of my friends confided in me that she’s scared of on-line shopping, in case… in case… she couldn’t articulate her fears but there were there and they were real. So I decided to write about my shopping experiences, and tell you about the Good, the Bad and the Ugly:

The Good:

These companies are the standard bearers, the shopping experience to which every other on line company should strive:

Amazon.com – yes that amazon. It’s a wonderful company, I own no shares in it, but actually feel customer loyalty to it. They have a clear cart, you understand where everything is, it’s a very easy site to navigate and the more you use it the better it reflects your needs. They have free shipping (for orders over $25.) My only complaint is if you ever want to call them and speak to a human, it takes a bit to find a phone number, but emailing complaints or queries is very easy and they always answer quickly. If you ever have problems with a product or delivery, they always err on your side.

Zappos.com - I recent bought a pair of shoes from them, and they are the guys who introduced me to the free return option. So impulse buying becomes even easier! The shoes didn’t fit right and they didn’t have the size bigger, so I had to do a straight return. I gave them back to the UPS guy who visits my building and the next day I got an email from them, saying they had received my return and refunded me. Gold standard service, I will buy from them again.

Freshdirect –this is for New Yorkers only, but it’s a wonderful grocery shopping site. It’s range is oddly limited, but it’s recipe option (they give you a recipe and then you can order all or some of the ingredients listed below, they email you the recipe on delivery) is just terrific. I have made errors that were entirely my fault – (I ordered decaffeinated instead of caffeinated coffee, big mistake!) and they corrected it immediately, no questions asked. They have great customer service.

The Bad:

Ebay is iffy. My main problem is with their feedback system - if you have a 100% record and you complain about bad service, the guys you complain about will give you a negative feedback and spoil your rating. So I think it actually stops a lot of people justifiably complaining and gives people artificially high ratings. I notice that some people start getting a lot of neutral responses, which doesn’t affect ratings. I take those neutrals to mean that this person is unreliable and avoid business with them if possible. I’ve been both a buyer and a seller, and have had a few very unsatisfactory buying experiences which were not resolved to my satisfaction at all. But my selling experiences have all been terrific (and I am counting my blessings there, because if the person doesn’t pay, you’re stuck in limbo waiting for them.)

The Drug store. They bombarded me with emails saying I had been such a good customer, I would get a discount, or I had spent so much I got 10% of my previous purchase back as shopping dollars – but I had to spend them within a month. If I’ve just spent $90 with you, I may not need to spend more within 4 weeks, and you sending me daily emails saying I’m going to loose my $9 advantage is not helpful, I feel badgered. Also, if you really appreciate me so much, why that time constraint? If I was a good customer, reward me properly, not with all these silly rules and limitations. Give me free shipping for next purchase, no matter when it is, give me something I want, not something that suits you. I didn’t get the next order and won’t be buying back from them in a hurry. And that’s a service problem, not a product problem; the products they sent me were fine.

The Ugly

Actually, even the ugly is not too bad. I’ve never been ripped off, ordered and paid and not received something. But I’m cautious in the sites I choose, they have to have a certain look or have a RL existence too.

iKitchen – I ordered and paid, and waited, and waited. And finally called after 6 weeks. They told me that my product was on back order, but had never emailed me this information. They told me it was in stock now, and I should get it in 2 weeks. I waited, and waited. After 3 weeks I got an email saying they didn’t have it and they refunded me. Not ugly in that I was ripped off buy annoying and I had to do the chasing. Bad customer service, I won’t go there again.

Overstock.com – they have a $5 restock cost, as well as return shipping fees. It’s just not worth it. There are much better customer service sites out there.

Ikea. I hate Ikea with a hatred that is passionate and personal. I love their stock, it’s their customer service that lets them down so badly. I preface this by saying in live in Manhattan, and the nearest Ikea is in Paramus, so it’s not like it’s a 10 minute jaunt to return or pick something up. The problem was theirs – they sent me this enormous wardrobe without the screws, so I had a million pieces with no way of putting it together. So I called, and waited, and waited. I put it on speaker. I was on hold for 30 minutes. Really. They said they would mail me the screws. Well, they didn’t. So a few days later I rang again. Another 30 minute wait. Please send me the screws. The sweet customer service girl in North Carolina promised me that the store in New Jersey would send me them asap. By the third call the girl said that there was a note in my file that I had been upset in my last phone conversation, but she couldn’t get the New Jersey office to do anything other than forward my request. It took a month for the screws to arrive, in the meantime the space was overwhelmed with Ikea pieces (we had opened every box to search for the screws) and mess. Ironically, if I had ordered the entire thing on line, and not gone in to NJ, the service would have been better. Ikea gets zero for follow through on its customer service.

So like the girl with the curl, the good is very, very good and the bad is so not worth it.

Almost forgot to mention ebates! If you link to them before you shop, you will get all sorts of discounts and points and cash rebates. Worth doing! (though I often forget)

Re the Swimming thing

We went to Sandy Hook on the weekend. It's a very sweet beach, unspoilt, no rides or 600 vendors around. Busy but not so crowded you can't find space for your blankets or bump into people in the water (which I have done at Coney Island. I have Coney Island, it's way too crowded for me.) We caught a ferry there from Manhattan which was actually part of the pleasure of it, (unlike catching a crowded subway or waiting at 34th St for a train) It was swift (about 40 minutes) but very expensive ($32 per adult, not much less for a kid) So I have manged to find some water, but it takes $100 to get there... still, I'm glad we went, there's something about being in the ocean, bobbing in the waves, that soothes and refreshes me. I do miss the sea.

take a quiz, answer life's questions

You know how sometimes you get stuck in the weird world of the Internet and find yourself taking all sorts of quizzes (come on, work with me now, I'm not the only one who does this!) So I did the Color Quiz, whose results were somewhat dubious except for the desired objective: Seeks success, stimulation, and a life full of experience. Wants to develop freely and to shake off the shackles of self-doubt, to win, and to live intensely. Likes contacts with others and is enthusiastic by nature. Receptive to anything new, modern, or intriguing; has many interests and wants to expand her fields of activity. Optimistic about the future.
Or it wasn't that the results were wrong, but that the language was a bit odd, so it all didn't quite fit right. Still, I feel that I do want to live intensely (well not intensely but I want my life to matter, really matter to me. And yet I want to be able to let go and breath through it at the same time. I have intense contradictions)

I've had long email and chats with friends abroad today, and the world is okay, but could do with more love. Like every day, I guess...

Friday the 13th

This is the second Friday the 13th we've had this year. I know because the last one was the day I was flying back from Sydney to New York. I told my mother that my hope was that the flight would be emptier as the superstitious would stay home, but it turns out the sceptics were out in force, because the plane was full!

This Friday we flew no where, but stayed in the city. I was in a room that was so air conditioned that I was shivering, (What an waste of power!) listening to the very first performance of a show my husband is working on. I've never sat in on a reading so early in the piece that was interesting, and makes me want to see how it grows and where it goes. Although needing refinement, the bones were really good, and I was moved.

And then I had that oddly unsettling experience of going to an unfamiliar Wholefoods. I know the products they sell, but they were all in the wrong order, in the wrong place, so I could find nothing I wanted. I still manged to spend $58 on one meagre bag. I did buy one of their cloth bags which is designed to be reused. It has excellent long handles so you can carry the bag on your shoulder if you want and cost $1. They also said they'll give a 10 cent discount every time you bring it in. That's very generous and will encourage people to bring it back. I'll definitely be using it again.

Works of Art

I've managed to avoid presenting youtube clips. It's just too easy in a way. Also, while many are quirky, it's such an invitation to waste hours of your life, I can't wholly condone it. But this, this is amazing. A guy recreates the Mona Lisa using Microsoft paint.

See, the potential for art is everywhere!

In our home, we are currently on a beading kick. When I first bought the bead sets, we threaded them and if you made a mistake you had to start again. Clearly not a sport for champions. But then, (and this shows you what a rank amateur I am) I discovered bead boards. Highly sophisticated - basically it's a board with grooves, where you lay your patterns out before threading them. And now, we going gang busters, churning out bracelets with ease. And I'm designing bead rings! I have large fingers and find it really hard to find jewellery that will fit, especially as my current obsession is to have rings for my thumb and pointing finger. But now I can measure them out for myself, and that makes me very happy. So we are hunting beads down and have just put in an order to make this. I'll tell you how it goes...

July already! Let's go swimming!

Sorry I haven't written in so long, I feel bad that it's July already.

I had my sister over to visit, and that was wonderful. I had the end of the school year and that was crazy. I hate having 3 separate events to go to in one day. I know that some people aren't happy unless they have to leave this party early to go and be windswept and interesting somewhere else, but I am not one of those folk. I like going to one place and knowing I have time and space to settle in and enjoy myself - or go home and watch tv. But I don't want to go to a drinks, then a pot luck, then a show. It frazzles me. So end of June is a frazzling time, where we go to recitals and funny, sweet but really bad end of school shows, and pot lucks, and parties, all the while doing our usual life stuff. So the quirk factor fell.

But now it's July, after July 4th, and life can return to normal. I am on the quest for the perfect outdoor pool in New York city. Or it can be indoor, but be accessible. Basically I want to sun bake (don't talk to me about cancer, I grew up in the 70's, I know that a tan makes you look better, you can't talk me out of it) and then take a plunge, swim a bit, and go back to sun baking. I want a resort pool, that's not too crowded but is kid friendly and is in Manhattan. So far, not much luck.

But I did look at all the outdoor pools on Google maps. What amazing site that is! If you haven't been, go look up more or less any busy street in New York and click on the 'at street level' option and you will see a 360 degree shot of the the street. I saw my street. And I saw all the roof top, outdoor pools. Frankly, they all look a bit grim, but I'm going to go out to all of them, because the quest is on, I want to swim, but don't want to spend an hour in the subway to get there (or home again) I want to swim local. (of course I also want to eat chocolate with no consequences. Neither may happen but I keep holding on to the dream.)