CallistaSkye

50 minutes ago, RenoNanaOz said:

Me too! It’s relaxing to me. 

I like shopping in grocery stores super early in the morning when no one is there! and I do like browsing around the dollar store or Target. I just try to do the pickup order to keep my impulse buys to a minimum. Me and my Dad used to drive my mom nuts because both of us loooovveee window shopping. I used to go with him to go Christmas shopping and we would eat breakfast, get to the mall when it opened, shop for hours, eat lunch, and have a day of it. It was awesome.

30 minutes ago, Hogladyrider said:

Yikes, went physically grocery shopping today inside an actual grocery store for the first time in years.  My routine is "pickup" or "delivery".   No need to remind me again why I prefer "pickup" or "deliver"....worth the tip for delivery for sure.  I despise grocery shopping in the store......too much temptation for impulse buying and the worst part is waiting in line to checkout.  I pray this was a one and done for this summer.

 

Now back to our regularly schedules Sunday program.

That's how I feel about shopping in Target. I do the pickup orders now where they bring it to my car. Otherwise I end up buying all kinds of crap I don't even need. and it's always really crowded and the lines are terrible!

Sid that's crazy about the lady in the guys house! He should get a security system. Squatters take over houses here and it's a big problem. I hope his house is okay.

Not much here for Sunday.

Just went grocery shopping.

I'm questioning my sanity with thinking that taking a 3 year old on an 11 day cruise was a good idea. Sincerely hoping that our neighbors don't hate us for having a toddler. We only do the MDR for dinners, and obviously will have one of us immediately leave if she gets overwhelmed or anything. But it's nerve wracking.

We are on Carnival, so hopefully it's okay. But I'm getting really nervous the closer it gets.

18 minutes ago, Hogladyrider said:

Happy Saturday TRIBE!

 

OMG I have to share with you this story my mom told me.

 

I shared with you all my 95 year old mom went to visit her ailing sister in California last weekend.

 

Well, my mom goes to they gym 3 morning a week Mon-Wed-Fri.  Mom decided she was not going to tell anyone at the  gym she was going to California, she figured she would surprise  them when she returned and they asked her she would simply tell them "oh I decided to go to California for the weekend"........it  BACKFIRED ON HER!

 

Mom said when she got home from her trip she had  27 missed phone calls from people at the gym.

 

She has a group of friends there that they "chat" all the time about life and golf especially.

 

Then it  gets more interesting.  

 

My brother is a Land Surveyor and he maintains his business office in the basement of mom's home, has been for 50+ years.  Saturday morning he is in the office and looks out the window and there are THREE police  cars in the  driveway!

 

The gym had called in a wellness check on my mom and everyone in the town where she lives knows her so  they sent out the forces.

 

I laughed so hard when she told me this on the phone this morning during our weekly chat.

 

Guess she learned a lesson even at 95 to let folks know where she is going, something she always told us kids growing up!

 

She had a great trip and did just fine!  She is glad to be home for sure.

Awww. That is really good though! Honestly that's great she has so many people looking out for her and worried about her. Working in a nursing home you see the other side where people fell and laid in their house for 5 days before someone finally called, or they crawled to a phone and called 911. So it's really a blessing she has people that care and are looking out for her like that.

36 minutes ago, KmomChicago said:

Just when we thought Covid was the worst contamination one could encounter on a cruise ship.

Bleach wipes!!

LMAO. An ex boyfriend was roommates with his friend and his friends wife. She was a nudist. They had to have two separate living rooms because he didn't want naked people sitting on his furniture.

After joining the faces group, it looks like SF cruises don't have faster to the fun. So at least that solves that and I don't have to keep checking. They have all kinds of stuff going on, a shot glass exchange, a postcard exchange, a duck exchange. I don't know if I'm social enough to participate in all of that but it's cool that people are running them. It makes me think of my Grandma. She was one of those really bubbly outgoing people who loved sitting with strangers at dinner because they always were friends. She wrote letters and postcards to her cruise friends. I always wish I had gotten those genetics because she could talk to anyone.

Almost had a heart attack when I searched on the other website for our cruise roll call. There's a Baptist Church that is sailing on the same exact dates that has a roll call. Turns out it's on Sunrise from Miami.

I have nothing against religion, I just really don't want to end up on a themed cruise by accident. I always check that website that lists all of them for the year before I book because I just am not a theme cruise kind of person. Also it makes more sense that it's out of Miami because I would imagine most people would rather go on warm weather cruise than Alaska.

Joined the roll call group so we'll how many millions of notifications a day I get from that. I'm just trying to see if I missed Faster to the Fun or not and there's no roll call on here which is a bummer. I guess I could start one.

TGIF!

Not much going on here. Our dinner is JITB. Not terribly exciting but it's friday and we don't feel like cooking.

It was hot the past two days, then today it dropped 15 degrees to the 60s again and now tomorrow it's supposed to rain. I just leave our gutter extension thing out and move it off the sidewalk even though it looks awful, because literally every time I put it in the garage, it rains the next day.

We have zero excursions booked for our Alaska cruise, but most of them don't allow kids under 5. still trying to figure out Catalina. Maybe the glass bottom boat if they have it still.

On 5/1/2024 at 7:54 AM, ReneeFLL said:

That's my thought as well. Hurricanes you can watch and run if necessary. When we moved from Texas (hurricanes) to California my co-workers were surprised I was more afraid of earthquakes than hurricanes. Earthquakes come out of nowhere with no warning. 

True. But we have building codes. and they don't suck up your whole house and destroy it! Tornadoes and sinkholes are two of my biggest fears. Earthquakes don't bother me for the most part. The part that is scary are the roads. My mom and Grandpa were truck drivers and were driving on the 880 during the Loma Prieta. It collapsed behind them and they had no idea until they got to where they were picking up a load to transport. But my Grandpas dog had been howling and was acting crazy the whole time they were driving that way. If they had been later they would have been on it when it pancaked.

56 minutes ago, sid_9169 said:

During lunch break I logged into my health insurance account and it appears that I might have ended up getting the colonoscopy for free due to the provider not getting it pre approved! According to what I'm looking at they submitted it but the insurance, BUT there's a note underneath that says "This service is not eligible for payment. Your network provider was required to obtain authorization before you received this service. An authorization was not received. Participating providers may not bill the Member for this service."

 

If I end up getting away with this without any type of bill, there yet may be a cruise for late November / early December in my future!

 

 

 

The doctors office will probably try to bill you again. Make sure you print out that EOB. Highlight the zero dollars, and the part that says you do not have to pay. Write them a letter stating that you already talked to your insurance and since they did not get a pre-auth you do not owe them anything and they need to talk to your insurance company. I had to do that with my anesthesia bill from my C-Section because they misbilled it, the insurance asked for money back, and the hospital tried to tell me that I owed it now. Which is not how that works.

3 hours ago, BohJang said:

Our house has been on the market for 3 weeks. We only had one showing in all that time but they made an offer. $35,000 less than asking. They want us to pay all closing fees. Real estate market is apparently very slow right now. Realtor thinks we should take it. I want to counter for at least $5000 more. What says the Tribe? 

Is there a reason they offered that much less? Is there something that needs to be fixed? What are the comps in your area that recently sold? If you do not have a really tight time frame on when you need to have the house sold by, then I would not rush to sell it.

On 4/28/2024 at 3:42 PM, Stowaway LFC said:

 

We do!  First vacation in forever, been planning for 2 years now lol:

Juneau: Whale Watching & Alaskan Salmon Bake Combo

Haines: Kroscel (?) Wildlife Center scheduled through their website, heard it is really good

Tracy Arm: Tracy Arm Fjord & Glacier Explorer

Ketchikan: Lighthouse, Totems & Eagles Excursion

Prince Rupert: Best of Prince Rupert, City Highlights & Museum  mainly just to have something to do there.  And it was fairly cheap. May check out the Mc'D's and Tim Horton while we are there, sounds fun!

 

 

Oh nice that looks like a pretty full trip! Hooray for vacation! I'm glad you are getting one, they are important.  I think we don't have your second stop on ours. It's Skagway instead for us. But otherwise, similar stops.

I'm starting to get excited about the August cruise! Also need to look into booking a Disney one for when our toddler is like 5.

I'm slowly convincing my mom about cruises. At first she was adamant that she would never set foot on one. Now she finally admitted that she would maybe be okay with a Disney one so she could spend some Grandma time with our toddler lol. She also admitted that she would like to go to Hawaii because she has never been. So I'm hoping to figure something out where we can take her on a nice vacation.

Also I realized that this year is our 10th year of cruising. We started when we got married because it seemed fun and fell in love with it. Also I am glad I found this place because you guys have so much great info and I love reading the cruise re-caps.

I'm finally caught up on your review!

The coffee thing is funny. People don't really read signs though. So I can't say I'm surprised.

I'm excited for my August cruise. I forgot how much I love the Parade of Cakes, and also the movies that carnival shows. It's really silly, but one of the things that I love about going on the cruises is getting to catch up on the movies that we missed in the theater.

Your screencap of the e-book made me laugh. When I worked in the nursing home, we had to take photos of resident belongings and one of the residents had an ebook reader. Someone took a photo of it with the screen showing a pretty racy book. I noticed it when I was uploading it to their chart and was cracking up and emailed it to my administrator and the admissions person so they could get a laugh from it. We did end up blurring it in their chart belongings photo.

Sure thing! Do you have any excursions booked? We haven't booked any. I was considering the museum but I don't really like guided tours of that kind of thing. I might try to take the bus over there. Also there is a McDonalds and a Tim Hortons in that town, so as ridiculous as it is, I was going to visit those because the McD's has stuff they don't sell here, and I've never been to a Tim Hortons.

20 minutes ago, Stowaway LFC said:

Going on a Carnival Alaska cruise in September, the last port is Prince Rubert Canada.  Is there some kind of form I will need to complete?  Will they give it to me onboard or do I need to hunt one up?  Brisket cooked this weekend for attention LOL

 

Hey we are on the same one but in August! I don't think you need a form. On the last cruise I went on, when we docked at Victoria BC, we didn't have a form. We just walked off the ship and there were busses and stuff waiting at the port.

14 hours ago, onlyano said:

 

I have had both of these things happen to me.

 

On the hotel room, I booked it through AARP so the reservation number was different. I finally had to call the hotel to get the reservation number that would show up online.

 

At one point last year, I had five cruises booked. I wish that was the case now! The one closest to me leaving dropped off the reservations page. I had to use the booking number to add it back.

I need to call the hotel for sure! I booked directly through their website, and they emailed me, but it's probably just some weird thing.

The cruises showed back up on Carnival so I think it was just their website being worked on. 5 cruises! That must have been amazing. We have 2 booked now which is the most we have had booked at once.

Happy Weekend everyone!

aww your mom looks great!

I seem to be having some weird luck with booking things. I booked a hotel last month for mothers day so we could do a staycation. I have the email confirmation. I went to look at it on the hotel website just to make sure it's what we wanted, and it keeps saying that it can't find the reservation and that the number doesn't exist. I emailed the front desk 2 days ago. Nothing. Then I submitted it again on their website asking for help. No answer. so now I'm going to have to call them, but haven't been able to. and it's really annoying that I have emailed twice and heard nothing back.

I went to see if Faster to the Fun was available on our Alaska cruise and now when I log into to my carnival account, there are zero cruises showing up in my account as booked. I just paid the Alaska one off in full a few days ago and it was there earlier. So I have no idea what is going on.

Hopefully it's just a fluke and shows back up tomorrow.

1 minute ago, ReneeFLL said:

I like to charge everything to get AA miles. Big and small purchases. Pay it off at the end of every month so there are no fees. We fly mostly using miles.

We do the same but I don't have miles. I should. At the nursing home we had people who payed their bill with a milage credit card because when it costs 10k a month you can really rack up the miles.

Figured out the AARP thing. I had to use chrome and delete all the cookies and make it not have any blockers at all and it worked just fine. Was able to get the GC's needed so now our cruise is paid off!

Yay!

Also found the one hotel out of the 7 that I booked that has a cruise and park option. The Zephyr. They have a week of parking included if you stay before or after your cruise. I've been booking and cancelling hotels since 3 days ago when I started realizing that parking was not included at most of them, or they were in the south 40 super far from where we wanted to be. Trying to plan a vacation and figure this stuff out when I have no brain power left at the end of the day is rough.

17 minutes ago, Hogladyrider said:

@CallistaSkye...I only have purchased discount cruise gift cards from AARP.  Originally Carnival now I purchase HAL there as well.  I have not had any problems.

 

I have read that it is important to keep a written record on the gift card #'s and PINs in case they are needed if one has to cancel or change anything.  I keep a record of mine on my spread sheet for each individual cruise.

Good luck.

I've purchased in the past w/o issues, but I've been trying for days to get it to work again. It keeps erroring out. I guess there is a known issue with the cart, and you have to message CS to get them to resolve it. There are lots of posts on the boards there about it. So hopefully they can help me! I always save the PDF of the GCs just in case!

Newegg cancelled the second order in case anyone else tries to get around it. Although if you have a spouse with a different name/card I bet you could buy them that way too.

Sorry to pop in randomly but if anyone else is having trouble buying the AARP Carnival cards at discount, NewEgg has them for 10% off today too. You can only buy 3 at a time, but I switched emails and may have gotten around it that way. Just figured I would pass it along! I've been trying for days to get the AARP one to work and it keeps erroring out and telling me to call them.

Not much going on here. Tomorrow is 3 years since my Dad died so this month has been a bit rough just processing that more.

Trying to figure out parking for our August Cruise out of SF is such a PITA. No where offers Cruise and Park packages anymore, and I don't know if the hotels will let us keep our car parked in their lot. I also almost got scammed by a fake parking website because I was exhausted and trying to figure it out, and the only reason I noticed is because it had some checkbox to authorize a $4 a month charge for streaming music lol.

I have a million pages on here to catch up on. Hope you all are doing well.

Yesterday was super busy. Hung out with my mom and her neighbors and we went to a breakfast and then dinner at her neighbors house which was nice. They cooked a full meal. corned beef, cabbage, potatoes, carrots, bread. dessert. we were stuffed.

The toddler was exhausted from her skipped nap but we made it. My husband took today and tomorrow off which was so nice because he got to take her to storytime and see everything that we always talk about. I was able to do some random cleaning that is pretty much impossible otherwise.

This is a really dumb thing to ask about but does anyone know if Carnival shows the Olympics? I really really love watching them and realized today that our cruise is booked during the last portion of it. I tried googling but everything is not really clear answers. I might have to pay for the extra internet package and be that person who is watching TV while on an Alaska cruise.

Insurance companies are awful. The company I worked for had to take one to court because they were telling us that a resident who had the mental capcity of a 2nd grader and literally no family in the area could live alone. They had come to the facility after living in a house with no heat, no electricity and barely any food and the roommate was stealing their tiny amount of disability income. They tried telling us that a person who couldn't walk or bear weight on their legs could be discharged to live at home alone even though they were like 90 years old. It was ridiculous and so sad.

Sid, I hope your dinner is going well!!

I am sooooooo far behind on everything. Like a month behind. Sorry I missed so much.

Right now trying not to breathe too loud because the toddler is reading in her room. We moved all her books into there and she has a beanbag chair to sit and read in. and a desk with coloring stuff that she likes to play at, and she's been asking to move some of her favorite toys into her room now so she can play in there. We obviously play with her if she asks, but we also try to encourage independent play so she's not one of those kids that constantly has to be entertained by people and can't play on her own. I can't believe she's already going to be 3 in June! Time flies.

I hope everyone is doing okay.

We're getting  more rain which is bananas. all the lakes and reservoirs are full. The beach is all eroded back because of the storms we have had, and the ground is still completely saturated everywhere.

We're slowly booking stuff for our two cruises! I booked the Dr Suess breakfast on the first one last year, and good thing because it's already sold out! and they added some other Thing 1 and Thing 2 birthday breakfast. I suspect our kind of cruising is drastically different than most of you alls, but that's alright lol.

4 hours ago, deedle910 said:

So I’m turning 60 this year. I have a carnival cruise booked in november out of mobile if anyone is interested. Im also looking at booking another this year, does not have to be carnival. So if you want me to crash your vacation, give me some options! 

Aughhhh that would be so tempting if we did not have our two booked already. Our friends live in Mobile, and another friend from here moved to Florida, so it would be so neat to do a cruise out of there since we could go visit friends first and then go.