Mid-January odds & ends

• The Dyson saga: We've been pretty busy since our our brand-new Dyson purifier/humidifier/fan unit broke down a week ago, on Tuesday, Jan. 10th (and I was NOT going to chase down Dyson customer service and raise my blood pressure on my birthday!!  lol). Here's what's happened since I chatted online and then speaking with a customer service rep on the phone that day (who promised to send me a repair ticket and details on where to take the unit), and then followed up later that day with an email:    
• I was amused to see an email from Dyson in my inbox on Saturday morning... inviting me to rate their customer service and provide some feedback on my latest interaction with them. As you can imagine, I was only too pleased to do so...!  
• In my survey comments, I requested that someone contact me as soon as possible -- via email -- with the service repair ticket and other information promised to me last Tuesday (Jan. 10th). 
• (I had the option of receiving a phone call or email.  On the one hand, it's sometimes easier to just talk to a human -- on the other hand, email provides a paper trail, and I won't miss the email, whereas one missed phone call can lead to an endless game of telephone tag...!)
• Sunday afternoon, out in the car with dh, BIL & SIL, I got an email from Dyson... in response to the email I'd left the previous Tuesday afternoon (five days earlier!) via the chat function, where I'd noted that I had not yet received the promised email with repair ticket number and address information. 

Hi Lori,

 

 Thank you for contacting Dyson. 

 

 We do apologize for the delay in response, as we have an influx of emails and are responding in the order received. 

 

We have reviewed your concern about the repair. We are really sorry for the inconvenience caused to you. We would like to inform you that your repair has been booked and the repair reference id is... [number provided!]. Please visit to Dyson service center with this id. They would be happy to assist you.

• A repair reference number -- YES!!  :) 
• BUT -- they didn't provide the address for the local repair facility/warehouse where we could take our unit?! 
• I did some Googling and found an address in the suburb the customer service rep had mentioned to me -- AND, lo and behold, a local email address!  I fired off an email asking for confirmation that this was, in fact, the right place for us to bring our unit. (It's about a half-hour drive away -- and we've already spent almost a week without use of our unit -- so I don't want to be making any unnecessary trips.)  
• That triggered an auto-response email, saying that I can expect a response within 24 hours. (Well, at least I know it was a valid email address!)  They're closed on the weekend, so I figured 24 hours = by Tuesday morning.  We've been busy and unable to take the unit in until Wednesday anyway.  
• It's now Tuesday afternoon... if I don't hear anything from them soon (and I'm not holding my breath...!), I'll call the general customer service line (AGAIN) and ask them to confirm the address. 
• Then yesterday (Monday) morning, I got a response from the comment I'd left on the customer service survey I'd completed on Saturday morning... in FRENCH. 
• I got the gist of what it said, but ran it through Google Translate to be sure. It said: "Hello, Thank you for contacting Dyson, we're sorry to hear you feel this way. You will shortly receive the information requested by our service team." (! -- do you get the feeling the left hand doesn't know what the right is doing??  Are they not all connected to the same systems??)   
• And... a few hours later, I got what turned out to be a duplicate of the earlier email (!). 
• Why does everything have to be so complicated??  
• This would be funny, if the damn machine wasn't so horribly expensive... 
• I think the humidity levels in our condo have only cracked 40% once in the week since the unit broke down, and they've often been in the low 30s.  :p  
• The Bloglovin' saga: After refreshing the window, it SEEMS to be up and running normally today??  I'm not getting too excited, though... little has changed since my last post on this subject on Dec. 23rd (!).  Aside from a few brief periods, it's basically been out since Dec. 5th.  It varies from day to day, between (1) some posts from a day or two previous, mixed in with posts dated from 2020, including some spam-ish content in foreign languages (Slavic, Asian, etc.)(!), (2) "not available" messages and (3) "502 Server Error" messages. Bah humbug... 
• The weather has been relentlessly dark, grey and gloomy since we returned from holidays... very depressing. There was a brief period of exception:  the sky cleared and the sun came out last Saturday!! and continued through Sunday & Monday!!  It was glorious!!  :)  (It also got a lot colder, but hey, that's the price we pay...!) 
• Back to grey and gloomy this morning (with freezing rain overnight that's now turned to drizzle...).  :p  
• It was a busy weekend:  two Zoom sessions on Saturday (actually three, but two were on at the same time -- one of them was a webinar that was recorded, so I opted to watch that one later) and one on Sunday. Plus going to see Little Great-Nephew skating on Sunday afternoon -- plus I was watching the Canadian national figure skating championships on TV both days in between Zoom calls (& PVRing to watch what I missed later...!).  
• Nationals took place not far from our old community, about an hour/90 minutes away from where we live now. Once I would have jumped at the opportunity to get tickets for an even so close by -- and there were lots of empty seats, even in this venue, which is much smaller than nationals venues of the past. But I'm no longer close with the "skating buddy" I used to attend shows & competitions with, years ago. Getting there on my own would have been a chore -- transit might have been possible, but not easy (a couple of hours trekking back & forth, and not a great area, especially after dark...).  I think dh would have gone with me (and done the driving), if I'd asked, but it's really not his "thing" -- plus I'm still leery about big public events and covid.  Plus I find I'm still in a bit of a post-Christmas/birthday "slump" where I don't have a lot of energy/bandwidth.  Those are my excuses, anyway...! 
• We made the trek to our optometrist's office in midtown Toronto yesterday. I was last there in late October as a follow-up from my surgery last July, and got the all-clear from him, with a request for me to return in six months (May) to check in on how things are going. A couple of weeks later, in mid/late November, I noticed some redness and irritation in the inner corner of my right eye (the one I had the surgery on -- of course!), and what looked to me like a bit of a clear bubble (cyst?) right where the white of the eye meets the iris. I've had clear cysts in the past; they generally disappeared on their own or with some drops. And of course, then there was Christmas. The eye has been looking slightly better since we got back home, but I decided I'd feel better if he had a look at it. He did (and so did his young associate), and told me he didn't see anything that concerned him, but to come back in May as scheduled for another look. What a load off my mind!   
• BIL is adjusting to unofficial retirement (long-term disability). In recent years (since dh's own premature retirement in 2013), he & dh have spoken over the phone almost every day... and the calls have increased since he found himself at home. He doesn't read, football season is almost over (lol), he doesn't have a lot of friends outside of work & family (and of course many of the other people he might call or visit are still working themselves), SIL is still working part-time, Little Great-Nephew has been (mostly) at home with his mom since before Christmas, since SHE's on disability too... In a nutshell, he's bored, lol.  
• I recently learned (via Facebook) that an old friend lost her first grandchild (her oldest child's baby). I sobbed as I read her post to dh (who also knew her well), and showed him the photos of an absolutely beautiful baby who hung on for a little more than three months in the hospital and passed away shortly after Christmas. A story we heard from our support group clients many times over the years -- but one that never loses its power to break your heart. :(  
• Coming soon:  some recent reading, with links to share!