Carmella's Hang Out

So Kade and I have quite literally been saving our pennies since the end of last hockey season, and maybe even a bit before, so that we would be better able to afford the online game viewing program that we had for the latter half of last years season. Last year we got in at a half price deal, since the season was half over. This year we wanted to get it from beginning to end. The half price was $60, so it would make sense that $120 was the full price, right? Right. Well, it might have been….had they kept it all as the same thing.

See, last year, what we signed up for was called Center Ice. Since the end of the season, they decided to change it to become more of an NHL thing, so it is not NHL GameCenter Live. With that change came, you guessed it, a price jump. It went from $120 to $159! Why? Pretty much, because they can and they know it. If you are the fan of a team from out of state, and you want to watch the games, the only way you are gonna do that is by getting their service. This is the situation that we find ourselves in. {And to be honest, even if we were fans of the local team, given that we have just bumped down to basic cable, we would not even be able to watch Red Wings games if we really wanted to}

So we write to tell them that we are not happy that they jerk the price up on us…that in it of itself was hard to do since they do not give an email addy to write to, but instead give you a box with so many allowed letters and so on, therefore you have to choose your words carefully. They write back and say “Nope, we don’t got no deal for returning customers” {Yes, the English was just as poorly written in the actual email!}

{I need to get to bed so I can get up for a game later, so I am going to try to make this short….sorry if it make little sense}

We got a NEW account so we could watch the games. Today, I got an email saying that our OLD account would be renewed automatically for the new season, and that the $159 would be taken out of my account {I have two bank accounts btw. One checking account is used for savings, so right now holds all of the money I am saving for China and Hockey. The other is what I call my Red card, or play account, which is also a checking account. The two NHL accounts were paid for on different cards. One the red one the China.} I called as soon as I got the email to say, “Oh no you don’t” and they said they would cancel it and send me an email to confirm. I got the email. What did the email say? We just canceled your new account! Back on the phone for me. This time, I wait for what seems like forever {Mostly because I need to get to bed and I am really frustrated with all of this!} when finally a nice man answers and tries to go about fixing the problem. Very thankfully for me at this moment, it does not seem as if the NHL outsources their Service department, as both times I spoke with men who had perfect English, were able to communicate well and not frustrate the life outta me, and who were easy to understand and understood what I said very easily as well. They were also NOT reading from a flash card that said anything like “Please wait while I input dis information.” {hello Tracfone}

Another one of these “long story short”s they could not un-cancel the new account, so he just did a refund for it {you got it, the first guy was not gonna give me my money back but was gonna let them take another huge chunk of money out of my account} and we will let the old account renew like normal in a few days. *le sigh*

And of course, I started this while I was on hold with NHL….and finished that call a bit ago but am too stubborn to stop typing before this post was done…..so I have now put myself way over the time I should have been in bed…and I will have to get up in an hour and a half to watch MY TEAM in the first Reg-season game of their season.

I like hockey too much at times I think.

Quickly….Dad has said that Kade and I can go to the hockey game next month! YAY!! THANK YOU!! We will go watch am AHL game from ICE LEVEL [yes, the tickets have been purchased and we only found out we could go TODAY] I am so excited! True, I would be more excited if I was not so upset with NHL right now, and if my head had not started pounding again, but still. I am happy and thankful and now…………….

I need to go to bed.

GO DUCKS!

In the summer of 2009, I plan to join a group called Bring Me Hope, to help with camps for orphans in China. The Lord has given me a burden for this lost and hurt generation that is quickly growing in that nation. I am excited to share of this burden with all who are willing to hear!

Bring Me Hope {www.bringmehope.org} is an organization started by a young man,named David Bolt, with a heart to reach the young forgotten ones of China for Christ. Since 2006, through one week camps run by volunteers from the US, Canada, and Australia along with the help of native volunteer translators, children and young people in this communist country have been given a chance to smile and feel loved. Most importantly, many have given their hearts to the Lord.

While across the ocean, we will need a great deal of prayer. I am in search of groups who would be interested in hearing about the work Bring Me Hope is doing in China, and would like to have a visit from some of the staff. In the early part of 2009, Bring Me Hope will be having a tour across the country in order:

To remind people about God’s call to missions and His heart to see hope brought to orphans.

To invite people to our China camp to care for orphans.

To let people know how they can financially help orphans.

To challenge people to pray for orphans.

To raise Adoption Awareness

The presentation takes from 10 to 45 minutes: perfect for a mid week Bible study, ladies meeting, or Sunday morning service. If your congregation would be interested in hearing from them, I would be greatly excited and appreciative of the time!

Please contact me with any questions you have, and let me know if we may make a visit to your church.

My photo links from MIRF

My passport should be here in a few weeks!! I put in my app today and it is all paid for and everything! They will send it to Passport Services at 9 tomorrow morning!!

Hey guys, guess what……I’m goin’ to China!

It is not just this blog….I have not been updating any of my blogs as of late. I have really not been in the mood!

My letters have been very lacking as well. Not sure why, other than a lot of ’stuff’ going on emotionally, and it has taken me out of the ‘keeping in touch’ mood?

David has just spent his first full day in his new place! We are all very proud of him, though he has already been missed greatly by everyone! I did pretty well all day yesterday, which was when he left. I had to say goodbye to him the night before because I was going to be at work when he got up and left Michigan. My worry had been that my day was going to be really poopy, fighting back tears the entire time I was at work. However, I held it together very well and did not cry the entire time I was there. It was not until just before I went to bed, when I sent him a text to say goodnight. I burst into tears when I got his text back. Guess it had kinda sunk in then…..he really is gone. Knowing me, that is not going to be the only time I do that, but I am happy to report it is not all the time. Like I said, I miss him a great deal, but I am still so happy for him and that is helping.

I contacted the group {Bring Me Hope} about going to China, and have been given the “Green Light” from them! My health conditions will not get in the way of me going! PRAISE THE LORD!! Already, I have the money saved for my passport, and my plan is to get that VERY soon. Once in hand I am sure that I will be even more excited than I already am. And that is hard to believe, since I have been pretty geeked about it as it is! Savings for that is going very well, as I have drawn up a budget that looks doable and will give me some extra ‘oh no’ money should something go wrong. {did I mention that already in a post before?}

I was asked by my boss to watch his cat while he was away for the weekend getting married. That went really well!! It was not only a cool thing for me, to be asked and trusted with that, but also because I am allergic to cats and this gave me the chance to ‘test’ the shots I have been getting! lol. As you can see, I lived through it, and in fact had very little problem with it at all, so I can see the shots are doing some good! I have a visit with my allergist coming up near the end of the month, when I hope and pray that he tells me I do not have to get these shots every week anymore. I have now been on the same dose for six months with no problems reported {I have VERY sore arms after every injection day, and they swell really big. However, since the nurses never seemed to show much care about that, I stopped telling them. I do not want to risk having to get these weekly any longer than needed!! So I just deal with that part of it.} which they told me was what I had to do before they could let me reduce the frequency of the shots. When I go, I am going to ask his thoughts on the China trip. What I should do in the way of prepping for it, what I should take with me {other than the duh things, like my epi, inhaler, benadryl, and such.} and if he knows of anything I should look out for over there.

I also have to talk to him about the possibility that I am becoming allergic to milk. NOOOOO!!! Yes, sadly it is true. Starting today, I did my own control test and it seems that I may have a problem with the creamy white goodness, a fact that makes me very sad. For now,it only looks like it is a certain time of the day that I will need to stay away from it. In the hopes that it will not spread to the rest of the day, I am happy to cut it out of those hours!

Even as far back as working at Meijer, I have often had a surge of what I have come to call my “Morning Sickness”. To detail the symptoms of my early day woes, described very closely the symptoms suffered by a woman for the first few months of her pregnancy. I will spare you all the icky details, but suffice it to say it is not pretty, nor is it fun. Seems to hit me most if I wake up earlier in the morning {and by this I mean before 7 or 8} and do not eat something within the first 10 or 15 minutes. I had found that if I caught it right away, got something to eat before it became too bad, then the pain and problems went away pretty quickly. However, in the last month not even that has been working. Every morning I would wake up to find my illness nagging at me within the first 1o minutes of my awakeness. Thinking it would work, I made sure to always eat my cereal as soon as I had dressed and made my bed, the rest of my prep work could wait. Long story short, this week I noticed that the pain got worse instead of better on the mornings that I had more milk in my bowl then cereal, causing me to have to drink a great deal of milk in the end. While it does not last ALL day long, mornings at work with all of the smells {which cause a great deal of nausea} and fast moving required to serve 100+ people their morning coffee {which brings on dizziness and ‘punch to the gut’ kind of feelings} are not always the most fun thing to deal with! I have found that having mints with me help to keep the ‘toss my cookies’ feeling at bay. Yet, needing to suck on two and three in one hour can get a bit old!

Today I decided to try NOT having milk before work, to test it and see what happened. I woke up still with the same icky feeling soon waking up as well, but eating something different did in fact mean that I was not sick much longer after I made it to work. It had cheese in it though, so I am going to try and cut as much dairy out of my morning as I can, and will not be eating that again either! {I am also unable to eat eggs, so that is not an option unfortunately.} With some of the other things to which I am allergic, small amounts do not cause me problems….I am just careful how and when I eat them. That is how I will treat the milk thing as well. Milk is a favourite for me, and I would hate to have to give it up, so I am going to be as careful as I can to not over do its consumption so that I can have it for longer! hee. Mum figures one of two things will happen for me. Once I do suffer from true, honest to goodness morning sickness either,I will be so use to it that it is NOTHING for me….or all of the internal problems I have had over the years is a show of just how bad it is going to be! lol

That shall be all for now. I will write again when I come up with something of interest.

Love you David. Miss you! See you in a year, eh? Talk to you soon.

Every bodies wondering how the world could get this way
if God is good then how it could be filled with so much pain
its not the age old mystery that we made it out to be
theres a problem with the world
the problem is me.
So Ill find the closest mirror
thats where the offender is hiding
so grand is my need for a redeemer
I can not trust myself
so I’ll trust in someone else
The sooner you can sing along
the sooner you can sing this song
the happier we’ll be