I don't know how I came across Illustration Friday, probably from Mom, but I've been watching it for a while now. The basic idea is that each Friday, a topic comes out, you draw a picture/illustration of the subject, post the image to your website, then add a link to the Illustration Friday website. Pretty simple. I've been receiving the subject emails each Friday, but have yet to actually start doing the illustrations, much less post them. Something about knowing I had talent when I was younger, and never doing anything with it makes me somewhat embarrassed about showing off any work now. I should probably post some of my pieces, if I ever find them. Another "if."

So, in the spirit of "You can't do unless you start," my first (5 minute) illustration. Eventually, I'll have more time to invest (ooooo, into color illustrations, too!).

In case it's not obvious, it's a chair.

Since I wasn't feeling good yesterday, I didn't head into work. We have the sick policy that if you are starting to feel ill, stay home and work, rather than getting everyone in the office sick, too. So, I stayed home yesterday. Good thing, too, given how sick I was last night. Today isn't much better, not being able to do much more than sit around the house, drinking sugar water, and asking Kris, "Do I feel hot?"

Liza had been sick on Thursday, but was feverish on Wednesday afternoon, so she couldn't go into school on Friday. Instead, she spent the day with her mom at work, then with her dad at work. Apparently she managed to get as much work done on Friday afternoon as I did:

I'm a big fan of delivered organic vegetables. I'm mostly a fan of supporting small farms through CSA programs, where consumers (that's me!) purchase shares of harvests in order to support local (often organic) growers. I'm mostly a fan of organic food, but the farmer's blood in me isn't too diluted.

We started getting boxes of organic food delivered over six years ago, when we lived near Ben and Lisa and split a weekly big box delivery of organic food. We often struggled to both get foods we all liked and eat all the food we did receive.

When we moved to Sunnyvale, we found out the company we used previously didn't deliver to Sunnyvale, so we stopped deliveries. We tried again later with other companies and programs, including a pickup in Palo Alto, and another delivery company that did deliver in Sunnyvale. Unfortunately, we ended up throwing away more than we ate, so Kris asked me to cancel that service, too.

Since one of my new year's resolutions is to cook more, it made sense to start the delivery back up. Kris was, expectedly, skeptical about the resumed delivery. Okay, yeeaaaaah, so, sure, I plan on cooking more, but are we going to, once again, be throwing out more food than we eat?

I convinced him to continue the service, but we'd watch what we consumed. If we ended up throwing away more than 10% into the compost bin, we'd stop the service.

Been doing fairly well so far. Tonight's dinner was potato leek soup to use up the leeks from this box of vegetables and the last box of vegetables, as well as the potatoes from a couple boxes ago. Having never made potato leek soup before, I wasn't sure how it would turn out. It turned out fairly well. I need the soup tonight, having caught whatever Mike and his kids are dishing out. I'm good on the one resolution of cooking more, but less good on the running every day. Stupid fever, aches and chills.

I placed an order for new business cards late Wednesday night for everyone at work. Yes, I ordered them late, yes, I recognized I would need to pay rush charges, I was completely expecting this, as I needed the cards for the Drupal meetup Mike and I are going to in Vancouver next week.

We leave Monday night. When I ordered on Wednesday night, I selected the Rush delivery with a three day turn around time. Three business days, let's see, that's Thursday, Friday, Monday, no problem. All set.

Except when I received the notice via email of the order received, it said a Tuesday delivery time. Well, we can always hope they arrive earlier. I didn't do anything about them.

Until today, when I received the "Your order has shipped!" email. Great, let's see how the order will be shipped. Second day delivery via DHL. Scheduled for arrival on the seventh. Tuesday.

We leave Monday night.

Fine, nothing a few more dollars can't fix, right? So, I called DHL with the tracking number and the question, "Can I upgrade this to next day air and pay the shipping cost difference?"

"No, we can't authorize that."

"What?"

"We can't authorize a quicker shipment."

"Even if I'm paying for it?"

"No. You'll have to contact [the vendor] for authorization."

"They're closed."

"There's nothing I can do."

This annoys me. There is plenty that she could do. She chooses not to help. She knows who the vendor is. She knows it's a shipment that can be rushed. She has done nothing but guarantee I will not use DHL for shipments, and will request merchants I do business with also not to use them.

Morons unable to help customers. Stupid company cultures that encourage brain-dead customer "service" instead of the flexibility of, oh, actual service. The package was just picked up. It can have a rush put on it. Moron.

Update: Lovely, this keeps getting better. After being on hold with the vendor for fifteen minutes, the person at the other end of the line picks up the phone and hangs up. I actually had my desk phone and cell phone on two separate calls to the same vendor, checking to see if different, but equally valid, phone option selections to the support line affect the hold time, but hanging up on one is just plain wrong.

Stupid, cute Bella dog.