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January 02, 2017 - 12:44 a.m.
welcome, 2017

Hey Journal!

Welcome to the first day of 2017! So far, so good!

I have to take this opportunity to say Happy New Year... because it's the first day!

I woke up this morning at about 10:30 and Dan and I went downstairs and watched some TV. We had two episodes of Walking Dead left to finish up so we got right into it. The last episodes was okay, but overall this half-season has been terribly boring and slow and just not what I expect from TWD.

For lunch, we went out to meet my mom at Branchinelli's for pizza. We waited for a table to open upon the other side of the restaurant and we just got a slice each to hold us over until dinner.

After that, Dan and I went to Target and we got some Christmas sale items! Gotta take advantage of the great clearance prices!

When we got home, we had about two hours until we had to leave to go dinner with Linda. I watched a couple of episodes of The Twilight Zone and Dan went into the dining room on a mission to catalog all of our gift cards! We have so many -- some that we've had for a REALLY long time. So, Dan called all of them in and figured out the balances and wrote them all down.

There was on that gave him some trouble. It was a Macy's card and, I remember getting it a long time ago as a gift from someone, but we don't remember who. It has been sitting around for so long, and when Dan called to check the balance, the automated system transferred tim to a representative. He read the number, and the person told him that because it hadn't been used in so long, it had been "locked" for security.

Dan asked what had to be done to UNLOCK the card so that we could get the balance and use it. The woman told us we would need to know the original balance. Now, Dan thought he had used this card one already, but he didn't remember how much was on it when it was given to him possibly more than six years ago!

So, he explained that to the woman, but she said that she would not be able to help us unless we had proof of purchase! WHAT? So, let me understand this -- you need proof of purchase for a gift card you didn't buy, but received as a gift, over seven years ago? Even if we remembered who had gotten it for us, do you think they still have the receipt still sitting round?

Macy's is such a scammy company. I really dislike them. They do really shifty things and have policies that are very unfriendly to the customer. Anyway -- this is just the most recent of many things I've learned about them over the years. I try NOT to shop there whenever possible,

Alas, Dan was really ticked off. So, at this point, we had one hour till we were supposed to be meeting for dinner so we left home and went to the Macy's that's on the way. Dan pike dout some stupid sweatshirt (we'll return it later) and went up to the register to buy it. They guy tried the card and said "this card didn't work." Dan insisted it had a balance, so the man called some internal number or something. When he got off the phone, he told Dan there was nothing on the card! Dan insisted it had a usable balance -- as we were SURE it had not been used before.

The part that drives me nuts here is that some people may say. "Oh, okay, I guess I used it before" or "I must have used it online" and not know and throw it out -- and now Macy's has banked YOUR money! It's really fraud of an epic proportion!

Anyway, Dan called the number again and spoke to someone. He told them he was at the store and that he wanted to use his balance. This person seemed more agreeable and she opened the card to be used. Dan was able to buy the stupid sweatshirt. Perfect.

I just can't believe they would make you jump through hoops to use a gift card. The card says that it never expires and the card says you'll need proof of purchase IF you lose the card! BUT THIS CARD WAS NOT LOST! It was right here... in our hands. What a scam,

Anyway, we finished there in good time so we went to Home Depot as we headed out to Buffalo Wild Wings. We wanted to get some little stakes to hold up our big plastic Christmas Santa/Snowmen. When we got home later on, we installed them and it's amazing -- we should have gotten these WEEKS ago! The stupid things would fall over every night and now they're much more stable!

Anyway, we met Linda, Dan, Connor, and Cameron at BWW in DP at 7:00. This time, I was happy to order and receive my Naked Tenders without any mixups!

We had a fun time, exchanged out New Year's Eve stories -- thought Dan and I didn't have too much to report, and we enjoyed our first meal out together in 2017!

After we ate, we made our pilgrimage to Target. Yes, we just can't get enough. New year, same us!

We perused the goods and spent special attention on the clearance Christmas stuff. I was excited to see a different store's leftover items -- you never know what you'll find! Linda stocked up on wrapping paper and other decorations. Dan and I only got a few small things. The Reese's candy canes were now only .30 each! Wahoo!

While we were in the clearance area, I put one of the Christmas stockings on Cameron's foot! It was funny watching her walk down the aisle with it on so I recorded a video with the Home Alone music in the background! It came out quite good, if I do say so myself!

Dan picked out this big thing that looked like an antelope head but turned out to be an Onix head. It had no price on it and the guy in the back of the store didn't know what it was and couldn't locate any means of figuring it out. He told us to bring it up front.

When it was time to check out, Dan presented the head to our friendly cashier, Tawanna. Tawanna was perplexed and so she ran off to ask someone else. While this was happening, the woman behind us on line was getting so irritated that she had to wait so long. She eventually gave up and went to another line!

Then some other guy got behind us but he was in rush at all. He seemed like a quiet, shy, type guy and looked very mild-mannered. He also had a tattoo of skeleton bones on his hands.... which I didn't think went with the rest of his look!

After a lot of discussion, Tawanna returned and the agreement Dan and the Target leader came to was that the item was 29.99 but was on clearance for 70% off! BAM! $9 Onix head! I don't think i would have ever bought it if it wasn't for the whole crazy thing that went down with it. Now we have it. No idea what to do with it.

Another successful Target trip! We all got some stuff we "needed" and we had a good time in the process. We also did get some contact solution and had a $5 coupon that my mom gave us. Bam Bam bam!

We said goodnight and headed on home after that.

I took a shower and then Dan and I watched a couple more Twilight Zone episodes! I feel it's my obligation to watch as many as I can on New Year's Day. It's just a tradition and I would feel like I really missed out on something. I skimmed through the upcoming episodes and tried to record any of the ones that sounded interesting. There are a lot I haven't seen so hopefully I can find some more good ones. I did, of course, set a recording for Willoughby! That's one of Dan's favorites!

After dinner I got the hiccups really bad! I couldn't stop it... they followed me all the way to Target. At some point during our time there, they disappeared, thankfully! And just as I sat down to write this, my hiccups came back! I can't believe it!

Ugh! Well, I'm off to try to get to sleep and hopefully the hiccups will go away.

Until tomorrow...

Goodnight. :)