WallGreen's hell

This is a compliant email that i sent to corporate. I'm still amazed i had to go through this.



Dear Sirs,

I’m writing this with one hand as I have recently had hand reconstruction surgery. Here is the story and the reason for this letter of complaint.

On March the 9th I go into the George Washington University Hospital for my hand surgery to fix what had been broken the week before in a fall on the ice.

All goes well with the surgery except they had to do a lot more to piece the bone back together. I get out much later then I though I would be. There was more damage then they thought and took them much more time to fix I have a friend take me home and then send him to fill my pain medicine prescription.

Your Walgreen's on 21st an M streets in NW Washington DC is two blocks away from where I live and is also between me and the ER at the hospital so I used them last week to fill my prescription from the initial ER visit.

This time I send my friend to fill the prescription because I’m just coming out of general anesthesia and should not be walking about. He calls me to tell me that the pharmacist will not fill it until she verifies the prescription with the hospital and that she can’t do it that night because it had closed.

The hospital is open 24/7.

At this point I get my discharge papers and walk there myself. I’ve just had major surgery and was not going to go without pain medicine, or so I though. I get there and show her my bandaged hand along with my discharge papers and give her a phone number to call. She still will not fill the prescription. The phone doesn’t pick-up and I leave in frustration hoping that the meds from the surgery will last the night.

They did not and I was up all night in extreme pain. I get to the store the next day at 8am when it opens. The same pharmacist is there and she’s calling the hospital. I’m shaking in pain at this point. She finds out that yes I did have surgery the day before (but didn't believe me) but still will not fill the prescription until she can verify the amount. And she has to do this by fax.

By this point I’m on the verge of tears with pain and frustration. I’m luck in that my doctor’s office is walking distance from home and your store to me. Same as the hospital. I first walk to the hospital thinking they would help and they send me to my doctor’s office.

Once I get there I tell them this story and as I tell it you can see the disbelief in their eyes. The doctor calls the pharmacy in the bottom of their building to see if they had the meds and then wrote me another prescription for that pharmacy.

I go down and try to fill it but my insurance refuses because it says it’s too soon. Your pharmacist had filled it (or put it in the system anyway) and still didn’t give it to me. Luckily the new Pharmacist could back out what your person had done and I finally got my pain medicine.

I need to reiterate, YOU PHARMACIST DENIED ME PAIN MEDICINE AFTER MAJOR SURGERY!!!!!!!

I’m really trying to figure out what other actions to take against your origination. This was beyond neglect and on the verge of being just plain mean!

London in Six days.

And I am crawling out of my skin. I’m ready to be there. Ughh.

Dave and I have gone on a crash weight loss problem and general being better fit routine. I’ve lost about ten pounds and have about another three to go before we go to London. We want to get dance floor ready. I have to say it’s really, really hard. Here’s what we’ve been doing.

No drinking.
Running in the morning.
Working out in the day.
Dave isn’t eating gluten right now, I haven’t gone that far.
No going out to dinner.
I’ve been bringing my lunch to work; I know what’s in it.

So far we’ve both done very well, the only problem is that we’re both a little bit light headed and short tempered. I’ve gone from 213 lbs to 203lbs and want to lose another three pounds before next Thursday. Dave is down to 162 lbs from over 170 lbs.

We look good and will hopefully stay that way unless we kill each other.

We’re looking at this as a life style change. When we come back from London we will be doing the same thing but not as aggressively. Our next big trip is Buenos Aries for Christmas and we want to look good there too.

So much work, so little time.

Miami Trip Day One.

Well this started off well. I’m on my way to our annual fall meeting. I went to bed early and got up early for this. This time it’s in Miami. I usually fly United or USairways when I travel by air because I like my points. This trip I’ve had to go American airlines. Reason being is it was $200 compared to $400 on my preferred airlines. It’s also out of National airport which is much closer then Dulles.

Being the good boy that I am I got to the airport 2 hours before flight time, which was 12 noon. I checked in and was offered an upgrade for $90 bucks. For me that’s well worth sitting in the front of the bus for a two hour flight so I took it. I proceeded to check my bag in and go through security. I settled myself in at the RCC after a failed attempt to access the Admiral Club (American airlines lounge) and started surfing the net. I then get an alert saying the plane has been delayed. I’m in the Red Carpet Club which is very comfortable so I’m not too worried. I update my computer and then restart to check my email. The next thing I know the flight has been canceled.

WTF??

I call American and they put me on the next flight at 3:05pm. Not happy about that. I ask about my bags and the woman said that it would automatically be on the next flight. Now because I do not trust these people I go over to the American lounge and check. I saw that there was an earlier flight so I asked to be on it. The woman was quite nice and told me she would try but that I need to go pick my luggage up and recheck it.

WTF??

Recheck my baggage? United never made me do this. Seems that they do not have enough ground staff to figure out what to do when I flight is canceled so they just make you do it.

I then made a mad dash to the baggage claim and picked up my bag. Then ran back upstairs and went to the outside-curbside to recheck it. “Sir, it will not let me do it from here. You have to go back inside and do it”

WTF??

So inside I go and all of the sudden it’s really busy. Luckily the girl at the American lounge gave me priority access boarding pass which gets me in the first class line. Thank God! I’m sweating bullets at this point because I think I’m on standby for the earlier flight. I finally get my bag checked in and run back to the American lounge. The girl their confirms that I’m not on the earlier flight but that I’m confirmed on the 3:05 flight and she put me on the wait list for first (I’ve paid for it). She then tells me that if it doesn’t go through I will have to ask for a refund form at the gate.

WTF??

So now I’m at Friday’s having a 500 calorie meal and a beer writing this. And I haven’t even started my journey. I still have five days ahead of me. If this is the way the trip goes I will not be a happy camper.

At least I’m now staying at a place on the beach in Miami. That counts for something. I was supposed to be there for work tonight but I don’t think that’s going to happen. I will check-in and find a store nearby where I can get some breakfast supplies and fruit. I haven’t gotten to this weight by eating crap.

PS. I’m having the healthy meal at Friday’s, which is hard to do really. At Friday’s anyway.

Tomorrow I’ll fill in a little bit more about the trip. I’m not expecting great things to tell the truth.

And he's back.

Well let’s see, have I been busy since the last time I wrote here?

The answer is a resounding, YES!

I just dropped my mom off from a weekend that was a great success. She got in on Friday night and we went to Café Trope for dinner. It was nice and we got to visist for a bit. I do have to say that driving to Baltimore international airport on a Friday going through the city is about as much fun as being racked in the neither regions. It took about an hour and thirty five minutes to get there. I’m glad I left at five thirty for a seven ten pickup. As it was, I didn’t have to pay for parking because I was there under thirty minutes. We ended up just eating and then going to bed. We had a big day planned for Saturday.

You see my mother wasn’t the only mom in town. Dave’s mom is here from England, this is the whole reason we had a dinner party on Saturday night. The party was for eight with another joining us for dessert after. Here’s is what we had.

Watermelon salad with feta cheese, fennel, Arugula, toasted hazel nuts and a balsamic dressing for the starter.

Chicken Marbella marinated from the night before in a prune, olive, caper brown sugar, white wine and balsamic vinegar mixture. This was served with fresh fettuccini with a garlic, shaved almond, and olive oil sauce topped with poppy seeds. We also had a little cream spinach I whipped up.

For dessert we had a flourless chocolate torte with a fresh raspberry sauce and whipping cream with vanilla beans.

It was a huge success. Mom and I ended up staying on the roof talking after everyone else took off. Dave had to take his mom back to the burbs and all the other guys went out to town (the club).

The next day we had brunch at the Beacon bar and grill. This time it was the whole family, brother and sister-in-law and the baby. Sunday just turned out very nicely as did the whole weekend.

I had to take mom back to BWI yesterday in the afternoon but that wasn’t bad at all. I went to work that morning and listened to a presentation on VMware on the desktop and then meet Dave and Mom for lunch. I then dropped her off, went back to work and actually found parking right outside the building. That never happens.

I was a bit sad to see mom go, we had such a good time together and she so enjoys it up here.

This week I’m having dinner with Kiat at the Saint Regis tomorrow, having dinner with our friends Rob and Carlos on Thursday. Friday there is something to do but it’s date night so I’m not sure we’ll do it. Saturday we have three parties to go to. I think Sunday will be a go see a movie in the afternoon unless of course one of our friends shows up from the UK, which happens.

On another note, I’m finally feeling close to 100%. I’ve had a throat blossom in the back of my throat where my right ear drains into my throat. Now it only bugged me every so often so I thought it was allergies. Well we ended up going to the doctor for another issue and he put us on antibiotics. The back of my throat has almost cleared up completely. Seems I’ve had this thing for two or three months and just felt down the whole time but being me refused to accept that and still worked out and hung out with friend. All I have to say and now I feel like my old self again. Next time I know what to do if it happens again.

Our next trip it the UK in November together, I might have to go to Miami for work in October. We will then go to Buenos Aires for Christmas and Cape Town in October. There might be a New Zealand trip in there somewhere, we’ll see.

I think that’s enough to write for my come back. I’ll write about the restaurant on Thursday.

Cape Town accommodations

Dave and I started looking for places to stay for our big trips this year. The first challenge was getting affordable plane tickets to Buenos Aries, our fist destination, in December for the Christmas holiday. We originally wanted to leave on December the 23rd and come back on the 4th. We looked at a United flight which is direct from Washington Dulles but the price was close to 3k for a coach class ticket. That is way out of our price range. So I stated looking at alternative offerings from other airlines in the star alliance (we like our points)

We found Air Canada out of Toronto for about 1k each. It would be a trip from Washington National to Toronto to Buenos Aires. The problem is we were not sure we wanted to go so we procrastinated.

We shouldn’t have done that. The prices went up to close to what united was charging for those dates. We made up our minds to stay at home and see what was being offered by way of an esaver the week before Christmas.

But I wouldn’t let it die and one day decided to look around some more.

I found that if you left on the 25th and came back on the 5th the price dropped from $2,900.00 to $947.00 each. I called Dave and told him about it. We got the tickets within thirty minutes of that conversation. Which is good because I looked again after that and the price had gone up again to $2,900.00 for those dates too.

So now we have the tickets to Buenos Aires but no place to stay. This mirrored the situation we were in for Cape Town South Africa for March. I got us free tickets on points, including my sister coming out of Charlotte NC but we didn’t have a place to stay.

Dave and I decided to spend the weekend looking for places to stay, my job was Cape Town and his was Buenos Aires.

Let me tell you, this is not an easy or fast job. There are way too many places to look at on the internet.

I looked and looked and looked and sent off inquiries to a bunch of places but was getting discouraged. You see we need a place for the whole month. We have a staggered schedule of Dave and his mom, then Dave and my sister, then Dave my sister and me and then Dave and me with maybe some friends coming to stay from Brazil and the UK. We were very fortunate in the last couple of visits to get places to stay in the $100 to $150 a day range.

I wasn’t finding anything like that this time, it was all $300 to $ 500 a day for something we wanted to stay in and $200 a day for something we didn’t want to stay in on the bad side of town. I finally asked someone about a place in Bantry Bay. It was rented but they had another suggestion if I didn’t mind looking at it, and they offered a monthly rate.

We looked at it and it looked interesting. It was a three bedroom (we were looking at two bedrooms) with a roof deck and it was in the right location. Here is the link to the description.

Now here is the good part, we were offered it for the whole month for 22, 500 Rand, or about 3k or about $98 a night. Now what you have to know is that it normally rents for three times that even in the slow season so I wasn’t sure what was going on. Seems that the girl mistook the monthly rate paid if you stay for a year with the monthly rate if you only stay for a month and she quoted us the yearly/monthly rate by mistake. And they are standing by the mistake!! We couldn’t be happier. It was looking like lodging was going to cost around 7k to 8k for something we wanted to stay in. Oh happy days.

So now we’re still looking for a place to stay Christmas in Buenos Aires. Dave has a few leads and we are just waiting to hear back from them. I think we've narrowed it down to two in the same building.

Somewhere in all this we have a life with work and friends happening too. Never a dull moment in our lives.

Playa Del Carmen

Rob over Christmas “We need to go to Playa Del Carmen”

Me, calling his bluff “Ok, how about over 4th of July”

Rob, calling my bluff “Fabulous! I’ll set it up”

Me in my mind “ Oh f*ck, now we really have to go”

Rob and Mikko have been telling us for years how great Playa was (We’ll call it Playa from now on to shorten things even if it does just mean beach in Spanish) for years. They have gone for New Years and other times of the year. We’ve done places like Rio over New Years. So finally we were nailed down on a time to go.

It was one of the best times we’ve had. And that was a huge surprise.

For some reason Dave and I had this notion that Mexico was not a destination that we wanted to visit. There are more exotic places in the world that we wanted to go to but a few things happened along the way over the last year that changed that thought.

The dollar SUCKS against most currencies!!

Fuel prices have driven plane tickets to the point of being ridiculous. I checked a ticket to CLT from DCA and it was $800. That’s an hour trip!!

So both of those reasons made going to Mexico much more attractive. We used points to get the plane tickets and the peso is still a good value so the room was cheap and everything else was cheapish too even though we were in tourist central.

The days consisted of getting up at 11ish and going to the beach to lounge around at the most amazing beach club until about 6 drinking bear and eating lunch. We would then go back and take a little nap before heading to dinner at around 9pm. Then it was time to go to the local gay bar called Playa 69. Funny great name I think. And we would stay there until the wee hours of the night go home and then do it again.

This happened every day except Monday when Playa 69 was closed so this forced us to get some sleep that night. I also went deep sea fishing on Thursday so I had a little bit of an early night on Wednesday because I had to be up and out of the house for the boat at around 7am.

This was pretty much the vacation and we enjoyed it greatly.

I especially liked the fishing even though I feed the fish coffee three times while we were on the very small boat out on the very rough sea. Ughhh!!!! Luckily I didn’t eat any solid food that morning. Still we caught 7 fish between the 8 of us, which was 7 more than what some of the other boats caught. We got a sail fish which I’ve never seen caught before. It was at least 4 feet long but we let it go (Bill fish are endangered) and we also caught a Mahi Mahi that was just as big. I caught a mackerel and a barracuda. When we caught the Mahi Mahi two other boats come over to see us pull it in and when we got to the beach 20 people showed up to look at it. Seems no one had caught a Mahi that big in six months. Everyone was so envious. I was so proud of my friends and their catches.

Also, as soon as I put my feet back on the ground my sea sickness went away. What a relief. I don’t remember feeling that bad and I hate throwing up.

That night we took half of the Mahi Mahi and a Barracuda back to the flat and proceeded to have a dinner party for 14 with plenty of fish. All in all a very good day.

Me to Rob “We are soooo coming back”

Rob to me “We knew you would”

So, that was our trip to Playa Del Carmen. I left out anything that was R rated or worse. Those are stories for in person.

I won!

Seems I’m going to be in Paris this weekend without a playmate. I entered a contest (http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=834270 I’m ckc123) and, wonder of wonders, I won. I leave on Thursday night and come back on Sunday. I’m staying here: http://www.hotel-saintmerry.com/english.html

This is a great little get-a-way. I tried to get some people to meet me there but it happened so last minute that a ticket is now in the 5k price range because all of the coach seats are taken.

Last Thursday I read that flyertalk.com was having a give-a-way of 20 seats on a brand new luxury airlines called openskies.com. They are being started by British Airways. The new service starts on the 19th so I will be on the inaugural flight. I entered and then the next day found out I was one of the chosen to go. This gave me six days to get this prepared. So I have everything set up and I’m ready to go now. I’ve figured out where the hotel is and found a nice bistro that a friend recommended.

I’ll write about it when I get back.