Okay it's been a while... the Walmart Robots

I lived in downtown Montreal until August 1998. So my exposure to Walmart had been limited. The first time I went to one was when I was visiting my sister in Sarnia, Ontario a year or so before moving. I had always hated what Walmart was doing. Sure great prices for shoppers, but at the sacrifice of jobs and small businesses. The same people that bitch about the employment opportunities are the ones that do as much of their shopping as possible at Walmart.

Anyhow, my contempt of Walmart somewhat lessened when I moved to a small city in Ontario. Basically, it's the only place you can go here to buy most things. Since I travel a good deal, I've also been to Walmarts in many other cities too.

Every Walmart is essentially the same. Predictable experience. They've applied the system format that originated in the restaurant industry. People like knowing what to expect.

I had a recent Walmart robot experience I needed to get off of my chest.

I wear daily contact lenses. Daily contact lenses are also very expensive. I've been buying mine from the same place in Montreal for about 10 years, if not more. It's a downtown boutique store. I pay $180 for 6 boxes of lenses. Basically enough for 3 months. I also get a manufacturers coupon I can use to get $40 back 3 times a year when I purchase 6 boxes at a time.

If you do the math on it, thats a lot of moolah I'm spending on contacts. Obviously if I can save a bit of money somehow, then great.

About a year ago, I went to the local Walmart's optical store. Found out that buying my contacts there would be about $100 more a year than through the opticians in Montreal. Online options were about the same price as Walmart too.

Earlier this year when reviewing my budget, I decided to investigate things. I had switched to these lenses maybe 2 years ago when they first came out on the market. So I figured that maybe prices elsewhere had gone down.

I go back to my local Walmart and talk with a sales clerk in the optical store. Had one of my lenses with me in the package to make sure I was getting the price for the right lenses. I was told that to buy an individual box of 30 lenses it would be $28. Prices would go down starting at 2 boxes. At 6 boxes, it would be $20 a box. $120 in total. Net result would be saving $140/year and I didn't have to deal with the hassles of ordering lenses from another city. Long distance call to order and then getting husband to pick them up when he commutes into the city. So overall, it seemed worth it.

After writing down the pricing I was quoted, I asked the clerk what I needed to do. He said I needed to go to my opthamologist to get an eye exam done.

Unfortunately OHIP (Ontario's Health Insurance Program) no longer covers eye examinations. My health insurance company doesn't either. My exam was $35.

I made my appointment on a Monday since my husband works from home that day so easier for him to take me around. I then headed on over to Walmart and handed over my prescription along with a sample of the lenses I wear.

I was told I needed to get an eye exam there to be fitted for contacts. Of course, the optician doesn't work Mondays. Appointments are available Tuesday through Friday. Saturday is open clinic. Oh and there is also a $15 charge for the fitting too.

So I make an appointment for the next night. It's the only night the optician works late. (I guess Walmart's optical center caters to the unemployed and retired!) Husband rushes home after commuting to get me there on time for my appointment.

Optician spends about 10 minutes with me. Half of that writing down a brief medical history and the other half looking up pricing. Well, it turns out that it is $30 a box and there are no discounts for buying multiple boxes. No manufacturers rebate. Huh? This makes no sense. It didn't matter to the optician that I had just gotten a quote from a sales clerk a couple of weeks ago for $140/year difference! Why the heck would I go through all of these hoops to pay more money than I was already spending. At this point, my husband says to me, "Lets go. Just get them from Montreal." But I was there already and figured I may as well get two boxes.

I'm then told that it takes a WEEK to get them in. I didn't expect them to keep them in stock, but I'd at least expect a little faster time than that. The place in Montreal I've been going to normally gets them in 2 business days after I order. Why would Walmart be slower than a small store??

So a week later, I get a call. I'm told to make sure that the pick up is done when the optician is in. I figured that since I didn't need an appointment or see the optician, I'd just get my husband to pick them up when he does his errands Saturday morning.

Wrong. Husband gets there and he's told that the optician needs to see ME personally. After all of this hassle, my husband just blew up. It takes a lot for him to reach that level, but it happened.

A couple of hours later, we head back over to Walmart. The optician, it turns out, needs to do a check of my eyes with and without my contacts in. Now as much as I've been wearing contacts for eons..... I still have problems with getting them in. I actually ended up in the ER earlier this year after breaking a contact in my eye. I also don't put the same lenses back in my eyes. So I didn't want to do it. The lenses were exactly the same I had been wearing for 18 months. No change. Why did he need to do this now? So my darling husband says lets forget it and get them in Montreal. Unfortunately by this point, I was wearing my last pair of lenses. With it being a Saturday, it would be Wednesday or Thursday before I'd be able to get them from my Montreal store. The optician at one point in all of this says if he doesn't do the exam, he can lose his license since its a legal requirement in Ontario. I reminded him that I had told him I had been buying from Montreal... so it would have been nice to have been informed of this before.

The staff there just looked like robots. No emotion. No sign of sympathizing. It was kind of like - this is the way it is. They didn't seem to get that I had been quoted a substantially different price just a few weeks earlier for the same thing. They didn't seem to get the sheer hassles and negligence when it came to explaining to their customers how things worked there. The only good points are that in all the confusion, I wasn't charge the $15 fee for the exam and the optician gave me a container of contact lense solution and a case for when I took out the pair I was wearing.

When leaving the store, I stopped at the Customer Service counter and asked if they had a complaint form. I was directed to a box of slips to nominate an employee for exceptional work. Sigh.

Not only did I not get the savings I was expected, but I spent money on an unnecessary eye exam, had to go to the eye exam and either my husband or I made a total of five trips just to pay more than what I was paying before.

Vent over.

Review - Movie - Saw Part II

I picked up the DVD for Saw on the weekend. The director's commentary (actually director + writer) was really interesting. I think it should be required viewing for any aspiring filmmaker. It gave me a much better appreciation for the amount of work that goes into making a low-budget flick.

Review - TV - Living With Fran

Okay, okay. I'll admit it. I'm a huge fan of Fran Drescher. While others may find her annoying, I think she's a hoot. I also think she has to be an amazingly strong person not only to have pulled herself together after some of what has happened in her life, but to be able to talk about it as openly as she has.

I had been anxious to see "Living with Fran." Primarily because since "Friends" went off the air, there really hasn't been a sitcom to catch my interest.

Friday night both the pilot and a regular episode of "Living with Fran" aired. God, the pilot sucked. The jokes were almost forced. The laugh track was awful. (Who in tv land REALLY thinks that laugh tracks do anything GOOD?) I was absolutely ready to throw in the towel.

But I hung in there and watched the next episode. A huge improvement. There wasn't the same attempt to turn every line into a joke. The laugh track wasn't as annoying. Overall, it was a huge improvement.

After seeing the difference between the two episodes, I am not entirely sure why they even bothered to air the pilot. It wouldn't surprise me to find out that a lot of people were so turned off by it, they wouldn't have bothered with watching the next episode.

The premise of the show is pretty simple: Fran's character has been divorced for 2 years. She met and fell in love with a much younger contractor. We know he's supposed to be 26 (although I believe in real life he is 29). We don't know how old she is supposed to be (in real life, I think she's 47 or 48). She has a 15 year old daughter that lives with them. She also has an older son (I believe he's supposed to be 23) that had been living with his father and estranged from Fran until he got booted out of medical school for having a breakdown. The son moves back home and doesn't know about mom's new boyfriend. He doesn't seem to be coping with the idea very well during the first couple of episodes.

Is the premise believable? Well, Fran looks amazing for her age. She hasn't changed much since "The Nanny." I don't know if she has had plastic surgery, but if she has, her surgeon is a genius because it doesn't look like it. In real life, she supposedly dated a much younger man for a while. I think it works.

I'll give the first episode 1 star but the second one a 3 star. I'll reserve judgment for another episode or two to see whether I'll continue to watch it.

Movie Review: Saw (Spoiler)

I saw the movie Saw last night. I'd heard a number of mixed things about it. It seems to be the type of movie you either love or hate.

Usually I end up disliking movies when I hear a lot of good things about them. I guess hype surrounding a movie (or anything else for that matter) tends to make me more skeptical about it.

In this case, I knew that it was a low-budget movie and the first movie made by both the writer and director. Where a lot of negative reviews pointed out the many flaws with the movie, I was really surprised at how good it was for a low-budget flick. Sure there were a lot of things wrong with it, but overall, I enjoyed it. (Okay, 'enjoyed' may sound a little perverse given the subject matter.)

When it comes to any kind of entertainment, how I rate something comes down to three things:

1. The 'escape' value. Something with a high escape value will find me losing track of time while something with a low value will have me looking at the time. Basically, how well does it keep my attention.
2. Did I walk away with something? Did it make me think, evoke emotions (even if it's something as simple as genuine laughter) or leave me questioning my feelings and opinions about something?
3. Will I remember it? This is really tied in closely with #2. But there are many books, movies and tv shows that I didn't really walk away with anything from, yet I remembered it for some reason.

In all 3 cases, "Saw" came out on top for me.

I know that many who have seen the movie, didn't like the ending because it left so many unanswered questions. The top two being: do Adam and Lawrence survive? Given the number of discussions I've seen online about this, I wanted to share my two cents.

We know that Jigsaw's 'game' is about getting people to prove what life means to them by their being able to complete tests. We know that it is possible to win his tests and survival is a possible outcome because Amanda passed her test and lived. We also know that Jigsaw really thought things through carefully.

So, if you take the survival of Adam and Lawrence on the basis that they would each win or die depending on whether they passed or failed their tests, it makes things a lot easier.

Lawrence obviously failed. He missed his 6 o'clock deadline for killing Adam. Amputating his foot as he did, with the resulting blood loss, it's hard to imagine that survival was even a remote possibility. I can't imagine how Lawrence could have survived. He shouldn't have according to Jigsaw's rules.

Adam is another story. He was not given as straightforward a test as the others. Adam had been a voyeur into others people's lives and neglecting his own. Jigsaw wanted him to learn to appreciate the value of his own life.

I've read the opinions of a number of people that Adam still had a final test: to get the key out of the drain. However, before Jigsaw leaves the washroom, he tells Adam, "Game over." In saying this, I believe that Jigsaw is telling Adam that he won.

Many people also seem to believe that Adam's survival is contingent on him being able to somehow obtain the key and undo the lock holding his chains. I don't think that is even necessary. He's only been locked in the washroom for a matter of 6-7 hours. He could easily survive there for days. We saw that the video was set up in the doctor's home showing the washroom. Lawrence's wife will be able to tell the police about the cell phone call. The cell phone is in the washroom. Presumably, even without someone answering the phone, eventually, by continually ringing it, they'd be able to track it down. If Lawrence was able to get partway out of where they were hidden, I'm sure that would make it easier to find Adam.

The only way I can imagine that Adam would not survive until help came would be if he somehow killed himself. I doubt that would happen because he's already shown he wants to live.

So, I think the death of Lawrence and eventual survival of Adam are inevitable.

A couple of things I think were interesting in the movie that I wish had been better explored or explained:

It seems like Lawrence was a target of Jigsaw's from the beginning. Lawrence was framed to look like he was Jigsaw. But more than that - we know that the police raid on Jigsaw's hideout happened 6 months before Lawrence's kidnapping. Yet in Jigsaw's hideout, there was a model of the washroom that Lawrence and Adam were held captive in.

Other than being Jigsaw's doctor, what was Jigsaw's real issue with Lawrence? It seems like there was more to this than Lawrence being a simple victim.

Also, the issue of Jigsaw's tumor... coincidentally I am finishing reading Michael Crichton's "The Terminal Man." In this book, the main character suffers from a flaw in his brain that results in seizures that precipitate increasingly violent behavior. Doctors within the book say they have reason to believe that physical deformities of the brain often are the cause of psychotic or extreme criminal behavior. Seeing "Saw" so close to reading this book made it a little easier for me grasp the idea that a tumour could, in fact, result in homidical/psychopathic behavior.

Excuses and the trouble with quitting

From the time I started on my previous post until about an hour ago, I didn't smoke. Granted, I was asleep half of the time. But I did manage not to smoke for about 5 hours of being awake. Then I got up after napping and boom...the little nicodemon got me yet again.

I think that part of my problem right now is that my smoking is only having minor affects on me healthwise. I haven't had to use my daily asthma inhaler in over 3 months now. I haven't had an actual asthma attack this year. (Removing most carpeting from my house in the fall seemed to really help.) My coughing isn't bad and it doesn't wake me up.

So the little nicodemon is playing mind games with me. As much as I want to stop and I know the damage, the signs of it killing me right now aren't staring me in the face.

This will sound awful but if I were sick right now, this would be so much easier.

There's a great site that gives a little too much of a reality dose of what smoking does to you. The pictures and stories there look almost staged they are that gruesome. If that is what smoking does to you, then why don't they show us stories and pictures like this ("they" being everyone that says we need to quit). Sure, there are a lot of PSA's that tell us we shouldn't smoke, that smoking causes health issues, etc... but why not just put it right in our faces. They do that to some extent with cigarette packages here in Canada with the gruesome pictures. But that doesn't do it. Seeing the savage effects of cancer and knowing the personal story of a whole person humanizes it. It makes it more real. The pictures on the cigarette packages of someone's mouth or a cancerous lung... what exactly is that supposed to do?

Part of my fear right now is wondering right now if it is already too late. Do I have cancerous cells already growing in my body somewhere? I've already stared two types of cancer in the face myself - skin cancer and cervical cancer. Obviously that wasn't enough encouragement or enough of a scare for me to quit.

I know that even if I already have precancerous cells, chances are that if I quit before they actually become cancerous, with the wonders of how the body works - I'll be okay.

I hate that I smoke. I hate the hold that cigarettes have over me. Even after so many years of being a smoker (21 versus 16 of not smoking), I don't see myself as a smoker.

Sigh.

If you've ever smoked or you might smoke now.. you might know the panic or anxiety that comes with running low on cigarettes. I buy cigarettes by the carton. I never let myself go down to less than 2 packs and here I am with one pack on hand. The weather is nice, so I can just take a walk to the store to get some if I run out.

The way smoking preoccupies the thoughts of smokers - especially those of us who really want to quit - is sad. So much time, energy and thought wasted on such a stupid stupid habit.

Part of me feels like I need a game plan. I make plans - lists - everyone that knows me well jokes about how anal I am about making lists. They tend to work for me. In this case, I've tried the lists and plans before and they haven't worked.

Am I just making a bigger deal out of this than it needs to be? If I quit cold turkey, I'll have a few rough days and then it will get easier as long as I take it minute by minute.

My doctor gave me a prescription for Elavin - a mild dose - and told me to take that before going to bed and do a combination of patch and gum. The Elavin is supposed to help with me sleeping. When I've used the patch before, it worked well for me except that I had wild dreams if I wore it when sleeping. I also had problems with getting pains in my arms if I didn't rotate them enough. My first experience with the patch stopped when I started to get nose bleeds. That was scary! My doctor at the time (different one than this one) thought it was because I was getting in too much nicotine.

I guess what I'm getting at here is that it's hard for me to make a plan because I can't predict how I will be affected by the steps I take in order to stop. I can't predict nose bleeds from wearing the patch. That happened once. I got a sore jaw from the one time I tried nicotine gum. I already related my experiences with anxiety attacks on Zyban/Wellbutrin.

I do know that I have 2 issues to tackle at the same time - adjusting to not smoking itself. The habit cigarettes. And then the addiction component.

I know all the arguments about why NRT isn't a good thing. Best just to get the nicotine out of your body once and for all. I know the success rates are lower than cold turkey with education. Bah. I just want to get this over and done with in the 'easiest' way I can. I just don't know what the easiest way is.

My First Blog Entry - My cat Smokey and quitting smoking

Okay, I'll admit it. The title of this post is really unique, isn't it? Actually given that I've spent the first 37 years of my life having an opinion and I've been online for more than half of my life, it really is amazing that I haven't started a blog before now.

I lie. I actually made 2 previous attempts at starting one. The first was in 2001. I made one entry. In 2003 I made 2. This time, I'm determined to stick it out.

I have a good reason why too.

3 weeks ago Monday Smokey, one of my 7 cats (yes 7!) was diagnosed with oral squamous cell cancer. He was put out of his pain exactly 3 weeks after we found out. Smokey would have been 10 on April 16th. This was way too young for a cat to die. He went too fast. Oral sqamous cell cancer is a nasty form of cancer. I think I've shed more tears since we found out than I have in my entire life to date. I don't want to get into this any further right now. It's been an unbearable couple of days and a very tough few weeks.

I can't do anything to bring Smokey back. I couldn't do anything to stop the progression of the cancer he so valiantly was fighting. But I can do something for me and for my other cats - and that is to quit smoking.

I don't know if my smoking contributed to his cancer. I do know it certainly couldn't have helped. I've made efforts not to smoke around my cats in general. Maybe not as hard of an effort as I should have. I have been dealing with guilt about smoking since Smokey was diagnosed.

I started smoking when I was 16. By my early 20's, I was at a pack a day. (In Canada, packs are 25 cigarettes.) I never understood why. My mother smoked and I used to be a very vocal anti-smoker. I hated the smell. I couldn't understand why people did it. It caused awful illnesses. Yet somehow I managed to start.

Around 30, my smoking increased slightly. I've averaged 30-40 cigarettes a day since then.

I've tried to quit. Many, many times. But something always seems to happen. My last real quitting attempt was a few years ago. I was suffering through it, but I had made it almost to the end of my third month. Then a tax auditor showed up at the door and gave me 2 weeks to get together 4 years of tax records. I continued NOT smoking until the night before the audit. I just couldn't concentrate. I now know that it was a cop-out. Smoking does not help me concentrate. I just wasn't equipped to deal with the stress cigarette-free. I now know that was a cop-out as well.

I've hated smoking since around the age of 29. I mean, I really hated it. I remember the trigger moment for me where this hatred started. I was in a restaurant in Old Montreal with my husband. We were in the smoking section. It was a hot summer night and even as a smoker, the lack of ventilation and smoke in the room were bothering me. A couple walked in. The woman was pregnant. I'm not sure how far along, but she could have been due any time. I got David, my husband, to look at them. I was really surprised at her coming into a stinky smoking section like that to begin with. I was more surprised when I saw the woman light a cigarette up when she sat down. Surprised isn't the word. Shocked. Appalled. Yeah, those words are much better.

The reality of the little nico-demon and the hold it has over smokers really hit me then. Did this woman really want to poison her unborn child with thousands of toxins? How could she do this in public? Didn't she feel shame?

I had a cigarette lit myself when she had lit hers. I stubbed it out. Crumpled up my package. Stopped then. That quit attempt was my first one. I think if I had really thought about quitting prior to that, I might very well have been able to have stayed away from cigarettes. But I had no knowledge at the time about how just one cigarette would get me hooked again.

I won't even begin to guess how many times I've tried to quit since then. Dozens? I know that I always have nicorette and the patch on hand - being prepared for my next attempt. I've tried Zyban and Wellbutrin. Have both sitting in my cabinet too. Zyban worked well for me but I got anxiety attacks while on it (which I never had before starting on it). I think the anxiety attacks were caused by my aversion to taking any type of medication. Irony there for you - I'm more worried about the small potential for side effects of a prescription drug than I am about the effects of smoking!

I've downloaded and started up 'quit meters' more times than I care to think about. I've gone to bed many nights intending on getting up smoke free in the morning.

I have a lot of good reasons to quit. My mom died at 67 after having had a few heart attacks and 2 strokes. Instead of enjoying retirement with my dad, from almost the time she retired, she was sick. The last few years of her life were hell for both her and my dad. I've seen first hand with smoking can do.

I started having problems with my breathing around the age of 30. Had tests done and it turns out I developed a mild case of asthma. (I had mild asthma as a teen, but never had to do anything for it.) The asthma has been worse off and on over the past few years. A late night at the computer with lots of smokes and I wake up being unable to breathe. I start off my morning with the same routine - a cup of coffee, a halls cough drop and a cigarette. I need the cough drop now in order to have my first cigarette of the day. How stupid can you be?

I know that whenever I have been on a quit, I have never had to use my inhaler. Is smoking worth having asthma issues?

I'm worried about emphysema. Really worried. January 2004, I got really sick. Sick to the point that I actually coughed up blood. Gosh, that was awful. I was too sick to smoke, yet as soon as I felt well enough, i started again. Lung cancer scares me as do many other kinds of cancer, but not as much as emphysema.

What does this have to do with Smokey getting oral scc? For the first time in my life, I feel really scared. I saw how fast he progressed with cancer. I've now lived with a living being with aggressive cancer. I don't want that to happen to me. I know that the number one cancer to kill is lung cancer. I know that 90% of people with lung cancer are smokers or former smokers. Most of the rest get it from second-hand smoke. I saw some recent numbers on the odds of a woman today dying of lung cancer. 1 in 18. That includes non-smokers as well. So continuing to smoke, I'm basically looking at 1 in 5-6 odds of dying from lung cancer.

I had a sign yesterday that the timing was right for me. A further reminder. Peter Jennings announced that he had lung cancer. He didn't give details as far as the type of cancer or the stage it is at, but he is starting chemo - which probably means it is far along. He's 66 and apparently stopped smoking just over 20 years ago but started again after 9/11 (permanently? I don't know). Regardless, he DID stop for all that time and he still got lung cancer. That really sucks. You have to wonder how he felt about starting again. If he hadn't, would he have still gotten it? Was the damage from all those years ago?

Sharon