Fruit Salad... Yummy Yummy
My husband has a bit of an aversion to fruit due mostly to childhood experiences involving "overripe" fruit. Let's just say... his parents are Dutch. You don't waste food.

The thing was that I knew we were going to have two weeks at home, and I didn't want to be snacking on naughty stuff the entire time. I wanted to have some good snacks in the house too.

So I made my mom's Fruit Soup, albeit the Aussie/Danielle way -- which is to say that this country doesn't always have the ingredients, and I don't always measure. But it is so great and so refreshing, and I'm sharing the recipe here.

Fruit Soup
3 Tbsp Sago (the real recipe calls for tapioca, but I'll be darned if I could find that here)
2 cups water
1/2 cup sugar
2 oranges juiced
2 lemons juiced
(Bear in mind that the lemons were the size of the average sunkist orange, and the oranges were the size of an average grapefruit, you might want one more of each if they are small. The original recipe calls for frozen orange juice and lemonade concentrate, but we don't have that here. I liked the fresh juices just as much.)
1 box frozen strawberries thawed with the juice
1 container/can diced peaches with the juice
2 branches seedless grapes (red and/or green) halved... approximate amount, more or less would be equally good

Put sago, sugar, & water in pan. Boil until sago is translucent. I think I ended up adding more water because of my unfamiliarity with sago, but it was probably fine without.

Remove from heat and add juices and fruits. Stir well and chill. Stir again before serving. Serve in a pretty dish by itself... but it is divine over ice cream.

I had intended to add other fresh fruits from the market, but they weren't very flavoursome. Still it was a hit, and I have even been told that I can make it again. Success!

Tidbits
♥ The photos below were from our Australia Zoo adventure last week. Despite the wind and rain, it was a wonderful day. We saw Terri feed the crocs. Got to see the tiger cubs. I was most impressed that they promote recycling and use real silverware and crockery to reduce waste... love it! I am now reading Terri's book My Steve and relate to it in a weird way.

♥ Lego Batman is coming... eeee!

♥ Two youtube videos you really need to watch: 24: the Unaired 1994 Pilot (omg!) and Trajen is the Movie Font.

♥ We are trying to get back into our jetlagged routine from last year when we got up early and went to bed early and thusly did not suffer in the heat so much on the way to work. We've worked up to 6:00 with 5-5:30 being the goal. I'm a bit cranky.

♥ Even though they don't ship here, I am seriously thinking about getting yoga toes. I have no idea why.

♥ Our illness at the beginning of the holidays is now under suspicion after we returned to work to discover that six of the ten of us who went to dinner that Friday night before were all hating life on Sunday. For the record, I thought the place was skanky the moment we walked in.

Tidbits

• TV-Intros.com: Prepare to spend the next 3.25 hours there. (Link via somebody I can't remember...sorry!)
• I've spent the weekend researching all the ways to hack my new phone. Of course my good friend and daily read Lifehacker has the some handy tips: Turn Your Windows Mobile Phone into an iPhone.
• Hans has been at the office all day. Ask me how happy I am about that. Not his fault. He and a workmate are there finishing up some renders. In the meantime, we're IM'ing links to YouTube videos of Disney songs to keep spirits up. (Yes, we're 30. Shut up.) Did you know they have "Hakuna Matata" in not only English but also Portuguese, French, Danish, Polish, Slovak, Dutch, Hungarian, Cantonese, and Hebrew. I'm pretty sure my favourite is Mandarin-Chinese though.
• Anyway, speaking of my other half, be at Ric's in the Valley on the 15th. It's another little mini-mid-week show but should be fun. Mmmm... pumpkin pizza from Fat Boys...

In Brief

• I stupidly wore my wedding rings (with no gloves) while scrubbing a stain with bleach today... still afraid to look close enough to see if I messed them up.
• Having a Mexican dinner this weekend. Listening to lots of Buena Vista Social Club to get in the mood.
• Seeing as I'm a Harry Potter widow this week, I'm starting my own spoiler rumor: "Ron kills Hermione... accidentally!!"

EZYdvd -- Order with Caution
How interesting to hear that I'm not the only one with a bad EZYdvd.com.au experience...

But anyway, this is the background to my story.

Being a native Iowan, I am a COMPLETE fan of Meredith Willson's The Music Man. It was the first theatre production I ever had to audition for and made. I've seen it about a zillion times. I love it.

So I've been singing some of the songs lately. One day we saw a kid in his striped school uniform jacket, and I started humming "Lida Rose" subconsciously. And I keep wanting to show it to my in-laws, because I think they'd get a real kick out of "Iowa Stubborn", with classic lines such as "join us at the picnic -- you can have your fill of all the food you bring yourself" and "we're so dog-gone stubborn we could stand touching noses for a week at a time and never see eye to eye".

Last Thursday I decided to try my luck at finding a copy of the movie somewhere in this country.

I checked the online store for THE dvd/cd store here. It wasn't in stock, but they will order it in.

I asked around the office to see if there was any other place to get DVDs online. A colleague mentioned EZYdvd.

I searched, and found it. And to my delight -- it was IN STOCK!

I quickly put it in my shopping cart. I also added Season 5 of Scrubs. Sure it was more expensive than other places, but we had a weekend of nothing ahead of us, and suddenly it was about to be filled with all the movie/tv watching that we could handle. I was excited.

I specifically checked the box to say that I wanted it sent via Startrack Express (an overnight courier service) for an extra charge so that I would have it in my hands before I left work on Friday. Bring out the popcorn, folks -- we're watching movies!

My excitement waned that afternoon when I got the email to say that my product had been shipped -- via Australian Post. (No offense to the dear people of the AUSPost, but you're just as reliable as the USPS.) (emphasis added)

Your parcel was shipped today (21/06/2007) by AUSTRALIA POST SURFACE MAIL
Whilst the Australia Post mail service is generally very reliable, it is not unusual for some items to become delayed within the postal system. Should you experience significant delays, we ask that you check thoroughly with your local post office for your parcel and wait a minimum of 10 business days before lodging a query with our office.

Oh no no... I immediately sent an email to say that I was quite certain that I had asked for the courier service.

I got a reply 3.5 hours later...(emphasis added)

I can advise that you did select courier as your delivery option, however our Credit Card provider had problems with their server yesterday and we could only manually process orders.

Unfortunately the processor who put your order through sent it by Aust Post Surface Mail in error.

We are really sorry about that and apologise for any inconvenience caused.

Ugh... fine. Maybe I was quick to get irritable. Perhaps the postal service would come through with flying colors. I decided to wait until the next day before getting upset.

Well, I think it goes without saying that the package did NOT arrive on Friday. So I sent a response to my customer service girl...

I appreciate the reply. However, I am somewhat disappointed. The whole reason I ordered from you guys was because my husband and I wanted to watch as much of "Scrubs: Season 5 " as we could on the weekend, and I thought I would have in my hot little hands before we left work today. If I had known you weren't going to send it via next day delivery as I requested, I would have canceled my order and gone to JB Fi-Hi to get it $7 cheaper on Saturday. Perhaps it might be nice to implement a policy to inform the customer before shipping if you're going to change things up on them.

Fine. Whatever. I officially am never using them again, but there wasn't anything I could do. So we went home, rented the first season of 24 and got over it.

Got over it until Monday, that is... when a package from EZYdvd arrived... SANS The Music Man! There was a Warehouse Stock Discrepancy Notification that basically said they didn't have it. But nowhere on that form did it say anything like "we will be ordering this for you posthaste and apologize for the inconvenience" or "you will be receiving a refund for the cost of this item" or anything like that.

So I fired up my email once again... (emphasis added)

I received a package today with Scrubs only. There is a piece of paper giving indication that, while your website said it was in stock, "The Music Man" was not there, in actuality. Full payment was taken out of our account yesterday. Please let me know if/when I can expect this item or the refund.

Oh yeah... they had already taken the money! Communication, people. Seriously.

Four hours after that, I get a response... (emphasis added)

Unfortunately I am unable to give you a date to when more stock will arrive, however I can confirm that we currently have placed an order for The Music Man with the distributor and expect to see it soon. As soon as this title becomes available again, we will immediately send a copy to you.

We apologise for the delay.

What. The. Crap. Honestly... if I wanted to wait for it to be imported from America, I would have just called my mom and had her send THE COPY I ALREADY OWN over... and I told her so...

Thanks for the reply, [Helen]*.

Could I please just have the $19.83 refunded to our credit card? I already own a copy of the movie and can have my mother ship it to me in a couple of days. It was one of those impulse purchases, because I thought I would have it by last Friday... and we already know how that turned out.

Thanks for your help!

Five minutes after I sent my email, I was copied in on Helen's email to Pat* asking her to refund our card. And this morning I got a confirmation email that we were refunded (though I haven't checked our account balance online yet).

I can't blame Helen, and once she got the refund-ball rolling, it happened. But I'm just so dissatisfied with their lack of up-front communication. Pretty much if I didn't have the videos by last Friday, I really didn't need them from EZYdvd at all. Maybe I'm overreacting, but I just felt conned after each little step.

As far as I am concerned, these are the facts:
1. Their website said my two items were in stock.
2. The items were not in stock.
3. They said they would send my items via overnight delivery.
4. They decided they weren't going to send my items via my requested method.
5. Points 1 & 3 are the only two reasons I ordered from them in the first place.
6. I won't be ordering from them again.
7. I wouldn't encourage you to order from them either.

*Names changed to protect the innocent.

Space: My Occupational Frontier
At work, we've been putting together a series of space dvds, that I'm disinclined to mention by name... but you can find here. We get them, edit them, and send them on for duplication. We also forward the masters and edited scripts to Sweden for their market. The last five scripts are due next week, and unfortunately, they were given to me in pdf format. And not like a document printed to PDF... more like pages scanned out of an old binder and saved as a PDF. So I'm using text-recognition to try to avoid having to type them all out again, but it has kept me busy this week.

All that to say, did you know that 95% of all UFO sightings turn out to be space junk re-entering Earth's atmosphere?