Wednesday, October 29, 2014

10/28/14 Albuquerque

First thing in the AM I headed back to Coco Bean to get an Americano to go this time. :-) I then went to Gonzales Woodworks to get my tabletop. It was done and it damn sure isn't breaking again. He clamped and glued it, then attached two braces of angle iron. Total came to $60. Yeah, I might have paid only a bit more for a new one but where would I find the exact fit. I had no complaints. especially done in such a rush.

I set off for ABQ.  Looking at Gas Buddy it looked like exit 102, Acoma Travel center, had the cheapest gas at $2.72. As I approached the exit I had some deja vu......didn't this place suck in Dec? As soon as I exited I realized, yes, this was the sucky gas station I stopped at on that trip too. Roundabouts and weird turns everywhere. :-/.  It took a while but I finally got gas, and remembered to put gas in the gas can too.

Back on the highway, I set my sights on the UPS store on Ellison Dr in ABQ. I had called in the am asking if it was ok that I had had my amazon packages shipped to their store. When I signed up for a UPS Premium MyChoice membership at $40, I understood part of what I was paying for was the right to send packages to any UPS store. Someone else had told me I was wrong in this and there was a chance they'd refuse the package. I wanted to make sure before I went all that way. The guy on the phone said no problem. Phew. It took a little over an hour to get there but it was a bear to find. I parked in front of a Barnes and Noble bookstore. I haven't seen one in years.  I walked to the UPS store, and a pleasant lady gave me one of my three packages. She said it was no problem shipping there and just tell them I was a premium MyChoice member when I picked stuff up. I went back to B&N to kill time until the other 2 packages showed up. I almost spent tons of $$. I didn't realize how much I missed bookstores. I got the text that my UPS package had been delivered and headed back there. Well, what a difference a shift change makes! Gone was the nice lady and in her place was a harpy who yelled at me, told me not to ship there, charged me $10 to ransom my stuff, and told me at one point, "I don't work for UPS. These stores are franchises. You paid UPS not me." when I asked what I had paid $40 membership fee for. And that right there is bullshit. If you want to put a company name on your store (UPS) then you need to at least pretend you are part of that company. When I called UPS to complain they weren't too impressed by that remark either. Whatever.....I'm done with that outfit and I certainly won't be paying that $40 again.

Next on the agenda was Costco. Went from the world of suck customer service to excellent CS. I bought a new Toshiba laptop. The Envy (and trust me, don't envy anyone with an HP computer...this is my third dud) ate one HD before I left and was bluescreening and giving HD errors with a new HD so I couldn't trust it. I guess it's some motherboard problem. Anyway.....it looks like a nice machine and I love Costco's 90 day return policy on computers. The first Envy I got failed near the end of the 90 days and my error then was in not just getting a refund instead of an exchange. Never again on HP either.

Next up was Petsmart. I needed stuff for the composting toilet. I wanted to try pine pellets instead of coco coir. Smallest bag I could get was 14lbs.....I was really hoping for a five pounder. Oh well. I did find space for it, and it was only $6 so if I don't like it it's not a tragedy if I toss it.

By this time it was dark. I had thought about going to a park by Camping World and shopping there in the AM but I was kinda done with all that. I had passed a Cracker Barrel right when I got off 40 and considered going there. It was 24 mi rt backtracking tho and I wasn't sure I wanted pancakes that bad. I looked at some resources and saw Santa Ana Star Casino about 20 min north and on the way so decided to go there.  Well of course when I got there they no longer allow rv parking. The security gal told me they send rvers to the Warrior Gas Station but there's a lot of noisy trucks there. I must have looked unenthused as she told me I could stay in their lot tonight since it was so late. (7:15pm :-)  So that was good. I wandered into the casino and had green chile stew & fries. It was pretty good. One thing I'd never seen before was that they had free beverage stations around. Coffee, soda, iced tea etc. I had a hot chocolate.

Back to the RV I messed around with the new laptop & wifi antenna for a bit. Now it's about time to test out the new tabletop/bed. Sweet dreams.....

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