Under the counter

I think the butcher fancies me. Every now and then he slips me the not-so-nice looking steaks or tail-end of the salmon in with my order, saying they don't look good enough to sell. Obviously this will put me in good stead should the Second World War break out again.

T, after spening the last 18 months tip-toeing across the ice, has passed her first grade ice-skating. She is the same level as I am, and is everso strict when it comes to her giving me a leson each time we go out. By forcing her to enjoy sport (sometimes physically, sometimes through crisps) I am hoping she will never have to experience the full unmitigated horror of being chosen last for the netball team.

The ice-skating has now finished for the summer, and I have replaced it by attending a personal trainer at the gym, courtesy of one of bridgjo's friends who can no longer use the lessons he paid for. The Swiss friend and I have started running around the lake again. The weather is beautiful and sparkley....though now and then a Minnesotan will sigh and murmur "It's not over yet, y'know".

A bloke said "Howdy!" to me today. I giggled.

Retail Therapy, A Case For

I have a bit of a problem at the moment, well, since I got here, in that I cannot use my American Visa card to purchase items on the Internet.

Each time I go to a web-site and have entered all the selections I want - colour, size, mailing address, billing address, card number, expiry date, those three little numbers on the back, orientation, religious preference - I sometimes get a box saying “This site is verified by Visa”, which then presents me with another set of boxes whereby I have to enter all sorts of extra data, as a further layer of security, which includes my Social Security Number.

Unfortunately, this means that the security is now so high that even I, as a lazy ex-pat spouse who does not have a SSN, cannot use my credit card over the Internet.

This screen has both the Wells Fargo (my bank) and the Visa symbols on there, indicating that it is with some sort of mutual agreement with those two institutions.

However, I have now spent:

1) 1 hr on the phone to Wells Fargo, who eventually said they couldn’t help me as I could neither recite the last 397 transactions verbatim, nor did I know my maternal great-grand-father’s favourite pig’s name.

2) 1 hr in Wells Fargo (with extra ID) who said “It’s to do with the people who are selling you stuff on the Internet, nothing to do with us”.

3) 30 mins talking to a nice lady called Eileen in the hamper shop in the UK, that she’d never heard that before love, and what time is it there, then?

4) 10 mins talking to Wells Fargo, who put me through to their Visa department….

5) Who put me back through to Wells Fargo….

6) Who put me through to Rita, the cleaning-lady, I think…

7) Who put me back to someone else at Wells Fargo who said “Really, I don’t know what you’re talking about, it’s definitely nothing to do with Wells Fargo, but I’ll put you through to the Visa department”;

8) 1 hr talking to the Visa department who got a bit huffy “You keep interrupting me Madam”, when I tried to explain to them that the credit card was not fit for purpose. She said that there was nothing I could do about it and her solution was that I could always phone up the company I was ordering from, but obviously not after 1pm if it’s in the UK due to the time difference, and I’m not sure whether I could actually be that bothered doing stuff over the phone when there are, allegedly, easier ways of purchasing an item.

Even if she made a note, she said, nobody would get back to me (because by this time she hated me).

She then put me through to Visa, who, after a rather jaunty Irish jig, cut me off.

9) I then sent a snippy e-mail to Visa, whose contact details (rather understandably) are extremely difficult to find on their web-site, who responded thus:

“When activating VbV or using a password to shop online, the cardholder is always interacting directly with his issuer, not Visa.

As many Visa card issuers have a Verified by Visa area on their website, you may wish to search for it. If you are not able to locate a Verified by Visa area on the website, please contact a Supervisor or Manager at the Verified by Visa Customer Service (a.k.a. EBusiness) Area at your Visa card issuer to request alternative options to the Social Security Number requirement. Your Visa card issuer contact information can be found on the back of your Visa card, on your Visa card statement or via their website. The local branch office will not be able to assist with this.”

Meaning that Wells Fargo, if they could just bring that careering carriage under control for just one instant, might be able to say “Hey, we are an international company. Any chance of an NI number instead?”

At which point I’d probably think “Bugger”.

I never met Hercules while he was shovelling out those stables, but know that I would have been hanging over the fence with a cup of tea saying “Oooh, I know, but listen to what happened to me….”.

And talking about visas, I didn't have to go to Canada after all to get T's visa transferred from her old passport to her new one. I just had to go to the Illegal Import of Vegetation and Small Mammals section at Humphrey terminal and a nice chap did it for me.

Fame at last

At last I get the fame I deserve....hmmmm, quite. Nevertheless, I scrape a mention here:

http://www.working-mum.co.uk/2010/03/mummy-bloggers-carnival/

I currently have a cold and am incapable of writing the HTML necessary to provide a direct link after the hot toddy (which naturally include rather more whiskey than honey, belying my Irish roots). Which reminds me, T needs to get a new green T-shirt in time for St Patrick's Day. French School. In the US. Yep, we celebrate Irish-ness here more than they actually do in Ireland...