I hope you had a good weekend and enjoyed your Victoria-like temperatures! I was so glad to see you might be thawing out a little bit. Just what you need to get you through the rest of January and then that shortest of months to follow.
 
I had a couple of online shopping adventures I wanted to share with you and both, I hope, are cautionary tales.
 
I stumbled across some flavoured water that I really like. Although I’m also fond of stevia-sweetened drops that you can add to still, sparkling or soda water, I happened to pick up a few bottles of Talking Rain Sparkling Ice a couple of weeks ago. I love them, but wasn’t crazy about the price, which can run as high as $1.99 for 100 ml. When I found them online through Amazon.ca for $1.49 each – or $17.88 a dozen – I thought that sounded pretty good. And they’re delivered to our house!
 
I ordered three dozen of the only flavours they had in stock (clearly I’m not the only fan of Sparkling Ice) and smugly awaited what I thought was a smart purchase.
 
Thank goodness I checked my email clutter file the next day. There was a receipt from Amazon and I happened to glance at the numbers. Rob came running when he heard me shout an obscenity; I somehow hadn’t gotten the free shipping I expected. So here’s the total:

Sparkling Ice: $53.64 
Shipping and Handling: $68.38
For a grand total of: $122.02 

Wondering how much that breaks down per 100 ml bottle of flavoured freaking water? $3.39! Um, no. Luckily, because my order hadn’t shipped yet, we were able to stop and cancel it. I caught that one just in time and won’t make that mistake again with the one-click purchase thingy.
 
But here’s a story of something that we needed more than a week ago, and still hasn’t arrived. You know how we went to a comedy show in Seattle, right? Well, we ordered our tickets through Ticketmaster on Thursday, January 11th. They were to be mailed to us (at a cost of about $8.50) and we knew we’d be cutting it close, as we were leaving the next Friday, January 19th. Well, as you’d expect, those tickets didn’t arrive in time for our trip, so we called Ticketmaster and they arranged for us to pick them up at the theatre (which should have been an option to begin with). 
 
It’s now been two weeks – 18 days, actually – and even though, when we called on the 19th, we were told those tickets had been mailed, they still have not shown up in our mailbox. And for this we paid an extra $8.50 US? Just a wee bit of a rip off, wouldn’t you say? (And yes, we tried every other means available not to have them mailed to us.) I know, I know, First World Problems, but I mean, people – we live on an island, but it’s not Bora Bora! 
 
I’ll be back here with you tomorrow.