Oh hi there...

Remember those 18 times I wrote on my blog?  You don't?  Well don't feel bad, I hardly do either.  In perusing those old posts I have learned that sometimes I am boring and sometimes I am hilarious.  Or rather the things that happen to me are hilarious.  I am going to give this blog thing a try again and I will aim for more hilarious and less boring.

Since I do not have a reality television show (yet), I will use this space to regale you with the wackiness that is my life.

The latest episode would show the evening that my sister and I tried to book our tickets for Disneyland Paris in January.  Julianna, my sister and I are all headed on a grand adventure at the end of December to meet up with my niece Lexi who is studying abroad in Italy this semester.  We decided that we would make a stop in Paris while we are there and were excited to realize that Disneyland Paris would be nearby.  We love that Mouse so of course we must visit him.  In booking this visit we learned three things: 1. We do not know how to call an international phone number that has weirdly arranged sets of numbers, 2. Citibank is very serious about fraud detection and 3. Tami has a limit to her patience and niceness.

The night before I got a fraud alert on my Citicard because Lexi had booked us a few things from Italy, using my card (with my permission).  That made sense, I called and it was authorized and life went on.  Fast forward to the next afternoon.

We decide we want to book the hotel and park tickets for Disneyland Paris (DLP from now on) and searched around for any deals.  Melissa found a great one on her phone but we couldn't get the same one to be an option on my laptop.  So after messing around for awhile we thought we would just use her phone.  So we began the tedious job of entering in everyone's information on her iPhone.  We click payment, I put in my cc info and submit.  There is an error, try again.  We try again.  And again.  Then I get a fraud alert on my phone from Citicard.  Oh that explains it, thanks Citicard for looking out for me. I call and speak to a very nice man with a pretty significant accent.  I do not have the best hearing and I am terrible with accents but I did my best.  I spent at least 15 minutes on the phone with him, verifying Lexi's purchases AGAIN, explaining what I am trying to do, giving him my travel plans, he says he's removed the bock and entered my trip info and I should be good.  We go back to the phone and try again.  NOPE!  GRRRRR.  So I called again and went through the automated system by yelling (well loudly stating in an aggravated voice) CUSTOMER SERVICE!  CUSTOMER SERVICE!!!  NO...NO...CUSTOMER SERVICE  until I got a live but different lady.  I explained everything I had just done with the last guy and the guy from the night before, answer a million of the same questions, she supposedly does the SAME thing that the last two people did and after another 15 minutes I should be good but she will remove the large purchase limit and that involves transferring me to a different lady. By this time I am really losing patience, I'm holding my head and muttering.  This lady proceeds to make me do it ALLLLLL again,  ALLL of it, that I've done 3 times now.  I say to her, "I appreciate that you are protecting me from fraud and I know it's not your fault but I have gone through this 3 times and it's making things VERY DIFFICULT!" Of course she's sorry, blah blah blah, fast forward another 1000 years and she says it's set.  I tell her to stay on the line with me until it is finished and it finally works.  We did get a good deal and I better get some gold plated Mickey ears or a lap dance from Tinkerbell after all that work.