Saturday

The resolution streak continues. It's amazing how making sure everything is picked up each night eases the workload of cleaning in the house, so I'm very pleased I made that resolution. I ate a hot dog at the movie last night, but that doesn't count because it was necessary since I'd not eaten dinner, or really a good lunch, beforehand.

Tonight we're dining at Hurley's before we hit the Kathy Griffin show. I had never heard of it, but it's one of the restaurants participating in the Mileage Plus Dining Program, so I figured we'd give it a whirl. It has decent, though not stellar, Zagat reviews and the menu looks interesting.

We have decided to switch to Starwood Points as our primary points accumulation entity (Sheraton, Westin, etc) instead of Diners. So far, I'm not impressed. We stayed at a Sheraton in San Diego last month and I had signed up for a bonus promotion before that stay that would get us 2,000 additional points for that stay. I monitored my account diligently and it's still not shown up. I called them the first time and they tell me it takes 7-10 business days after the stay for the points to apply - I wait. I emailed them 2 weeks later and they tell me it takes 2-3 weeks from the time of the stay for the points to apply. I email them again yesterday and get a response that I signed up for a promotion period from Oct. 2006 - Nov. 2006 (or some dates like that). This, of course, is completely wrong because 1) I signed up for this program in December 2006 - why would they let me sign up for an expired promotion? and 2) I received a confirmation email with the specific dates of December 2006 - February 2007. I have emailed them back and said they were mistaken and included the confirmation email I got, however, what I really wanted to do was pummel their customer service rep who responded to my email inquiry. Points programs that you have to track down and hound them for every point enrage me. It's like rebates: why offer it if you're going to make things so difficult to redeem/obtain? It just makes me loathe your company.

I guess I'm trying to procrastinate as much as possible since I don't want to go workout. Did you all read this article on procrastination? It's apparently gotten much worse in the last 20 years or so. One guy they studied procrastinated for 40 hours to avoid 5 minutes of work. I'm not that bad, but damn, blogging is a good procrastination tool.

OK, done. Must go work out.