Watch out DC-Area Businesses - I'm on Yelp!

So, two things today inspired me to join Yelp!

1)   I desperately need a haircut, but I'm terrified of choosing a new stylist. So, I turned to Yelp and went with someone who had great reviews. I'm looking forward to my haircut with Marsha at Tracy & Company salon next Saturday. I will definitely review my experience.

2)   I've been ordering groceries online from Safeway since I moved here. The first few experiences were okay...a few problems that I was willing to overlook in the name of convenience. That changed today.

I typically order all my heavy stuff to be delivered - cat food, cat litter, cases of soda, canned goods, etc. - about once a month. Well, I placed my order yesterday to be delivered today and there was only one time slot available, noon-1pm. A one-hour time slot runs you $12.95, but I decided it was worth it since I was stocking up on everything and probably won't need to order again for awhile. So, I'm waiting  at noon for them to come, and at 12:25 I get a call from the driver. He informs me that the store hasn't even pulled the orders for today and he can't guarantee when he'll be able to deliver. If I have any questions or want to cancel, I need to call customer service.

Since I had no plans anyway (I'm sick and staying home), I figured I'd let them go ahead and deliver whenever today. But at 3:45pm, still no groceries and I'm getting impatient. So I call customer service to see what's up. She tells me that the driver is unexpectedly running 3-4 hours behind on deliveries - well, no crap! No offer to refund the delivery fee or anything until I start complaining about how useless a service their delivery is if they don't get there even close to when I'm paying them to get there. She explains that it was unexpected delays, blah, blah - well of course it's unexpected! If you expected it, you wouldn't have offered me the option of a one hour delivery window from noon-1 today! It's 4:30pm now and still no groceries. Needless to say, I'm going to attempt to avoid shopping at Safeway now and decided to make my dissatisfaction known.

Thus, I will now review everything on Yelp! My Safeway review is already there, and I'm going to make an effort to write honest reviews of all the places I visit while in DC, because I know I use the site to find good companies too.

Recent reviews by Robyn S.

What's this?

STILL WAITING...

Well, you have probably inferred from the title of this post that I still don't know where I'm going. I've been putting off blogging because I keep thinking that I'll find out. First, I thought I'd know before Christmas- fail. Then I thought for sure I'd know by the end of the year - another fail. So, now we've been given the date of January 10th. And in the meantime, I thought I'd post a few pictures from the graduation ceremony where I got my American flag...

All the American flags....you'll notice a few Afghanistan flags sprinkled in there for the Mid-Levels

Me with Administrator Shah

I love the photo of me with the Administrator because, for some reason, I'm the only one in my class of 60 who is posed like this. Everyone else has this super serious handshake pose. Not sure what happened there...

The whole DLI 15 class

Happy New Year!

Still waiting...

Well, I haven't written anything in awhile...I was waiting until the 10th when I found out where I was going, but that plan was thwarted. On the 8th, they told us that we'd all be getting American flags at graduation because they were unable to assign the majority of our class. That was disappointing. So, graduation came and went...Chris came to DC for the weekend, so that made it enjoyable. We had a nice dinner on Friday night, saw 'I Love You Philip Morris', had a delicious crepe at Eastern Market on Saturday morning, made a trip to Ikea....oh yeah, and Chris brought me a cat! Tiger is now a city cat with Wally. I think they've readjusted to being together now.

This week has been wonderful. We moved into our cubicles on Monday - my home is in the Bureau of Food Security. I've had some great meetings that have really helped me figure out what my purpose in the agency is and what I should be doing for the next year or so. I'm hoping I'll get my assignment by Christmas...check back soon!

Pics from graduation to come!

Settling in...

I haven't blogged in awhile...mostly because I was at home for Thanksgiving and have been working on unpacking since. As of this evening, I'm down to 3 more boxes left to unpack. I'm still working on finding homes for everything that I've already taken out of the boxes, but it's slowly coming together. I'm hoping it will all get done in the next 3 days because Chris is coming for my graduation ceremony on Thursday.

I can't believe that my initial 5-week training program is just about done! This Friday I'll find out where I'm heading for the next two years of my life. We've been warned that they're having problems placing all 60 of us right now, some some of us will be getting US flags at the ceremony and finding out our assignments later. I know that the agriculture group is among those that are having problems being placed, so I have my fingers crossed that someone has claimed me by this Friday.

I've been spending most of my time outside of training working on the apartment, so I don't really have any exciting stories...

I'm sure everyone has heard about the debacle of WikiLeaks publishing thousands of cables from U.S. Embassies around the world. Since the published documents are classified information and we've all signed agreements not to utilize classified information outside of approved methods, government employees are prohibited from accessing them on WikiLeaks, so I've only seen and heard what's been reported on the news. It's been a big topic at our training lately because it will severely impair our ability to interact with foreign governments, not to mention it endangers the lives of both US government employees and those who have been working with us. I can understand people wanting the government to be more transparent, but the way that this was done is going to have a huge impact on how the foreign service agencies are able to do their work. It angers me to think that someone single-handedly endangered the lives of hundreds of thousands of foreign service workers, most likely without even thinking about the consequences. But anyway...

Photos of the finished apartment to come, as well as graduation pics...visit my Facebook page to wager your guess as to where I'll be assigned! The winner will receive an undetermined prize from me!