High Yield No Till Integrated Gardening means less work, lower cost, and more produce.
Click to Download Your Free Heritage Pickling and Culturing e-Book Now!
Instant Download, NO Registration Required!
Corned Beef And Potatoes
He doesn’t like cabbage. Doesn’t like the smell of it, either going in or going out, he says. I can persuade him to taste a really excellent Olde Scots Colcannon (NOT just cabbage and potatoes, but a hearty meal with lots of other ingredients), but cabbage is not his thing AT ALL.
So Corned Beef And Cabbage has never been a celebration of Irish for him. And he CELEBRATES his Irish. Every Thursday we hear Irish Music when he is home, he loves the plaintiff melodies, the rolicky tunes, and the humor and grit. We sing along.
I have made Corned Beef And Cabbage for the family, when all the kids were home, eating everything. But he would not eat it.
I bought a corned beef a few days ago, and this time we are having the OTHER Irish Corned Beef dinner. With Potatoes, and Carrots, and little green peas on the side. Gravy, made with the drippings and with some butter and bacon grease. Tastes very like Ham gravy, as long as you don’t leave it too salty.
If there is leftover, you make Hash, which is as American as it is Irish, and a lot English too. In fact, every country that EATS corned beef eats some kind of corned beef hash. Just don’t forget the onions.
This time I cooked the corned beef in my instant pressure cooker. It did it quickly, and tender.
Corned Beef And Potatoes really are traditional Irish, along with the gravy and fresh peas.
Why Is This Still A Problem?
Post Office Boxes. That’s what.
Fully 1/3 of Rural Postal Customers in the US have a Post Office Box, and NO OTHER WAY to receive mail. This accounts for tens of thousands of customers in EVERY large company. So many that they CAN’T NOT KNOW that Post Office Boxes are a NECESSITY.
But company after company leaves rural customers with NO WAY to specify accurate delivery.
The Post Office RETURNS mail that is sent to a street that they do not deliver to. They DO NOT hold it for delivery, they do not slip it into the box of the person whose box is registered under that address, they just return it dispassionately. Yeah… It is deliberately cruel, and they know it. Yes, I can prove it, their other indefensible actions toward rural customers bear this out.
So the problem is that online systems (which SHOULD SURELY have evolved to a simple solution BY NOW!!!) do not let you enter a split shipping address. They simply demand either a street address, or a mailing address (which for this rural customer HAS to be a P.O. Box), and then they SHIP the package however they want, and you are stuck with hoping that they’ll use UPS or FedEx when you are forced to put in a street address with no Mail Delivery.
But PayPal is worse. PayPal DEMANDS a Street Address, and ALWAYS mails the sensitive mail, Postal. So you CAN’T GET IT if you obey their rules. Of course they WON’T let you enter a P.O. Box.
Previously, they updated it manually for me when I called. Now, they just insist that they can’t do it, sucks to be me. Like I’m the ONLY PERSON in the whole wide world that has this problem. Like they haven’t already heard it 10 times today… and they HAVE to have heard it already, A LOT.
Incidentally, I plugged the number into my phone, and it automatically identified it as Sparkle Lifestyle & MediSpa. I kid you not… It does not say PayPal. It does not say somebody or other Enterprises. It says Sparkle Lifestyle & MediSpa. The recording that answers the phone says PayPal. But this bit of bizarreness did not increase my faith in the current reliability of this necessary service that I’ve used for more than 25 years.
I am puzzled as to why this problem even exists anymore. Nobody cut out the brains of the people who run these businesses and who code the systems that enforce stupidity upon the hapless customer who lives somewhere that mail delivery does not occur. Having brains, why do they not USE them?
I had a frustrating morning with a foreign customer service agent (the same kind Sears used), whose culture dictates they NEVER ADMIT to not having the answer. and who, once they tell you there is no solution (because they do not know it, or they do not wish to go to that much trouble for you – yes, they will lie about it), will NEVER EVER correct and decide to do it anyway. They will also deny any ability to hand you upstairs to a supervisor. They can admit no wrong, remember?
No, I’m not really prejudiced in a pigheaded bigoted way. But when I have to deal with a customer service agent who barely speaks English and who is incomprehensible 50% of the time, and who then tells me that the common solution I have used before is not available through this company, I am not going to pretend that linguistic and cultural problems are not a factor! I have dealt with TOO MANY non-native English speakers with patterns of incompetence that are unjustifiable. They should NOT be working that job! You just can’t hire someone for customer service whose idea of the job is to do the LEAST POSSIBLE amount of work to get the customer to just go away.
But back to P.O. Boxes… Why hasn’t this been solved? Why hasn’t it been built into EVERY shipping and account software, the option to select the P.O. Box as the Postal Service Delivery address?
And why hasn’t PayPal got a clue and fixed their system so a Post Office box can be used? I don’t mind them asking for a street address to verify legitimacy of the account holder, but geez, to insist that someone GET POSTAL DELIVERY at their business or residential address, when it does not EXIST, is sort of insane, don’t you think? Out and out psychotic.
Rant over… for the moment.
Gardening doesn't have to be that hard! No matter where you live, no matter how difficult your circumstances, you CAN grow a successful garden.
Life from the Garden: Grow Your Own Food Anywhere Practical and low cost options for container gardening, sprouting, small yards, edible landscaping, winter gardening, shady yards, and help for people who are getting started too late. Plenty of tips to simplify, save on work and expense.
