Read reviews don't just look at the star rating

 Recently I purchased a product through Amazon, and I ended up returning it as it didn’t meet my needs at all. I purchased one of those watches that will monitor your sleep, count your steps, answer calls and a bunch of other things. I took a chance on a watch that was a very reasonable price. I received the watch and immediately charged it and then started to wear it as I am someone that does track my steps because it helps keep me moving and motivated.

I wore my new watch, and we went for a walk-through Ikea as it was a place I knew roughly how many steps I would get while doing that walk. It was interesting to see the outcome of this walk once we sat down to grab a hot dog for lunch. My step count was in the lower 800 steps while my husband was around 3,200 steps. The 3,200-step number is roughly when I normally get when walking around Ikea because of course we have to look at things and not just stay on the path. Seeing just 800 steps told me there was something wrong. We then did some other walking that day and I finally got to around 1,500 steps while my husband was over 5,000 steps. Yes, there was a problem with the watch, but I decided to try it a couple more days to see if things changed.

The result was the step count was way off, and I decided to return the item because it wasn’t working as it should. I also had made sure that I had entered all the information that could possibly affect the measurement of my step count. I have been wearing a tracking device since around 2014, so I understand what is needed to accurately track my steps. The return process was very easy, and the refund came quickly which also made me happy. I decided to do a review of the product on Amazon because I wanted people to know that the watch out that the watch might not be right for everyone. The review I left was a 1-star review and said my honest opinion about the watch. I thought it was over but found out differently.

About a month after purchasing and returning the watch and posting a review I received an email from the company, and they offered to send me a replace watch and attached the information on how to get the watch to correctly count your steps. The funny thing is this is the first thing I checked when the step count was wrong. So, I figured I would accept the new watch and at least then I would have a spare and one that I could wear when I didn’t want to damage my new watch that I purchased by a known brand.

I provided them my order number and mailing address and figured everything was going to be done. Well, I finally get an email that says that my new watch is going to be on the way shortly. What I didn’t like was the next part of the message and it reads:

“1.We have successfully registered a new watch for you. Once the logistics tracking number is successfully created for you, we will send it to you as soon as possible.

2.In addition, we sincerely ask you to re-share the review for us. You don't need to change the content, just change the star rating to five stars. If you are bothered by this, you can also delete the review directly. If you are willing to help us, we will be very grateful to you, and we are happy to send you two free bands. Please tell us the band code you want . Thanks.”

When I saw the just change the star rating to five stars, I know there was something extremely wrong with this. I then started looking at a bunch of the other reviews for this same watch and I saw that quite a few people had changed the start rating to five starts with the headings like these

• Not Great

• Product doesn’t last

• Poorly made

• Changed my review

All of these are for now 5-star reviews and all of them said that customer service was great, and a replacement was offered. It is amazing that replacement products have to be offered to so many people and the heading of the review doesn’t match the initial wording of the review.

I have left my review as it because I wanted to give an honest review and I have also told the company that they can keep their product.

So here is my word of warning when you are looking at a product that the price seems maybe a little lower than you expected. Sure, there may be a lot of 5-star reviews but go through and look at the heading of the reviews as well as what some people have said as you could learn a lot. Asking something to change their rating from a lower star rating to a 5-star rating is just trying to track potential customers that the product it better than it might be.

What is a stitch-along

 For people that do cross stitch there is a term that we use to explain a project that people are going to be working on at the same time and it is called a stitch-along, or as some people call it a start-along. When people are talking about doing one of these, they may refer to it as a SAL.

There are so many different stitch-along and it just depends on what you want to do. 

Mystery stitch-along 

There is mystery stitch-along where you will receive a piece of the pattern at a specific time, and you can work on that section and then have to wait until the next section is released. This can be a lot of fun, but you have to be willing to work on a project and not know what the final piece is going to look like until the final section of the pattern is released. This can be a lot of fun, but you have to be willing to not know what the piece will look like and sometimes these projects will be a 12-month project.

Specific pattern stitch-along

This one is an easy one to understand because you are given a specific pattern to work on and it can be divided into sections, but you know the pattern before you ever start the stitch along. There are designers that will do this, and they will give you the entire pattern all at once and the pattern is divided into sections so you can either stitch it following the sections or you can stitch it your own way it doesn’t matter.

Specific designer stitch-along

This one is you can pick any pattern from a specific designer, and everyone starts their pattern at a specific time, and it is just a way to motivate each other to get work completed on the design. This can be a lot of fun when people are posting which pattern they are working on as well as where they started the piece.

The idea behind a stitch-along is to help motivate you to work on a piece and try and get it done within a specific time people. The reason why some people call it a start-along is because in some cases if you have a lot of projects on the go you will start the stitch-along but you end up working on a bunch of other projects and the stitch-along piece doesn’t get finished in a timely manner.

For me it is interesting to figure out which stitch-alongs that I want to participate in. I have done most of the different stitch-alongs that I have listed, and it has been fun. I have done both the stitch-along and the start-along because things just got in the way of me finishing a project when it was the stitch along. I recently finished a 2019 Mystery Stitch-Along so what started as a stitch-along turned into a start-along but I at least got it finished. 

A stitch-along can be a lot of fun if you don’t put too much pressure on yourself. If you can’t keep up with the project that is fine because cross stitching is supposed to be for enjoyment so why stress about keeping up with something. 

Managing all the demands on your time

For most people there are always a lot of demands on your time, either it’s work, personal life, or a combination of the two things which can get a little overwhelming sometimes and making sure that you know how to manage the demands can make a big difference. Sometimes it may feel like you don’t have a minute to think because someone is always asking for a bit of your time.

Now that a lot of people are working remotely at least some of the time for work that can also impact how people see your time because you aren’t in the office 5 days a week. I know for someone that works remotely all the time there have been times when family figures that we don’t work, and we could just drop everything and help with an issue. Well working remotely means that you still have deadlines and meetings that you must attend. Sure, there are times when you can shift your work schedule a little bit, but it cannot be all the time.

Having a mobile device also means that both work, family and friends figure you are available to response to their questions no matter what time it is. The one good thing about mobile devices is you an put them on silent when you need the time to focus on something and in the evenings, you can put them on “do not disturb” so you don’t get those messages in the middle of the night from someone that just had a great idea that they wanted to share.

Being able to set priorities and manage them can be a challenge because when you are working remotely people don’t understand or see what you are working on which can sometimes be hard. Something that I have found that works well for us is to put things on our calendar and that shows people that we are busy doing something. Sure, you cannot put everything on your calendar but putting blocks of time when you are busy can help quite a bit.

Knowing how to manage the demands on your time is very important to ensure that you can continue to get everything done that you want to do but not feel overwhelmed. For me I know that I have a planner that I put things in, so I know what I need to do, and I also make sure that important items are on the calendar so that they are not forgotten and that there is time set aside to get those items done.

How do you manage the demands on your time, and does it work for you?

Using different pens

For someone like me trying out different pen types is a lot of fun and something that I do enjoy doing. I don’t do a lot of writing daily, but I do make notes in my planner and sometimes can write an entire blog or notes in my notebook that I normally have with me. Now being a lefty does have some challenges when it comes to some pens, but I think I have overcome some of those.

Here are some of the pens that I have used or am using and what I think of them.

• Pentel. R.S.V.P. (fine) – I have used this type of pen for several years but what I don’t like about it is even through it says fine it isn’t as fine a point as I would like. When you find the definition of that pen it says that fine is .7mm so not as fine as I thought it would be. (Staples)

• Uni-ball Signo DX (0.28mm) – here is a pen that I found, and I must admit that it is one of the pens that I love using. It is a nice fine tip and for someone that writes a lot they fit my needs. These pens are very enjoyable to write with especially if you write small like I do. Oomomo carries these pens, and they are reasonable and do last quite a while.

• Flex office (.38mm) – this is another pen that I use very frequently because it is a pen that writes smoothly, and it also have a nice fine tip. I have gone through several of these and thank goodness Oomomo carries these as I do go and pick them up on a regular basis, so I am never out of pens.

• Zebra Fountain Pen – (fine) – this is a disposable fountain pen and the fine comes in .5mm and .6mm and I have used it for a while, and it does write nicely but again being a disposable fountain pen they are a little pricey but at least they are a great way to find out if fountain pens will work for you. (Staples)

• Hongdian 2861 Stainless Stell Fountain Pen Extra Fine Nib – this is a recent addition to my pen collection as I wanted to try out fountain pens. This pen has a nice extra fine nib, and I have been enjoying using it for making various notes. The one thing that you have to be aware of is that you are going to have to load ink into the pen and that get a little messy if you are not careful. You can purchase ink cartridges for this pen. This pen now holds my turquoise ink, and I have been enjoying using it. (Amazon)

• Nicpro Fountain Pen .38mm Extra Fine Nib – this is another fountain pen that I added to my collection, and I have loved how it writes. This pen is a little heavier than some pens but that doesn’t bother me at all. Again, the precaution is you are going to have to load ink into the pen as it doesn’t come with ink cartridges, but you can purchase those. This pen now holds my black ink, and I have been also enjoying using it. (Amazon)

• Hongdian Dark Blue Forest Fountain Pen Extra Fine Nib .38 – here is another fountain pen that I have added to the collection and again whet the extra fine nib it is enjoyable to use and something that has been sitting on my desk and gets used quite often. This pen works with either bottled ink or cartridges, but I am using bottled ink, and this pen holds my teal ink currently. (Amazon)

Fountain Pens

 I just recently starting using fountain pens and I must admit that I have been really enjoying using them. I don’t think I would travel with them given I would have to ensure that I have enough ink with me. Being a lefty I was a little concerned about working with a fountain pen and would I smudge my writing, but I haven’t so far which makes me happy. I have only bought the standard fountain pens designed for “right-handed” people, but they have been working fine for me. I would like to see what the difference between a “left-handed" fountain pen and the ones that I own just to see if there really is any difference in how the pen writes.

Summary 

Yes, I do enjoy trying out different pens and seeing what they are like for me. Of course, everyone is different in what they like in a pen so these comments about the pens are just my opinion, and they might be entirely different that what you think. When you find a pen that you enjoy using make sure that you have a couple of them available because you never know when a specific type of pen will be discontinued or hard to find.

Edit: Since writing this blog, I was able to ask a pen shop about the different between the left-handed pens and right-handed pens and the difference is the angel of the nib. This only works for the medium nib so if you are someone like me that likes the 'extra-fine nib' you will not get any difference because as per this gentleman "the nib is just scratchy no matter what."

Where is the entrance

This month we decided to go to the Toronto Home Show, and we figured taking the TTC would be a good idea. Well, that turned out to be a challenge on its own. The Toronto Home Show was at the Enercare Centre which is located within the CNE grounds.

I decided to look up how to get to the Enercare Centre from where we live, and I used the TTC planner and immediately ran into an issue because this location was not available to be found on the APP. So, this is the first challenge that we had to deal with but given it is within the CNE grounds it shouldn’t be too much of an issue or that is what we thought.

Getting to the CNE grounds is normally pretty easy if you are on the TTC but this was a challenge that we were not prepared to deal with. Our first challenge was we decided to take the subway to Union Station because normally there is a streetcar that goes directly from there to the CNE grounds. Well, this proved to be wrong because there was construction on the route as they were replacing tracks and watermains so that impacted the route. We could take the streetcar part of the way but then had to transfer to a bus for the rest of the route. The issue with this was the location of the bus was not clearly identified so that was frustrating. The bus was not in the same location as the streetcar so that was the first frustration. 

We finally figured out the location of the bus and we were on the way to the Enercare Centre and that should have been easy, but it turned out to be a challenge again. There are two stops within the CNE grounds and there is no identification which stop is for what location so we decided to go to the loop because that is where we thought we should be going. The first stop is Manitoba Ave and you have no idea where that really is, so you don’t know if that is the stop you need or not so you just continue to the TTC loop. 

We finally reached the TTC loop within the CNE grounds and figured it would be easy to get to the Enercare Centre from there given the number of signs that said, “Home Show this way”. It was this way but at one point we got to a location that there was a door to the Enercare Centre so we figured we would be able to enter but discovered it was locked. It ended up that the entrance that we need was way around the front of the Enercare Centre.

What we finally discovered was we should have got off at Manitoba Ave. as it would have been a lot closer to the building but there was no way to find this out until you have walked all the way around from the TTC loop. When we left the show, we walked over to Manitoba Ave instead of back to the TTC loop to get the bus. Something that the show should have had was how to get to the location especially when taking the TTC, this would have made it a lot easier for people getting to the show. So what we have learned from this experience is to look at the total route that you are taking and see if there is a stop a little closer to your final destination.

Listen to what someone is saying

Recently we were trying to plan a get together with a friend and it was a challenge because they didn’t hear that given food allergy’s locations were very limited. We nicely explain why their first location wouldn’t work and gave an option. They then same back with an option of a location that yes, was close to where we lived, but wasn’t some where that we went. This specific location was a location where I had a severe allergic reaction so no, I don’t want to go there.

Their explanation for the location was it was close to where we live so that is why he thought it was where we could eat. In a lot of instances, we don’t eat near to home because it is easier and safer to eat at home then eat at a restaurant that is local. The other thing that we have found is that eating at a chain restaurant to so many times safer than eating at an independent restaurant because the chain has strict rules that they need to follow.

The first location that the person thought about going was a location that they never had been before but thought it was a good place. Maybe part of it is because of the prices on the menu that was posted online. How current is the menu that is posted on the website especially when there is no date on the menu or even a copyright date on the website.  We did some research on the location and explained why it wasn’t such a good location given there was an open kitchen that could be very risky given someone with a shellfish allergy. The response we got was “Thank you for the in-depth research. I can appreciate the work to do this level of research! How about something closer that you may have been to” 

The interesting part of this is we had already told them a location that has been safe to go to for the past few years which wasn’t that far away. They immediately suggested a location without really thinking about the location we had recommended. It can be extremely frustrating when trying to explain to someone that we had told you a location we thought was safe so why are you continuing to think of other locations. The location that they recommended was a location that I had a severe allergic reaction at quite a few years ago. Yes, the location name has changed but is it still the same owner or safe and do they still deal with things the same way, that I am not certain, and I don’t want to find out by having an allergic reaction again.

When someone has a severe food allergy you need to listen to what they are saying and not immediately continue to recommend locations that you want to go to. Maybe what you are showing is that you don’t understand about allergies, or you don’t seem to care. I know a lot of people care about someone with food allergies but this individual even after multiple times explaining to them the issue just didn’t seem to get it.

If you know someone that has severe food allergies it is very important that you listen to what they are saying. Them saying locations that they feel safe eating at is something that you have to understand. Maybe it isn’t a place that you would at first want to go to but remember if you want to see that person you have to make some compromises. Listening to what they are saying needs to be considered if you want them to be safe when you get together.

Feeling like you are standing still

 Something that I have noticed in the last little while is how fast so many vehicles go on the highway when there isn't a lot of traffic. It can be amazing to be driving just over the signed speed limit and other vehicles are passing you as if you are standing still.

Recently during one of our drives when traffic wasn't too busy it was amazing to see how fast vehicles were going when they passed us. Yes, we were going just over the signed speed limit, but cars were passing us at least 20 – 40 km/h over what we were doing. There was even one vehicle that would have had their car impounded if they have of been caught doing the speed they were doing.

The posted speed limit is the speed that should be driven to be safe on a given stretch of road or highway. The posted speed limit isn't the minimum speed you should be going, and the idea is to see much faster you can go without having an issue.

In Ontario, if you are going between 16 and 29 km/h over the speed limit, you will get ticketed and also get 3 points added to your driving record. Going between 30 – 49 km/h over the speed limit is also a minor infraction and will get 4 points added to your driving record. Now if you are going 50 km/h or more over the speed limit this can result in the following:
•    A 7-day suspension of your driver's license
•    Impoundment of your car
•    Up to $10,000 in fines
•    Up to 2 years of suspended license
•    6 points added to your driving record
•    Possible jail time.

The fine and number of points that are added to your driving record will vary depending on which province or state you are driving in, so you have to be away of what the penalties can be if you want to see how fast you can go. In Ontario, if you get more than 15 demerit points on your driver’s license, that can result in your license getting suspended. There are a number of reasons why demerit points are given, not just speeding. Now if you receive between 6–8 points you will get a warning letter and then between 9 – 14 points a second warning letter will be sent. Now if you receive 15+ demerit points the license is suspended for 30 days. Now demerit points remain on a person's driver’s license for 2 years from the day they are issues, so you need to be away of that.

It is extremely important to be away of the laws of the road where ever you are driving because it can depend on the fine and even how many demerit points are added to your driver's license. So next time when you think it's a great idea to see how fast you can go over the limit remember if you are caught or cause an accident you may be in for a big surprise. For us, I would rather feel like we are standing still and let all of those other vehicles drive crazy because at least we know we are standing within the legal speed limit.