TH and I took a lil’ vacation. We had a very nice time overall, but there was a major lapse in customer service on the part of the Atlantis hotel.
Our AC went out in the middle of the night on Tuesday night. I called the “prompt response line” the next morning and was told they would send someone up to look at it. Great, we left to get breakfast. When we got back, the room seemed cooler, but not cool. We took a quick nap, not having slept well in the heat the night before. When we woke up, I called again because it did not seem to be that cool anymore and was told that engineering was working on it, so off we went to ride water slides without a care in the world.
We got back at about 3pm to reapply sunscreen and I called again. Engineering was still working on it.
We got back to the room at 5 or 6 to reapply and I called again because by this point, there is no fooling me, the room is hot. They tell me that the AC has been fixed and I just need to wait a few minutes for the room to cool down. We leave the room to go downstairs and soak up the AC and get back to the room in about 30 mins.
I call down again. She puts me on hold and allegedly talks to engineering. I need to wait 30 minutes for the system to pressurize so I can have cool air. By this point, TH has noticed that our passports are curling from the humidity.
I call down 30 mins. later and am told that I just need to wait a little while longer. The issue has been resolved. While I was on the phone with that lady, another lady called and left me a message to let me know that my issue should be resolved and to call if I have any more issues. So, I called back because I’m hot and clearly, there are some issues. I am told that I need to continue to be patient. We go to dinner.
At 9:45pm TH and I go down to the theater and watch a movie. In my crazy Pollyanna mind, I think that surely the room would be cool when we return. I do not think TH harbored any such delusions, but he humored me and let me enjoy Limitless. It ends at about 12:15am.
The room was not cool. I called downstairs and was told that she could start the room change process, but that it would take awhile. She says that the manager is at the front desk working on getting people into ACed rooms. I have seen the line in the lobby and at this point, I decide we are going downstairs because calling is getting us nowhere. So, we pack everything up preparing to go to a new room and head to the lobby. I wait in line for what I think was a little over 30 mins. so that a very pleasant, but not very informative young man can give me a room key for a different tower of the hotel which does have AC. I’ve noted by this point that I was not on a list to get a different room, so had I not gone downstairs, no room change would have happened. He instructs us to go pack all our stuff and takes our room keys. We take our already packed belongings and crash at about 1am across Atlantis from our original room. Right before we’re about to go to bed, TH points out that the key is only for one night, so the next day, we’re going to have to move somewhere else. There is nothing left to do but sigh.
The next morning, we go to the front desk of the tower we’re in to get the issue resolved because we’re not checking out for two more days. The pleasant but turns out not very helpful young lady gave us room keys to our old room which we still were checked into but left the checkout day as the day we were speaking to her despite my instructions to the contrary. We notice this as we’re entering our old hotel room which miraculously does at this point have AC.
We go down to the front desk and I spot the manager. She seems to think we should have been instructed to leave our stuff in our hotel room, not lug everything across the island. I nicely inform her that we’re leaving on Friday but it is Wednesday and we’re checked out. I also state to her, “Bless their hearts, the prompt response ladies were no help at all.” She weakly claims to be sorry about that and fixes the date issue and informs us that we will get a credit to our account. But, it was too little too late. After spending a few hours the previous Wednesday in a customer service class, I could only think about how MANY opportunities they’d had to recover and had botched every single one. From lying to me to sounding insincere to being snappy to misinforming me to being blase’ about the whole thing. I’d had enough. There is a slim chance at this point that I’ll ever go back to Atlantis despite the fact that the lazy river is AMAZING and the rest of the trip was damn near flawless. see pics.

While on vacation, I was able to finish my second Yomut sock from Silk Road Socks. Lorna’s Laces in the Tickled Pink colorway is very pretty.

It seems that if you finish one sock, and you try to make a matching sock and you do not have the first sock with you, you should have written down how many pattern repeats you’ve done on the first sock or when you try to finish the second sock, you might end up with one too many pattern repeats. This MIGHT happen… or you might be one of the lucky ones that gets it on the nose. I was not. I struggled while on our trip trying to figure out how many repeats I’d done on the first sock, but I was torn, and I guessed wrong. oh well. I spent one movie ripping back and the next movie reknitting and the third movie in a row, I cast on for another pair of socks. Hi, my name is Katie and I watch A LOT of movies.

I ordered some yarn online over the last month or two. First, I ordered Senke from MacKintosh yarn. Then I ordered Milkweed from Handwerks Textiles and finally Teal Mist and Robin Hood from Barking Dog yarn.
I had different experiences with each of these shops. Two great and one not so good. Here are the stories.
Senke was ordered on 6/18. Everyone on Ravelry seems to really like Liz’s yarn and she had the best colorway selections of her yarn on her site, so I decided to get it straight from her. It finally arrived on 7/13. Now, I don’t mind waiting a few weeks for yarn to ship provided I’ve been informed of this. I emailed Liz three different times asking for a status on my yarn and never received a reply. She got a tracking number on 6/29, but the yarn was not actually mailed until 7/11. So, no matter what it looked like when it got here, I was going to be irritated with the yarn. It couldn’t possibly look good enough for me to be happy to wait in silence for almost a month. If you really want MacKintosh yarn, my advice is to buy from a reseller.

I ordered the yarn from Suzan of Barking Dog Yarns on a Sat. and it was here within a week. The Teal Mist (Achilles) is amazing. I wasn’t as crazy about the Robin Hood (Achilles), so I emailed her nicely about being interested in something more forest green and she had me mail it back and she’s shipped me something darker. Totally nice and GREAT customer service!! I will definitely buy from her again mostly because her use of color is genius, but also because she is crazy nice and gives wonderful customer service.

Laura at Handwerks and I emailed about her different yarns on a Saturday because I was unsure which one might be coolest (temperature-wise). It is a tad warm here in Texas right now…a tad warm in the way that the Pope is a tad Catholic. She emailed me back right away and was able to give me advice. I selected the Milkweed colorway of So-Soft-Sock. It is lovely and I cannot wait to see it knitted up. She even sent me a little sample of her Super 8 DK sock yarn for me to try and a card with a tiny sample of each of her yarns on it. Fabulous customer service and her yarns are beautiful!