Mar 4, 2009

cloud

I feel sorry for the Pitney Bowes employee I spoke with yesterday. Not because I was rude, or difficult. I was never, nor am I ever [wink] either of those things when dealing with customer service [wink, wink] representatives. I feel sorry for her because she had no idea the can of worms she opened when she said, "I bet you can't wait to get married so you can change your last name to your husband's."

Poor girl.

She didn't, of course, say it unprompted. The conversation went something like this:

PB Rep: Thank you for calling Pitney Bowes, please tell me your name and how I can assist you."

HKC: My name is Haley Cloyd, and I'm calling about our account.

PB Rep: Alright, and can you spell that for me Haley?

HKC: Sure. It's H-A-L-E-Y C-L-O-Y-D.

PB Rep: Alright Ms. Cloud, how can I help you today?

HKC: Oh, actually it's pronounced Cloyd, you know, rhymes with Lloyd.

PB Rep: Oh, sorry.

HKC: No worries. It's happened my whole life.

PB Rep: I bet you can't wait to get married so you can change your last name to your husband's.

Long pause...

HKC: Oh, well actually I plan on hyphenating, ideally both of us would hyphenate.

Longer pause...

PB Rep: Oh...well...um...yeah. I guess people are doing that these days...

Us crazy girls and our new fangled ideas these days. An additional note on this topic, Sarah Swanson-Dexel [yes, she AND her lovely husband, AND their darling daughters all have hyphenated last names] said to me in one of our first conversations, "not every guy will. But the right ones will." Love her. Love them. Love these new fangled ideas floating around inside my head.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

that made me go "hahaha" and then "awww".

i love you.

Haley said...

Oh...Rebs, I was just telling a story about you. Remember when you told me high fructose corn syrup wasn't bad for you because you saw an ad on TV? That's the story I told.

LOVE. YOU. LOTS.

Anonymous said...

hahahaha have you seen those commercials yet?! seriously they say that it isn't bad for you.

TV SPEAKS ONLY TRUTH.

Haley said...

I haven't seen them yet. But I love you for your faith in television. Also, here is what wikipedia has to say about the health effects of High Fructose Corn Syrup [HFCS]:

Health effects

Critics of HFCS point out a correlation between increased usage of HFCS in foods and obesity rates in the United States over three decades. Some allege that HFCS is in itself more detrimental to health than table sugar (sucrose); others claim that the low cost of HFCS encourages overconsumption of sugars. The Corn Refiners Association has launched an aggressive advertising campaign to counter these criticisms, claiming that high fructose corn syrup "is natural" and "has the same natural sweeteners as table sugar".[25] Both sides point to studies in peer reviewed journals that allegedly support their point of view.

In his recent book In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto, journalist Michael Pollan claims that the way that the body processes HFCS is different from the way it processes the glucose and fructose found in other sugars. Digesting sucrose requires the production of an enzyme called sucrase, which breaks the bond between the glucose molecule and the fructose molecule. Because the body regulates its production of sucrase, it can only digest sucrose at a certain rate. Because digesting HFCS does not require sucrase, the rate at which it is digested is not similarly regulated by the body.[citation needed]

Elliot et al.,[26] implicate increased consumption of fructose (due primarily to the increased consumption of sugars but also partly due to the slightly higher fructose content of HFCS as compared to sucrose) in obesity and insulin resistance. Chi-Tang Ho et al. found that soft drinks sweetened with HFCS are up to 10 times richer in harmful carbonyl compounds, such as methylglyoxal, than a diet soft drink control.[27] Carbonyl compounds are elevated in people with diabetes and are blamed for causing diabetic complications such as foot ulcers and eye and nerve damage;[28][29]

A study in mice suggests that fructose increases obesity.[30] Large quantities of fructose stimulate the liver to produce triglycerides, promotes glycation of proteins and induces insulin resistance.[31] According to one study, the average American consumes nearly 70 pounds of HFCS a year, marking HFCS as a major contributor to the rising rates of obesity in the last generation. [32]

In a 2007 study, rats were fed a diet high in fat and HFCS and kept them relatively sedentary for 16 weeks in an attempt to emulate the diet and lifestyle of many Americans.[33] The rats were not forced to eat, but were able to eat as much as they wanted; they consumed a large amount of food, suggesting that fructose suppresses the sensation of fullness. Within four weeks, the rats showed early signs of fatty liver disease and type II diabetes. Shapiro et al. fed rats a high-fructose diet for six months and compared them to rats that had been fed a fructose-free diet. Although the rats that had consumed high levels of fructose showed no change in weight, when compared to the rats that had consumed no fructose fat, levels of leptin in the blood indicated the development of leptin resistance. When the rats were switched to a high-fat diet, the leptin-resistant rats gained more weight than those who had not developed the resistance.[34]

Several studies funded by Tate & Lyle, a large corn refiner, the American Beverage Institute and the Corn Refiners Association,[35][36] have defended HFCS. Forshee et al. concluded "that HFCS does not appear to contribute to overweight and obesity any differently than do other energy sources."[37] Melanson et al. (2006), studied the effects of HFCS and sucrose sweetened drinks on blood glucose, insulin, leptin, and ghrelin levels. They found no significant differences in any of these parameters.[38] Monsivais et al. (2007) compared the effects of isocaloric servings of colas sweetened with HFCS 45, HFCS 55, sucrose, and aspartame on satiety and subsequent energy intake.[39] They found that all of the drinks with caloric sweeteners produced similar satiety responses, and had the same effects on subsequent energy intake. Critics of HFCS, however, argue that the corn-industry funding of these studies leads to a possible conflict of interest, discrediting their results.

One much-publicized 2004 study found an association between obesity and high HFCS consumption, especially from soft drinks.[40] However, this study provided only correlative data. One of the study coauthors, Dr. Barry M. Popkin, is quoted in the New York Times as saying, "I don't think there should be a perception that high-fructose corn syrup has caused obesity until we know more."[41] In the same article, Walter Willett, chair of the nutrition department of the Harvard School of Public Health, is quoted as saying, "There's no substantial evidence to support the idea that high-fructose corn syrup is somehow responsible for obesity .... If there was no high-fructose corn syrup, I don't think we would see a change in anything important." Willett also recommends drinking water over soft drinks containing sugars or high-fructose corn syrup.[42]

A study published in the journal Environmental Health in 2009 [3] [4] found that high-fructose corn syrup was commonly tainted with mercury, and found traces of mercury in many common retail products that contained high-fructose corn syrup as an ingredient. The mercury appears to come from caustic soda and hydrochloric acid, two chemicals used in the manufacture of high-fructose corn syrup that can, depending on their manufacturing process, contain traces of mercury.The Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy tested 55 consumer items, finding mercury in one third of the samples ranging from 30 to 350 parts per trillion. The amounts of mercury found was far less than that commonly seen in most fish and seafood. The researchers cautioned that their study was limited. [43]

Haley said...

Also:

http://tinyurl.com/5dxm6t

Anonymous said...

hahahahaha that video was SO FUNNY! oh my gosh, i laughed so hard.

i believe you, and wikipedia (for the most part) over tv any day. that information was really really interesting. high fructose corn syrup is crap, same with their commercials. i wish the nazi one would get aired on tv.

Fifty Two Weekends said...

I JUST got your comment about you making me dinner.
I'm in. You pick the date and time and avenue.

I'll bring the husbands and hyphenated last names.
I laughed out loud.