Tag: Carol

Flashback to footwear

While we were in Portland, Maine, we stopped at Freeport at the L.L. Bean store.

I’ve been occasionally complaining about the quality of the customer service of certain businesses. So I thought I’d share a more positive story.

But first a bit of personal history. I was on the game show JEOPARDY! on November 9 and 10, 1998, which was recorded on September 16 of that year. I’ve quickly noted that I won $17,600 in the first game. I was less effusive about my second game. I was in a distant third place going into the last question. I had $2,200, Jim had $5,500, and Robin, $9,200.

The Final JEOPARDY! category was FAMOUS NEW ENGLANDERS: The clue was just a picture of a guy dressed rather like the guy here. I wagered $1,800 and got it right (LL Bean) ending with $4,000. Jim bet $3,800 and got it wrong, and finished with $1,700. Robin bet $2,500, which was incorrect but won the game with $6,700 in cash. Both of them gave Sears as the answer. Jim won a Panasonic DVD player; and I, a trip to Almond Beach Resort, Barbados, which Carol and I used on our honeymoon in May 1999.

In March 1999, my then-fiancee, Carol, took me to Portland, Maine on vacation. While we were there, we stopped at Freeport, ME at the L.L. Bean store; they weren’t all over the place as they are now. In the entryway was the exact same photo I had seen while taping the game show about six months earlier. We got snowed in at Portland and had to stay a couple of extra days.

In March 2013, I was wearing a pair of LL Bean boots when the sole separated from the rest of the shoe. My wife took them to the local LL Bean store – which did not exist in 1999 – who sent them to the repair unit.

The repair unit, though, could not fix them. But they would give me a credit for what I paid for them, as part of some lifetime guarantee I was only vaguely aware of. When did I buy them? I had no idea. “Had to be 1998 or 1999.” Well, in that case, it HAD to be March of 1999 [though I didn’t actually remember buying them, since I had not yet received the $17,600; the check arrived on March 17, 1999]. I explained that I had to make a pilgrimage to the store because it got me a trip to a far-away island. The repair guy loved the story.

Like father, like daughter: to the E.R. again

The lesson relearned – no food where peanuts or nuts are processed.

The Daughter: STILL allergic

When we last saw our intrepid little family, the father of the household was getting a ride home from his overnight hospital stay Friday afternoon by his lovely wife. Saturday, he was still exhausted; he didn’t sleep well Thursday night, and Friday night’s rest was insufficient. He muddled through Saturday, doing a minimum of vacuuming and dishwashing, and not much else.

Even Sunday morning, there was a sense of fatigue within him. But since almost everyone knew about the hospital incident, he wanted to show up to prove he was still among the living. Fortunately, all the songs the choir sang he had performed before.

At the coffee hour, somehow the Daughter had gotten permission (not from her father) to eat some coffee cake, despite being unclear about its origins. Apparently, it’s one of those items that had that warning that it may be processed in a plant that used peanuts or nuts. She is allergic to peanuts, and peanuts and nuts are often processed in the same place.

Shortly after consuming it, she got very upset. Was it a belated sense of fear? Her father took her into a quiet room and tried to calm her down. She was OK for a bit, but by the time she got home, she had a stomachache, and eventually upchucked. This was actually a good thing; the first time she had an allergic reaction, when she was three, that was how her body responded. So the family thought it was in the clear.

A couple of hours later, the Wife noticed, above the knees and below the neck hives over about 30% of The Daughter’s body. It itched greatly. After a call to the pediatrician, another trek to the E.R.

It’s much less busy Thursday at 8:40 a.m. than Sunday at 5:30 p.m. She got some Benedryl, stronger than the OTC we had given her. Then the family stopped at the McDonalds; the Wife seems to believe going inside is faster, an unproven premise, but staying in the car would have meant avoiding the rudest, vulgar-language customer; “Where’s my f@#$ing food?” , more than once, among other things.

The Daughter was asleep by the time the family got home. she got through dinner then was practically carried to bed; the Wife stayed home with her on Monday.

The lesson relearned – no food where peanuts or nuts are processed. I hadn’t heard the rule had changed…
***
That evening, there was an ambulance in front of our house. It was actually called for our next-door neighbor’s house. The father of one of the college kids had been drinking a couple bottles of beer with the guy when he was having some difficulties – I didn’t get the details. Turns out e had food poisoning; glad it wasn’t worse.

 

It’s a big world, after all

I got to go to eight states directly as a result of work. But I also missed out on the farthest state away for the same reason.

Arthur@AmeriNZ said: Okay, I haven’t participated in awhile, so: If you could pick one thing to do that you haven’t yet done in your life, what would it be and why? It could be a single event (bungy jumping in Skippers Canyon), or it could be a project or process. I’m interested in what you haven’t done that you’d like to do/wish you could do.

Travel.

Next question.

OK, maybe I should expand on this.

Here’s a map I made in 2008, right after I visited Illinois, and your former city of Chicago, for the first time. It showed that I had visited 30 of the 50 states. Now, four years later, I have visited 30 of the 50 states. My desire is to visit all 50, and I’ve made zero progress.

Related: my wife made my daughter a promise that she would visit all 50 states by the time she’s 18; she’s almost nine and she’s only been to 11, all between Vermont and North Carolina.

Now that the house is paid off, we need to save money to go west and see the Grand Canyon and Yellowstone Park. My wife has seen Mount Rushmore, but she’d go to South Dakota and see it again with The Daughter and me.

Also related: as I explained to Scott: “I want to go to every Major League Baseball park in the same year.” I might end up breaking it up in chunks, but my thought then was to fly to Seattle (check off Washington), take the train south (stop somewhere in Oregon – check) to the 5 California teams, then to Arizona (check), Colorado, Texas, Florida, Georgia, followed by the Midwest, starting with Missouri (check), through Iowa (check), catching Minnesota (my father-in-law’s favorite team – check) and ending in the east.

I noted that I got to go to eight states directly as a result of work. But I also missed out on the farthest state away for the same reason.

Back when Carol, then my girlfriend, was working in the insurance industry, she studied to get a series of designations. She completed her coursework and was rewarded with a trip for two to Hawaii! Who wouldn’t want to go to paradise with his Significant Other?

Unfortunately, that trip coincided with a trip to New Orleans of the Association of Small Business Development Centers. As the person who was the liaison to the other SBDC programs in the country for our library, I should have been going on that trip. But my new boss said no, that she and her chosen favorite – she was very much like that – would be going, and that we could not afford to have more than two of the six or seven librarians out of the office at the same time for three or four days.

Carol wanted me to ask if she’d let me go to Hawaii with her. My thought process was if my boss said no to New Orleans because that would leave us short-staffed, then she’d say no to Hawaii for the same reason, and that I’d lose ANY chance of going to New Orleans as well. Despite my attempts to explain, I don’t think Carol truly understood my office dynamics at the time.

As it turned out, Carol went to Hawaii with my parents, and I ended up going to New Orleans, not because of the reasons I suggested, but because the two women who were going would be hauling a lot of heavy equipment with them, and they needed someone to help schlep it.

Another place I regretted not going to was Puerto Rico. My sister, her husband at the time, and her daughter lived there for six or seven years. I should have invited myself down.

Beyond the US, I’ve been to two Canadian provinces, albeit the most populated ones, Mexico, and Barbados. That’s it! I’d love to go to Paris, Rome, London, and Tokyo. Now that it’s not at war, I’d be interested in visiting Liberia, which was populated by ex-slaves from the US.

Conversely, in the past decade, my friend Karen has been to India, Thailand, Laos, Malaysia, Costa Rica, Turkey, and is currently in Burma.

Arthur, you said on a recent podcast, and I’m paraphrasing here: “In 1994, if you told me I’d be moving halfway around the world a couple of years later, I would have told you that you were crazy.” Yet you packed up and moved to New Zealand, eventually getting married and doing that dual citizenship thing. I still find that remarkable.

Friend Carol is 60

Carol and I hung out together, doing exciting stuff such as watching, of all things, The Waltons every Thursday night.

I’m referring to my friend since kindergarten, not my wife.

In second grade, the class got to dance a minuet waltz. Bill danced with Karen, Bernie with Lois, and Carol with me; why I remember this so many years later is beyond me. I think I developed a bit of a crush on Carol, because the next year, I hit her with a snowball, unintentionally in the head; I felt terrible.

The whole class got to spend time at her family cottage on a lake in northern Pennsylvania, which was always a treat.

At some point, someone came across a list of IQ scores of our class. No names were associated with the numbers, but it was generally conceded by her classmates that she was the one with the highest ranking.

I used to walk Bill, then Lois, Karen, and Carol home most days, especially when we were in junior high, so Carol and I got to talk with her one-on-one more than most of my friends.

In high school, Carol and I were both involved with student government, and in our junior year, I became president, and Carol, vice-president, a remarkable feat, given the disdain our left-of-center politics had generated when we first got to the high school.

During the summer of 1972, she and her boyfriend at the time, and the Okie and I all went to Syracuse to see The Godfather. At the end of the summer, she, her beau, and my sister Leslie were the three witnesses to my wedding to the Okie. After the Okie and I split, and Carol and her beau broke up, Carol and I hung out together, doing exciting stuff such as watching, of all things, The Waltons every Thursday night.

A few years later, I went to her wedding in Binghamton, after which she moved to the Poughkeepsie area.

One time, some of my FantaCo colleagues and I were coming back from a New York City comic book convention when the car broke down on the Taconic Parkway. Having neither AAA car service or credit cards, we didn’t know what to do. In desperation, I called Carol, and she put our towing charge on her credit card – we DID pay her back – and got us on our way.

She was the only one of my Binghamton friends to make it to a MidWinter’s gathering, in 1991, if memory serves; very good wax magic that season. Soon thereafter, she moved to Texas. So I don’t see her often anymore, though we did get together a few times, not just the 32nd reunion, but a couple of times when she and I both happened to be in Binghamton, and in July 2011, when she, Karen, and I ALL were in Binghamton the same weekend.

I should note that her family’s also great. Her mom was the coolest mom of all my friends’ mothers. Carol asked her mother and sister to represent her at Karen’s mother’s funeral this past summer. Carol’s daughter, who I had never met until fairly recently, sent my daughter a huge unicorn, which continues to be Lydia’s favorite stuffed creature.

Happy birthday, my dear friend Carol.

The Rules: Christmas Gifts

thought we had an implied contract. I hint about gifts, she buys, and if there’s something that I want – that I really, really want – that I didn’t get, I’ll buy it myself.

We’ve been married for over 13 years. You’d think The Wife would have figured out the rules about Christmas gifts by now. Maybe I’m too subtle.

Back in September, she made a passing remark about some of the things she might want for Christmas. One of them was a health book; she actually has an earlier iteration, from the 1970s, but it’s now up to the ninth edition.

In October, she comes home from the bookstore with that very book! She says, “Look at what I got!” I harrumphed; I had just ordered it on Amazon that week, and it was too late to cancel. She didn’t see this as a big deal; I did, because she’s not always the easiest person to shop for, and I don’t have an infinite amount of inspiration.

It was especially tricky because we weren’t going to the Medieval Faire this year, that event, where I often buy her a nice wool sweater that she has coveted, fell on the same day I had an extra choir rehearsal, a family birthday party, the daughter’s soccer game, and her first ballet rehearsal for the Nutcracker. Not to mention picking up our repaired vacuum cleaner and taking stuff to the shredding events – we have several bags, and it only takes place periodically.

Moreover, I thought we had an implied contract. I hint about gifts, she buys, and if there’s something that I want – that I really, really want – that I didn’t get, I’ll buy it myself. So when she broadly gives hints before Christmas, I don’t expect her to come home with the item a month later. She claims that she didn’t think I heard her; I almost ALWAYS hear her, though I may have REACTED as though I didn’t, which I attribute to my fine thespian skills.

She said, “Well, it’s no big deal; I’ll return it and get something else.” Well, no, then she’d know precisely what I got her, and there’d be less fun in that. Ultimately, I gave the book I bought to someone else, as a VERY early Christmas present, and bought The Wife ANOTHER book, which, I hope, she doesn’t go out and purchase herself. Because I’m starting to run out of ideas…

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