Good Intentions. I Had 'Em!

Ya know those things called "good intentions"?  I had 'em, I really did!  I was going to continue my posts through Maine so that I could finally get them wrapped up but alas, life got in the way again and the only thing you're going to get from Maine today is that one picture above that I fooled around with on Picnik.  It really IS a lighthouse in Maine and I bet someone could even tell me which one it is but for now, I'm going to leave it at that!

Today I'm off to the Land of Tax Free Shopping otherwise known as New Hampshire with my cousin Amy, my youngest brother John, and his wife Ann.  Long ago, we had an annual tradition where we'd head up to Portsmouth for a day of shopping and seafood at Newick's in Newington but it's been quite a few years since we've made the trip.  I thought it would be nice to do it again this year and everyone else was up for it so off we're going.  As much as I hate to shop, it's a necessary evil this time of year and not so bad when I can combine it with a good time with some family members.

Speaking of family members, we're going to drop Jamie off at her cousins' house in Shirley on our way through Massachusetts.  Considering that she hadn't had the chance to see them too much while she was off living in Kentucky and Florida, I think it's nice when she can get the time to spend with them now - especially considering they're very close in years. I've got to think it beats the heck out of spending yet another day in front of the portable heater in her room, too!  Boy, if she thinks it's cold now wait until she gets a hold of January!  Hopefully her thin Florida blood will have thickened up some by then but I don't know ...

Rumor has it there may be some snow coming through later tonight though I'm hoping it's just a rumor.  Norwich is holding their annual Christmas Parade at 1:00 on Sunday and being that I'm not working, I was hoping to maybe get over there and take some pictures.  I could do it in the snow but truth be told, I'd really rather not!  Still, I suppose that the fluffy white stuff would add a more realistic feel to a Christmas parade, wouldn't it?  As long as it doesn't rain all should be good.  Hopefully!

Anyhow, I'll see what I can do about those good intentions I had another day but for now I'm going to go contribute to the nation's economy and hopefully have a good time in the process.  I hope that whatever you're up to today, a good time is in store for you, too - good intentions or not!

Too Many Choices!

Sometimes I really think that there is such a thing as "too much of a good thing" as the picture above that I took awhile back serves to illustrate. It used to be that when you went to the store to get new shoes, for example, you had limited choices and didn't have to spend all day pondering which ones to get or finally pick out a pair only to go home and wish that maybe you had gotten the other ones instead. I can see why children are confused when it comes to making choices these days as things like this are confusing even to we adults.

Case in point - I stopped in at the local WalMart yesterday because I needed to pick up a couple of things for the new house as one invariably always needs when moving from one place to another. One of the things I was looking for was a silverware tray for the drawer as the one that I had previously was too big and didn't fit correctly. I figured I'd pop in, grab a new silverware tray and a couple other things, pop back out and continue my day. Wrong!

When I got to the aisle where the silverware trays were I stood there facing way too many choices - bamboo, silicone-lined, several different types of plastic, red, gray, black, clear ... augh! I found myself picking up and then putting down again not one or two but four different silverware trays before I finally decided on a mesh silver one as I hate it when you get crumbs in your silveware tray for whatever reason and I figured that with mesh, the crumbs would fall right through. Before making that decision I had actually put two other choices into the cart and started down the aisle before I backed up, changed my mind, and took them out again when something else caught my eye. Ridiculous. And that was just the silverware tray ... never mind the robe hooks, sink liners, and other things that I needed. Quick trip to WalMart my old Aunt Del!

Seriously, it would be so much easier with just a few less choices ... life is too short to spend any of it standing in WalMart trying to make up my mind! Which I guess is another reason I hate shopping - too many choices! Anyone else have this problem?

Shopping Made Easy!

As this past holiday season has probably proved, I am not what one might call an enthusiastic shopper. Matter of fact, quite the opposite would probably be true so for me online shopping has really become the way to go. No crowds, no wandering aimlessly through a mall looking for Lord knows what, and no aching back from the cement floors that most stores us and my back really dislikes!

Sometimes, though, it's pretty darned hard to figure out which online store to use and that's when a buying guide or two comes in handy. Not only can it show me which online store offers what I'm looking for, in some cases the guides can show me WHAT I'm looking for - especially when I have no clue (which is quite often!).

Recently I was checking out ShopWiki's Gifts for Women Buying Guide and not only did it give me some great gift suggestions but it also broke them down into categories like Gifts for the Fahionista (neither of which my two girls are!), Gifts for the Pet Lover (definitely what Jamie is!), Gifts for the Fitness Gal (something I wish I was!), Gifts for the Gadget Loving Gal (there's one for Amanda), Gifts for the Culinary Loving Woman (hey! I know a few of those), and other categories that were really quite helpful.

With over 30,000 stores listed in the ShopWiki's Buying Guides, one would be hard-pressed to NOT find just the right gift for pretty much anyone and you can do it from the comfort of your own home with a cup of coffee in one hand and your computer mouse in the other. What more could a non-shopping-lover want?!?

Reflections From a Mall Parking Lot

Teenagers & the mall ... they go together rather like macaroni & cheese, hot dogs & hamburgers, spaghetti & meatballs, peanut butter & jelly, steak & potatoes, hot chocolate & mini-marshmallows ... you get the idea, right? Some things are just meant to be together in life - especially on a Saturday evening when school is out, summer has begun, and you and your friends want to go somewhere. Least ways that's what my teenage sources tell me!

To that end, I'm sitting in my car in the parking lot of the Crystal Mall in Waterford, which is the closest mall to our house, while Amanda, Darci, and Cate explore the wonders of Hot Topic, FYE, Borders Express, Spencer's, Claire's and who knows what other stores. While they're inside ooh'ing and aah'ing over whatever it is that teenagers ooh and aah over these days, I'm waiting for them in the car with my laptop, digital camera, and mostly-unread Stephen King book - fully prepared to wile away whatever amount of time it takes for them to decide they've shopped till they've dropped. By my estimation that shouldn't take too long as the Crystal Mall is somewhat pathetic by mall standards and none of them, except for Darci, have more than $20 to their name.

Way back in the day when I was a teenager, we didn't have malls to hang out in (yes, we did have electricity and running water, thank you very much!) but if we did have malls, $20 would have gone a lot farther than it does now. As a teenager if I ever happened to be in possession of an Andrew Jackson I was quite thrilled but alas, these days whenever I give Amanda a $20 bill invariably what I hear sounds something like "Is that it? I can't buy anything with just $20!" Sadly, she's almost right and with the way the economy is going, I suspect it's going to be worth even less before too long. Heck, as soon as you break a hundred dollar bill now it seems to disappear like a quarter from a magician's hand so $20 today is probably the equivalent of $5 back in the mid-1970's when I was a teenager. I'd check online to see what the difference is but there's no WiFi signal where I'm parked and I'm too cheap to go across the street to the Borders and sit in the Seattle's Best coffee shop and pay for one to find out. Though now that I think about it, a nice iced coffee beverage would really be nice ...

In an effort to resist temptation, though, I think I'll kick back and read some of Duma Key or maybe even take a bit of a nap while I'm waiting for my cell phone to ring to tell me that the girls are done shopping and "now can we please go get something to eat because we're hungry!" Teenagers & hunger ... they go together much like teenagers & the mall!

Note - This post was written using Windows Live Writer - if you aren't familiar with this great desktop application that makes it easy to write your posts off-line and then publish them later I suggest you check it out by clicking here! I first read about this over at The Life of a Father of Five and it's a pretty nifty little tool!

Shouting About Great Customer Service

First off, let me just say right off the bat that this is not a paid post in any way, shape, or form - it's just a really happy customer telling people about a really great company because when you find someplace that has an outstanding product and even more outstanding customer service then you really need to tell people about it.

Three years ago I went to a local Coldwater Creek store in search of a dress to wear to my company's annual holiday party. I found a dress that I really liked and was even able to buy it in a smaller size as I had managed to lose some weight. Shortly after that I started having some major back problems and by the time the holiday party rolled around, the dress didn't fit as well as I had hoped even though I still really liked it. I decided to keep it to hopefully wear the next year while finding another dress to wear that year. I was up for Employee of the Year and wanted to look my best if at all possible. (I won by the way!)

By the time the next year rolled around, I had been through even more unbearable pain, eventual back surgery to alleviate the problem, and managed to gain back all the weight I had lost while adding even more thanks to all of the Vicodin and other medications I had taken in order to keep the pain under control. No way was I going to fit into the dress yet again so it hung in the closet while I bought another dress. Still, hope springs eternal and I was hoping to lose the weight and be able to wear the dress this year.

Yeah, well, that didn't happen and realist that I am, I finally came to the conclusion that there was probably no way I was ever going to fit into that lovely form-fitting forest green dress that had been patiently waiting in my closet with the tags still attached for close to three years to make its debut. But what to do with it?

While looking on their website, ColdwaterCreek.com, for a potential dress for this year, I read the following in their Customer Service area:

100% Guarantee: If a Coldwater Creek purchase ever fails to meet your expectations for any reason, return it for an exchange or a full and prompt refund of the merchandise purchase price. There's no time limit to our guarantee, so there's absolutely no risk.

A lifetime guarantee? I contacted a customer service representative via their Live Chat function and she told me to mail the dress in using a prepaid shipping label I could print off their website and they'd take care of it. I did just that and without any hassle or questions they issued me a gift card that arrived in the mail yesterday for the amount I paid for the dress three years ago. How cool is that? A credit that I can use to buy a new dress for this year!

Good customer service seems harder and harder to come by these days - gone are the days of "the customer is always right" - so like I said, when you find a company that has it you need to tell people about it and shout it from the rooftops. I'm going to go rest my voice now and you should go check out ColdwaterCreek.com!

I've Got a Question, You've Got an Answer

Now that Thanksgiving is officially behind us here in the US of A, I can accept the fact that we are in the holiday season and Christmas will be on us before I can say "Bob Crachit's your uncle"! I don't care if retailers have the stores jam-packed with Christmas goodies before the last Halloween ghost has had a chance to say "boo!", I don't want to start thinking about Christmas until after the last piece of pumpkin pie has been eaten! I am just a bit of a traditionalist in that way I guess!

Even though it's still over a month until Christmas, retailers have already been whining about what a dismal season it's going to be for them and if there's one thing that frosts my Christmas cookie - that is it right there. Christmas shouldn't be about how much money people pump into the economy, about how many gifts are overflowing from beneath your Christmas tree, about whether or not you got that diamond pendant or fancy new car that they've been pushing on all the commercials, or about how much money retailers like Wal-Mart managed to suck into their coffers.

Christmas should be about peace on earth, good will towards men, and the one time of the year that you can greet a stranger on the street with a hearty "Merry Christmas!" without being eyeballed like you're some sort of internet stalker out for the day. People are supposed to like each other at Christmas, they're supposed to put their differences aside and get along, they're supposed to act like human beings who care about other human beings. Sadly, though, the focus of the holidays has been taken away from that and placed solidly on how much loot you got. It saddens me and I really miss the Christmas seasons of my younger years.

So - after all my ranting and raving about the meaning of Christmas being lost in the rush of consumer sales let me ask you this week's question because inquiring minds really do wanna know -

How much are you planning on spending this holiday season? More than usual? Less than usual? About the same? You're boycotting the holiday?

As much as I would like my answer to be the fourth option, I can't do that because I have kids and grandkids but I can tell you that I will be spending way, way less than I have in years past. Not only because I don't have the extra money to spend on extra gifts but because I believe that the holiday isn't about the gifts despite what Wal-Mart, Target, Best Buy, and every other retailer out there might have you think. Gifts are nice but they should be given in moderation and not just because more is better. A lot of times, it isn't.

Oh, and you'll notice that I'm not out contributing to the Black Friday craziness but staying home and blogging! I am a bad consumer ... a bad, bad consumer!

Retail Therapy 101 & 102

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I think I may have mentioned this in the past but allow me to reiterate it one more time just so we are all clear on this particular subject - I totally despise shopping malls. I do not enjoy going to a place that is a veritable mass of merchants out to relieve me of my money with wares that I neither need or want. However my darling daughter, being the teenager that she is, thinks that the mall is the mecca of society - a place to go and spend lots of time in even though there are only about three or four stores that she will set foot in. And that includes a mall that has over 170 shops! A mall that has three very high stories, carpeted floors, and over 170 shops! A mall that took us over an hour in the rain and wind to drive to with a parking garage almost bigger than the State it's in and over 170 shops! A mall that will make you feel somewhat dizzy if you stand too close to the rail on the third floor and take a picture looking straight down at the kiosks below and has over 170 shops!


So after all that, you might ask how the Retail Therapy to Get Over Not Being Able to Go to the Canceled My Chemical Romance Concert went and I would have to say that it went okay for the most part but it took a trip to more than just one mall to affect a total cure. After all, missing a concert that you had your heart set on for almost a month requires some heavy-duty shopping - at least that seems to be the case for Amanda!

We got to the Providence Place Mall around 3:30 in the afternoon and, after finding our way through the labyrinth of a parking garage, we made our way through the Macy's entrance to access the mall. Both Amanda and Cate cringed while having to walk through a store that sold "prep" clothes and appealed only to the masses who were merely brainwashed conformists but they survived the short walk through what I thought were a lot of cute looking clothes. Sadly, my daughter has no interest in 'cute looking clothes' and was chomping at the bit to get to Hot Topic where they sell things goth and Emo and non-conformist. It's a store that not too many adults frequent but boy-oh-boy do kids like Amanda and Cate just love it!

The one at the Providence Place Mall was surprisingly small for such a large mall and it was pretty well packed with kids who looked like they were more than ready for Halloween. After looking through their displays and not seeing anything that jumped out and screamed "Buy me! Buy me!" we went next door to a very large Newberry Comics store. There were more than several things in that particular store that screamed "Buy me! Buy me!" and Amanda walked out with two hard-to-find Mindless Self Indulgence CDs and a pair skeleton gloves. Don't ask!

Gloves, suspenders, and two CDs

From there we went to Dave & Buster's for a late lunch so that the girls could play some arcade games while we adults sat and relaxed for a bit and talked about the stress and frustration that Amy is experiencing with her whole house-buying experience. In talking to her I am reminded why I will probably never be, or even attempt to be. a homeowner. The whole process of buying a home does not sound in the least bit like fun!

After lunch we stopped in at Claire's where Amanda got a pair of green-heart decorated suspenders and then the girls popped into Spencer's where nothing appealed to them. At that point we had hit pretty much the only stores in the mall that the girls had any desire to go to and we decided to get the heck out of Dodge as it was pretty crowded and there really wasn't anything else to do as far as we could tell. It seemed to take longer to get out of the garage then it did to walk the mall but we eventually made our way out onto the turnpike and headed back towards Connecticut in a rainstorm that provided absolutely no visibility.

Amanda wasn't feeling particularly thrilled with the whole shopping experience as she had expected more from a mall the size of the one we had just left so I suggested that perhaps we could stop in at the mall closest to home and maybe the Hot Topic there would have something that she liked. At the one in Providence they had jackets that can best be referred to as the type that were worn by the members of My Chemical Romance on their Black Parade tour but they only had smaller sizes and Amanda was disappointed that they didn't have one in her size.

Thankfully it had stopped raining by the time we got back into Connecticut and I was actually able to see the road in front of me! When we got to the Crystal Mall the girls happily piled out of the car and into Hot Topic where Amanda was able to find the jacket she liked in her size. I told her that if I got her the jacket that was it - Retail Therapy would be complete at that point - and she was happy with that.

She really is happy despite the serious look!

After walking through a Halloween shop and trying on silly glasses for awhile we finally headed home with a very large moon hanging above and illuminating the way. I still don't have anything for a Halloween costume for myself but I guess we're going to try to hit a few thrift shops today and see what I can find there. Truth be told I've had enough shopping for the entirety of the year but as long as we don't go to any more malls I should be able to handle it. Hopefully! Besides, it beats working a 16-hour shift on what may be the first day of sunshine we've had in over a week!

The Back-Up Plan

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We should have been almost to Maine by now but due to the sudden cancellation of tonight's My Chemical Romance concert at the University of Maine we have had to make other plans. Amanda is still quite bummed about the whole thing but these things happen and one just has to swallow the disappointment and find something else to do.

After discussing it with Amy, we are going to take the girls over to the Providence Place Mall in - where else? - Providence, Rhode Island. I've never been there but it's supposed to be quite the place with more than 170 stores, eight restaurants, and entertainment venues including an IMax Theatre and a Dave & Buster's which is sort of the adult version of Chuck E. Cheese (blech!) with much better food and arcade games.

What impresses me the most, and sounds the best to my back in this rainy weather, is that they have carpeted floors! Can you imagine? Carpeted floors in a huge shopping mall that also has the essential stores that two teenage girls require - Hot Topic, Spencer's, and Newberry Comics. I need to put together a Halloween costume for work so perhaps I'll be able to find something I like while we're there - with over 170 stores I should be able to find something!

As a rule, I hate malls but there isn't too much else one can do in rainy, windy weather and perhaps this shopping excursion will help dissipate some of the disappointment of not going to Maine. As long as there isn't some sort of clown convention going on, it should be fine!

I'll keep you posted!