Blog Archives

Neighbors

Posted on 10 November 2009
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There’s always one in every neighborhood.  The weird ones who do weird things and get gossiped about over the fence.  You hope to Bob that this is not you, but might secretly take some sort of satisfaction that if it were you, you might be eligible for some sort of freak merit badge.

Thankfully, this is not us (sadly, no freak merit badge), but the favorite family in the neighborhood happens to be two houses over.  We live in an older neighborhood with some houses dating back to the late 1800s.  Most of the older houses had outhouses at one point, but they’ve since been removed ages ago in the name of oh, I don’t know, Modern Plumbing.  Said neighbors still have their little red brick outhouse in the backyard.  One morning, I awoke to sounds of construction outside.  Having dogs is always a good excuse to go out and investigate, so out we went.  While the puppies were sniffing all over the yard for any trace of squirrel poop to consume, I looked two yards over to see a man, on a ladder, chiseling old shingles off the roof of the outhouse.

…

I know.  They were re-roofing THE OUTHOUSE.  I could see if it was a deluxe model and they were repurposing the thing to be a shed, but really?  Four square feet don’t really constitute bonus storage space, especially if that four square feet comes with a bench that has a hole in the middle.  During the past two years, there have been so many memorable things, but this one definitely takes the urinal cake.

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Customer Service

Posted on 15 May 2009
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Today I took a trip out to the Pottstown Sewing & Crafts store with my late grandmother’s Singer Athena 2000 sewing machine (circa 1978).  It had started making this awful grinding noise when sewing and I knew something was really wrong.    I called the store the other day to check and see if they did repair on site which they did, so I hauled the machine into the store and was greeted immediately by a staff member.  The repair tech was on the phone, but the woman who greeted me started poking around, trying to see what was going on, finding the same unpleasant ‘clunk’ that I had found when turning the hand wheel.  The repair tech came over and, no joke, in a matter of seconds, had a solid hunch of what was going on which was confirmed when he brought the machine over to his work area and popped open the bottom to take a look.  He was right.  Incredible.  I just love seeing that kind of knowledge from any kind of technician or repair person.  The tech explained the costs involved in repairing the machine, pointed out the parts, showed me the 30 year old circuit boards, and advised a course of treatment.  Fixing the whole shebang would be $300.  Fixing what needs to be fixed to make it functional would be about $120.  His caveat was that even if I went the high road, the machine is so old that something else that’s not replaceable could break the day after I get it back home.  If I went the low road, it would  be funcional for light work, but wouldn’t be able to hem a pair of jeans (something my vertically challenged self does OFTEN).  He did encourage me to keep it regardless since it was the first computerized sewing machine and has historical value as well as the obvious sentimental value.  Still gabbing about the sewing machine, he smiled and said that the Athena was the first sewing machine he ever sold and even told me the exact year that particular color came on the market.  You could just tell that he loved his job and enjoyed knowing everything there was to know about sewing machines.

I was sort of ready for a grim diagnosis.  I know grandma used the machine a lot, and I put a good deal of time into it as well.  The $300 estimate is pretty close to a new machine anyway, and I immediately thought about the stack of pants sitting on the cabinet and the husband’s last set of patches that need to be applied.  Yeah, going without a sewing machine isn’t really an option.  The woman who initally greeted me took me around to a few machines and gave me demonstrations of the features I used often – button holes, straight sewing – and even a few of the new bells and whistles that have come about in the last thirty years.  (Dude, sewing machines cut the thread for you now and there’s no foot pedal!)  She was incredibly sweet and patient with me and I think she had more fun that I did, showing me all the neat features of each machine in my price range.

In the end, I walked out with a new sewing machine, left the old one for the basic repair (at half price since I bought the new one), and got two free classes with the machine on basic use and maintenance.  While I was checking out, in case I didn’t love these people enough already, another woman came in with a vacuum cleaner that she said was smoking when she used it.  The tech came over, flipped the vacuum over on the counter, replaced the belt, pulled some hair and fuzz off the beater bar, and tested the vacuum.  THEN, he showed the woman how to do the very same repair at home and only charged her for the belt he used.

I walked out with a smile on my face and feeling really spectacular.  I think all the big-box and chain stores have destroyed that good-customer-service ideal with their bureaucracy and metrics, but the little local mom-and-pop stores still get it.  The folks at the Pottstown Sewing & Crafts store were just doing what was right because it was the right thing to do – that’s just SO hard to find!  I know I look younger than I am and am sometimes treated like an idiot teenager (hi, I’m almost 30), but I didn’t feel like that at all today.  Their honesty and friendly attitude was really refreshing, and if you live in the area, I would suggest that you go pay them a visit.  I know I’m going to be a loyal customer from now on!

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Miss California

Posted on 24 April 2009
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Let me preface this post by putting in a few points on how I feel about the things you know are going to come up in this post.  Personally, I think beauty pageants of any kind are revolting for so many reasons.  I think that gay marriage should be legal.  Just getting that out of the way before I go play the devil’s advocate..

Let’s recap.
Perez Hilton: Vermont recently became the fourth state to legalize same sex marriage.  Do you think every state should follow suit?  Why or why not?
Miss California (Carrie Prejean):  Well I think it’s great that Americans are able to choose one or the other.  Um, we live in a land that  you can choose same sex marriage or opposite marriage, and, you know what, in my country, and in my family, I think that I believe that a marriage should be between a man and a woman, no offense to anybody out there, but that’s how I was raised and that’s how I think that it should be between a man and a woman.  Thank you.

I almost feel bad for the girl.  While I don’t agree with her feelings on the matter, she’s 100% allowed to voice her beliefs and opinions (I really don’t want to resort to name-calling here), but I’m not sure a *BEAUTY* pageant is the right place.  We’re not going to agree with eachother about everything and while life might be easier if everyone just agreed with me, I doubt it would be nearly as interesting and diverse (that was a touch of sarcasm, in case you missed it).  If she had been asked this question even twenty years ago, would her answer have ‘cost her the crown’ as the news says it has?  What bothers me about her choice of answer is the wording – that’s how she was raised.  That’s how I was raised too, but in growing up and developing my own thoughts and opinions, I decided that gay marriage wasn’t a bad thing and that there was no good reason in my mind to stop gays from marrying.  Her answer felt so .. pre-canned and robotic and rehearsed and unoriginal.  People are arguing that it wasn’t politically correct – well, give me an answer that appeases everyone!  Someone, somewhere was going to find whatever answer she would’ve given to that question politically incorrect or offensive.  It was a loaded question.  Pleasing Perez Hilton would’ve meant pissing off conservatives.

For kicks, let’s look at the requirements for the Miss USA pageant.
Throughout the USA pageant system, from the local level to the international level, contestants are judged in three areas:
Interview Competition – Pageant judges spend time with each contestant to learn about her successes, talents, goals and ambitions. Attention is focused on her poise, charm, self-confidence and her ability to communicate, as well as the substance of her answers.
Swimsuit Competition – Attention is focused on beauty of face, figure, physical fitness, and the confidence with which each contestant carries herself. Numerical measurements are not considered in the judging.
Evening Gown Competition – Each contestant wears a gown she has chosen for herself. Attention is focused on each contestant’s overall appearance, self-confidence, sense of style and the beauty she brings to the gown of her choice.
Emphasis all mine.  Do we see anything in there about political correctness?  Do we see anything in there about politically/religiously charged questions?  No.  The interview, as described above, is to be about her, “successes, talents, goals and ambitions.”  Just sayin’.. The girl from the state that voted in a measure eliminating the right of same-sex couples to marry and goes to a Christian college got a loaded question by a gay man about gay marriage.  WHAT DID WE THINK WAS GOING TO HAPPEN HERE?!

End point – she couldn’t have saved herself from failure on that question, no matter what answer she gave.  Of course, she’s since gone on a few interviews and dug herself a deeper hole (not to say that Perez isn’t doing the same all by himself either), but it’s clear that now she’s carrying an agenda when she could’ve been just another pageant contestant who gives a bad response to a question.

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I Object

Posted on 19 January 2009
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I make it no secret that I’m a Liberal Atheist Hippie..  The short version is that I am a gal who voted for Obama, doesn’t believe in any deity, and wants everyone to just get along, man.  :)

That out of the way, there was a news article I caught this morning that made me incredibly angry.  Livid even.  A nurse accidentally removed a patient’s IUD and then lectured her about how they cause abortions and that the nurse herself was against IUDs.  To make matters worse, the nurse admitted that the other people at the office laugh about how she must be doing this on purpose since she’s against IUDs, but that’s not true since they just come out when she tugs on them.  Let’s go over a few things.  IUDs are Intrauterine Devices that are inserted by a doctor or nurse practitioner as an out patient procedure.  It’s not something you can just go and decide to do one afternoon.  The insertion is usually a little painful since you’re putting a T shaped device through an itty bitty opening.  Likewise, removing the IUD isn’t a picnic since you’re basically pulling an open umbrella through a gutter downspout.  Their primary function is to inhibit fertilization, not to encourage the body to expel a fertilized egg.  How do I know this?  I have one and did a lot of homework before making the decision to get one (Yes, I plan on being open and honest in this blog).

Now, it’s legal for a medical professional to object to doing a procedure (ie. abortion) on grounds that it goes against one’s morals or religious beliefs.  I guess I can understand that (may not agree with it though), but why go into a field where you might have to object to doing the job that you spent years studying for?  Why even put yourself in that situation?  It would be like a mechanic who objected to the oil industry and refused to do oil changes.  What bothers me about the legality of objecting is the right of the patient.  If the patient in the article had known that the nurse disagreed with IUDs, I highly doubt that she would’ve agreed to be seen by the nurse.  What’s scary is that the nurse could have done serious physical damage to the patient by tugging on the strings of the IUD and not removing it properly, possibly perforating the patient’s uterus among other things.  Through my research, I was able to find out that you don’t pull on those strings – you periodically check to make sure that they’re there and that the IUD hasn’t failed or started to expel.  If the nurse is trying to say that she didn’t know not to tug on the strings, she’d have to be lying.  What’s really awful?  The nurse admitted that she joked with her colleagues about having done this before, colleagues who jokingly accused her of doing this on purpose and not by accident as she claims.  This same nurse who thought it was FUNNY to potentially endanger the lives and fertility of her patients was continually employed by people who suspected that she had an agenda and wasn’t removing IUDs by accident.  Personally, I have no doubt in my mind that the nurse did this on purpose – given the inormation in the article, it’s highly unlikely that it was an accident.  If the patient didn’t have good enough (or any) insurance, IUD insertion can run up to or over $1000, and in one swift move by a nurse with an agenda, the patient is out the time, money, and pain involved during the insertion.  It appears that this nurse had a clear agenda and wanted to stop women from using IUDs and was not at all interested in their health and well-being.  Personally, I want my medical professionals to be able to leave their bias at the office door and be more concerned with what is best for me, not what is best for their conscience.

I’m trying here to create an intelligent post, but what I really want to do is rant and scream and be irrational.  I’m glad that the patient has filed a lawsuit and I hope that the court throws the book at the nurse.  I also hope that Obama is able to undo Bush’s new right of conscience regulation and return the health rights of women to their OWN consciences and not put us at the mercy of the consciences and morals of our doctors.

On a somewhat unrelated note, I keep getting the urge to ask the abortion protesters how many times they’ve adopted an unwanted baby.  Making abortion illegal isn’t going to stop women from having unwanted pregnancies and doing what they feel necessary for their own health and well-being.

Okay, stepping off my soap box now.

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