Endless crappy toy rant....

We get the child a Bozo punching bag for Christmas. Blow it up today with a nice gentle pump. It seems fine for a little while then I look again and it's losing air. I look it over and it seems there is a tiny hole in the bottom, where they were sealing the seams around the weighted sand and managed to burn through the vinyl just a tiny speck, but enough. Will call and try to exchange this weekend, probably bringing the pump to try it out, but that could be tricky as it's almost 4 ft. tall and would not fit in the car too well...

We get her a rather silly but highly desired Hannah Montana guitar video game thingey. It works fine yesterday and today won't talk to the TV, despite all our trouble-shooting attempts (how many parents
with computer degrees does it take...). Will call their help number tomorrow after trying yet more new batteries. (If it drains 'em in a day, well, we are gonna have issues).

New Barbie clothes from the grandma include tights, which like all current Barbie clothes must be so skin-tight that your average single-digit-aged child has a horrid time putting them on. I feel like an old person, but it's not a doll modesty thing, it's a quality thing. The stupid clothes rip the first time she tries to use them. Come on, why and how do they get away with this? I have had better luck buying old doll clothes off of eBay, that hold up better after 30 years than new ones do.

Haven't even opened half her other gifts to play with yet. Can't wait. Dunno if my liver can handle the fun....

How much they can unknowingly hurt...

I'm desperately trying to finish some work (at home) before heading to the company holiday party. The child comes to bug me again about how soon can we go. She sits on my lap and says how she wants to be a famous artist when she grows up, not slump at some computer. Yeah. So did I. Not making very much progress at it, am I, getting sucked into having a degree in something I never really liked, because I was convinced work was supposed to suck and well, it mostly has.

Am I setting a good impression for her? Hardly. I'm not rich or famous at anything and she no signs of getting there anytime before death. Good thing it's the happy family-filled holiday season so I can be miserable in front of everyone else....not....

I want my life back before it's too late....

Electronic over-inter-action...

I am not sure why, but in the last week I have joined Linkedin.com, Classmates.com and Facebook.com and already connected with various friends, relatives, former roommates and so on.Mmaybe it's the nostalgia-filled holiday season or morbid curiosity or something else, I'm not sure. Maybe I need a contrast to my college newsletter that touts all the under-40 rich and famous alumni, making me feel like a useless slacker.

I should be writing Christmas cards and doing work (at home) but no, I'm obsessively trying to think of names of folks from grade school, just to see if they are virtually out there. Strange. But kind of fun, or there would not be millions of folks doing it, I guess. Still not sure how it's better than email or a blog but I guess it is the coordination and networking they do for you.

Soon to update my woefully ignored houseblog, too.

My Obama (non)moment

No, I haven't met him. I now regret not going to D.C. when he was a new junior senator and
requesting to have brunch with Dick Durbin (who is a very good senator) and him. A bit
late now...

Anyway, my behind the scenes (non) moment happened several years ago. I have
always been on donor lists for the Democrats and would get phone calls for polls,
money requests, and so on. Way before the Senate race in Illinois, there was a very
detailed survey call, asking about a bunch of potential candidates, mostly nothing
special local office-holders, and this guy with a weird name about whom no one had
heard much. They were very into it, with things like "What if we told you he was
the first African-American president of the Harvard Law Review", and lots of things
on his positions, and so on. It all seemed quite promising and I said I'd be willing to
learn more and perhaps consider voting for him. I guess a lot of other survey respondents
said so, too, since all of a sudden he was the leading contender in the U.S. Senate race
in Illinois.

Seems very much like there were folks behind the scenes planning and grooming and
scheming for quite some time there. And Now look where it's gone. Wow. I feel
better about national politics than I have since 1992...Woo-hoo and here's hoping....

Mother rant, 1? of infinity...

Does everyone's mother say how they have failed at raising their child because said child does not keep its house as clean as said child's mother? Do they ever have anything positive to say? Do they harp on things like faded shear curtains, that came with the house and are being replaced soon by blinds and don't rate washing, yet, somehow, they chisel away at most of said child's capabilities as an adult human being, or so she would believe? I've been told to just ignore such things, the rantings of a crazy old woman. This was from someone whose crazy old mother was safely in another country, not a couple miles away. It's hard when your mother is so perfect, you can never measure up, even if you wanted to, which you don't.....not in that way, at least....

Not ranting enough....

I keep feeling so screwed up and less-than-profound, that I am reluctant to write, but I think that is what makes me therefore NEED to write, if only to calm my troubled brain. If anyone is actually reading this, you have been warned.

So, can he do it? The Obama thing, that is. We've already had one massive hellish let-down for the year with the Cubs giant tease and crash. Do we need another? I have been actively ignoring national politics since 2000 when I volunteered for a campaign for the first time and got too crushed for my own good. I recall being thrilled in 1992 but far less since.....

I never thought the world would seem this screwed up by the time I was 40. Is it me or is it just that the longer you live, the more perspective you acquire and the cynicism multiplies....

The inescapable sucking ooze...

...that is JP Morgan Chase and so many others. I awoke to hear that yesterday the bank that has our mortgage and savings, Washington Mutual, was bought by Chase. Just last year, I had closed my accounts at Chase and switched to WaMu as they like to be called, gag, since I was sick of their impersonal fee-laden New York intrusive dumbness. This was after they bought Bank One who'd combined with NBD Bank, after taking over First Chicago, which had been around since roughtly 1864 and is no more.

And don't even get me started on the Marshall Field's demise...

How big can these Jabba the Hut corporate things get and why is there no escape? It's like the whole AT&T (sorry, they like lower case now) thing, gosh, it used to be Illinois Bell and then Ameritech and then SBC and now at&t again, just like we used to have for long distance. And their fees, too, keep going up. Text messaging on prepaid cellular went from 5cents/msg last year to 15cents in one go! Gosh, that's a 300% increase. Now it's going up another 5cents. All of this may seem petty to folks with unlimited plans, but I, and many others like me, don't make $100+ of cell calls a month to need such plans. Anyway.

Back to work and a nice cup of healthy green tea. END RANT...

A safe, fun, high-tech way to meet people!

Hey, check out Crush or Flush, a great new way to meet people.

You upload a photo of yourself and a name, or nickname, but not other personal info gets posted. You add whatever personal descriptions of yourself you want, and can browse for others based on their descriptive info. You enter your cell phone number and use the site to text message folks on whom you might have a "crush" or you can "flush" those on whom you don't. Pretty nifty and safer than the bars.

and more irony..

I recently saw little red painted wooden 4th of July pins, with American flags on them. They had a tiny plaque linked on, that said "This Land Is My Land". I had to check, and of course the usual "Made In China" sticker was on the back. Yes, this land IS theirs, isn't it, at least trade-deficit-wise... The patriotic shirts from Old Navy piss me off, too. Try American Apparel , made in Los Angeles t-shirts, for an example of actual American clothing...

Ah, the irony...

Ok, the last post was just slaving for mturk again. Still catching up since the holidays. The title of this post refers to my in-laws. They got me the book A Year Without Made in China, which was a surprisingly appropriate and thoughtful gift, considering my Buy American leanings (are liberals allowed to have those? Ah, another topic entirely. Anyway.) and my complaints about how so many things today are such junk, and so on.

Then they gave my daughter a doll, whose leg broke off with very little prompting right on Christmas Eve. There was an amazing trauma and they promised to take her to the doll hospital and get her fixed (ie secretly replaced). Apparently they mucked with it so much, rather than just return it, that they figured the store would blame them and they, amazingly, bought a whole new one instead. THEN, the day they gave it to us, right after we got home, gosh, what do you know, its leg broke off, just like the first one. More child traumas. I wanted to break some legs and I don't mean the doll's...This was beyond ridiculous, so we promised to get her crutches or some such and taped her leg back on and she has mostly laid in the doll bed since then, ignored.
At least stuffed animals don't break so easily but people could really lay off giving those, too.

Time to break out that sewing machine and make the memorable sort of toys and clothes that my grandmother made us....

Great new job listing site

Hey, check it out--SellingCrossing aka Employment Crossing. They have over a million sales-related and other job listings free for the browsing. The search options seem pretty helpful, too.