Thursday, December 29, 2005

Pointless Product: #1

Welcome to Pointless Products. A professor once said, "Don't rewrite what someone has already said better than you could." So, to sum up the Pointless Products Posts, here's Homer Simpson:

Homer Explains Pointless Products

Here is the first product. Holy Moses it is useless.

A Lighted Self-Grinding Pepper Shaker

Wednesday, December 07, 2005

I'm married....Honest!

June 13, 2005:The sun was shining as my fiance and I headed down to the courthouse with my sister, Jess, and our friend, Chad, in tow. We stood before the Justice of the Peace and stated the politically correct vows, signed the papers, and within 5 min BAM! We were married.

I wanted to take my husband's last name, and thought that although it looked a little tedious, it shouldn't really take that long. Wow, was I wrong! It is now December 7th and I am still without his last name on my passport. With a trip to Mexico in April I better hurry up. In order to send in my passport name change application, I need a copy of my marriage license, and unfortunately there is nothing that I can do about it at this moment.

The fun started at the end of September when I went online to get a copy of the marriage license. I entered in all of my information correctly, checked and re-checked everything, but instead of a confirmation page I received an error. Apparently, the search they did (with my social security number and driver's license number) did not find anything. So sorry, you are going to have to either fax or mail in your form.

I mailed in my form at the end of October/beginning of November. A couple of days before Thanksgiving I received an letter back from the Vital Records department informing me that they could not find my record. They went on to state that I needed to wait the allotted 60 days for the record to reach their office.(Um...June to November is WAY more than 60 days.) I should be receiving a refund check in the mail within 3-4 weeks.

I called them today (yes, I procrastinated) and the phone was answered by ... Don't know she didn't say her name. First thing she told me was that they do not send letters like that. Then, after I read her most of the letter, she said she needed to check me something and put me on hold - did not tell me that the stupid hold music would come back on. When she came back she told me that I did not wait the 60 days for the record to come to their office. I informed her (again - 3rd time) that I was married in June. She said she would have the original record pulled and call me back.

I received a voicemail from a different person stating that the check had been issued yesterday and that I would need to re-submit an application. That was it - no information on what went wrong or any apologies or anything. This sucks!

So, I called this lady, Bobbie, back and got her voicemail. I left a message stating that I will send in another application, but I wanted to be sure this time that it went through and that I wouldn't be waiting for nothing. I am still waiting to hear back from her.

Tuesday, December 06, 2005

Well behaved children are the best

Recently, I have such a hard time figuring out what I wanted to write a post about. I have many thoughts, but none of them have rounded out to becoming a post. I have been reading the news, and haven't found anything good to write about....until now. MSNBC is running a story about a restaurant owner who has put a sign in his window stating: Children of all ages have to behave and use their indoor voices when they come to A Taste of Heaven.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10338070/

Before I go on, let me state that I like kids. I do not have any kids, but I babysat a lot when I was growing up. Those experiences helped me learn a great deal on how different kids behave.

There is nothing worse than when a parent allows their child to cry, scream, and throw tantrums in public places. I find this behavior appalling and completely selfish on the parent’s part. I know that there are many people that would disagree with me, stating that children are volatile and can be contained as well as a volcano. The reason that I do not agree with this is because I have friends that are parents and can take their children to public places without the children causing any havoc. These parents are the one’s that take time out of their schedules, which are busy as other parents, and teaching their children the importance of discipline as well as what is acceptable and what is not. I am a firm believer that a well-disciplined child will in turn be a well-behaved child.

For this case, I side with the sign in the window. I can recall many times being in different restaurants, trying to enjoy my meal, when all of a sudden a child starts screaming. In these situations, the parents have a few choices on how to react:

a.) Talk to the child in a stern voice. If this does not cause the situation to stop, move the child to a different location (i.e. bathroom) and continue the conversation…although I am not opposed to spanking a child, I do not think this is an appropriate location to carry this type of discipline out.
b.) Yell at them to shut up.
c.) Ignore them and hope they will quiet down.

Unfortunately, in most cases I see a combination of ‘b’ and ‘c’. I understand that children can be difficult, but to yell at or ignore them is not the answer. I believe that inconsistent discipline will spur on consistent misbehavior, as well as consistent discipline will foster children who are well-behaved.