As you remember from a [url=http://don.oninohana.com/blog/?postid=242]previous post[/url], our washing machine crapped out on us and we had scheduled an appointment for the Sears repair tech to come today “between 1pm and 5pm”. 4 o’clock rolled by with no call or appearance from the tech. After finishing work, I headed upstairs and played with the kids for a bit to give Robyn a break and then decided that I should call to check on the status of the service call. The guy I spoke with said that we were 6th on the list for the day and that the tech had arrived at stop #5, but there was no further information. So, we waited. As 5pm approached and Robyn was getting ready for work, I decided that if we did not hear from anyone by 5, I would call later assuming that we would get the first appointment tomorrow. It’s an annoyance, but no big deal.

As I was getting ready to feed the kids, we got a call from the “routing center”. This was at 5:10, by the way. The gentleman said that the tech was “in the area” and wanted to know if they could send him over now. I said that this was not acceptable because it was past the timeframe in which Sears said that someone would be at our home. In addition, my wife was getting ready for work and I needed to watch the kids, so I couldn’t deal with having the tech there at that time. In response, I was told that he could schedule us for the next available appointment. Thinking I was going to hear tomorrow’s date, my jaw hit the floor when he instead gave December 28th as the next available time. I immediately let loose on the guy. I told him that I had been waiting for more than two weeks for [i]THIS[/i] appointment, that I had take half a day off from work in order to be around (not true, but they don’t need to know that I work from home!), that we could not be another ten days without a washing machine and that this was unaccetable and he was going to get someone over here tomorrow.

[i][b]Sidenote[/b]: You know the most annoying thing about good customer service people? They maintain their calm, zen-like state in the face of any verbal assault from the customer. One would think that this would, in turn, mellow the customer. But it had the polar opposite effect on me; I got angrier and angrier as he seemed completely unphased by any question I asked or demand that I made.[/i]

We went back and forth for several minutes. I mainly wanted to know why we would not just get pushed to tomorrow instead of having to wait so long. Of course, this guy did not make the rules and didn’t have an answer. Robyn even got on the phone to no avail. After much ado, we agreed to have the tech come back tonight. Unfortunately, the router (Scott) told us that he already disconnected from the technician and he was no longer en route to our home (even though we had not yet agreed on a solution). We ended being transferred to customer service where I spoke with Mary.

Mary seemed nice and she was certainly expressing her sympathy for our situation, but in the end, she did nothing that could really help us to get someone here tonight or tomorrow. We parted ways after she told me she had sent a message to the routing center and we should receive a call within an hour. After 45 minutes, I called customer service back, got disconnected and called back again. This time, I got Manny who was not only not helpful, but a bit arrogant. He repeated the party line that there were no available appointments until December 28th. At this point, I had had it with Sears. I was actually thinking about renting a truck and dropping the washing machine off at Sears’ front door. But they had us against the wall. What else could I do at this point? I was emotionally drained. It’s a very frustrating situation to realize that you have no further recourse. I relented and told Manny that we’d take his December 28th appointment. Of course, before hanging up, I had to ask if there were any guarantees that someone would show up on that day and also ask about who we call to cancel our service contract and if there was any chance that Sears would reimburse us for our trips to the laundromat. Heheheheh…that’s pretty funny now that I think about it.

What a pain in the ass! Of course, I’m pretty positive the technician is going to come on the 28th, diagnose the problem and then have to order some parts that will take a few weeks to be delivered. In addition, we’ll have to make several trips to do laundry between now and then.

I’m not sure if I knew this before or not (but I’m pretty sure I did not) but I just read something that save me minutes each year: the keyboard shortcuts to move through the sheets (tabs) in an Excel workbook are:

[b]CTRL+PageUp[/b] and [b]CTRL+PageDown[/b]

I’ve looked for this for years and now I finally know!!!

For some other great Excel tips [url=http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/help/HA102284301033.aspx]check out this page[/url].

Gabriel and Chloe have been gravitating to some of the toys that we’ve had for a long time but that they’ve never been very interested in. When the kids were still newborns, we received a package from Marissa’s mom that had a little pink plushy penguin that lights up and plays a song when you squeeze it’s belly (I called her “Penguina” right from the start, but Robyn preferred “Penny”) and a small blue lion of the same type, along with a nice card and some other items. Anyway, Chloe never paid much attention to either one of them, but Gabriel loved the penguin as soon as he could hold onto anything for more than a second. As he began teething, he used to love to chew at her little vinyl flippers and he would squeal with excitement when we got her to “sing” her little song. Well, Penny fell out of vogue for a while, but she turned up again a few weeks ago and Gabriel and Chloe both fell in love all over again. Now, both kids can squeeze her belly and make her sing and they love it!

It’s a similar story with the two [url=http://www.amazon.com/Hasbro-6552-Playskool-Lullaby-Gloworm/dp/B00008X35E]Glow Worm[/url] toys that Robyn’s mom bought for them as infants. Our kids have taken to these cuddly little insects with renewed love! It got to the point that one was not enough and I had to fish the other one (who’s batteries had long ago ceased to provide power enough to light up) out from the bottom of the toy chest and replace the batteries. Now we have dueling Glow Worms!

We love to watch the kids play with their toys. It’s really fascinating and exciting to see them interact and learn how to play. Now if we could just get them to share!

[font=courier][b]entropy[/b] – en·tro·py, n: the degradation of the matter and energy in the universe to an ultimate state of inert uniformity b: a process of degradation or running down or a trend to disorder[/font]

About the middle of last week, in our push to get the house cleaned up a little (many, many chores have gone un-done in the last few months!), I decided to wash our plush bath mat. Without thinking, I tossed it in the laundry with the other dish towels and old burp cloths that we use for dusting and the like. After letting the washer do it’s thing, I went down to the laundry room an hour or so later to put everything in the dryer when I saw that the digital readout on the washer indicated that the load was out of balance. I adjusted it and let it go again. After about 20 minutes, I went back and now it was indicating that the machine was not draining properly…great! I fiddled with some stuff, set new programs and never got the thing to drain. My guess is that some of the fibers from the mat got sucked into the pump (which is notorious for being easily clogged). I immediately went to the Sears website and put in a repair request – we have the good extended warranty on the washer that covers pretty much everything for at least 5 years. It’s a good thing that we got that because there is a lot of bad press about the Kenmore Calypso washers like ours. You can do the research on your own. Of course, the first available service date was December 18th – almost two weeks out! ugh! With four of us in the house, we do a fair amount of laundry, so this was not good news.

Saturday brought more good news. As I was hanging out with the kids on Saturday morning (Robyn and I take turns sleeping in on the weekends and Saturday is her day), it got quiet for a second and I heard what sounded like a weird whispering noise coming from downstairs. I made sure the kids were not likely to get into anything and ran down. Turning from the stairs to go into our family room, I heard water running in the laundry room. I immediately feared the worst because I had yet to drain the last of the water from the washing machine breakdown earlier in the week. As I opened the door, I saw a pretty large puddle in the middle of the laundry room, but the water was not coming from the washer as I feared. Instead, it was pouring, in a nice stream, from the oft-replaced pressure relief valve that sits between the water supply from outside and our holding tank. I quickly flipped the switch to turn off the pump, grabbed the small jug that we have sitting under the valve in case of drips and emptied that into the toilet – getting my feet soaked in the meantime. Then I ran upstairs and woke Robyn to have her watch the kids while I figured out how to get the water to stop. After running back down, I tried to remember how to stop the flow of water…we’ve been through this before! I hurriedly turned the valve that feeds the rest of the house and turned on the water in the bathroom sink in an effort to drain the holding tank. Of course, this was wrong. I should have left the valve open! As I was trying to figure out why the water wasn’t stopping, I was yelling upstairs to Robyn to get the number of the plumber we used before. This is pretty comical as I think back on it….

Anyway, long story short, I got the water to stop and we got a plumber to come by around half-past noon. He determined the problem was silt jacking up the pump pressure switch, causing it to run too long and pushing the pressure up in the tank. A few hundred dollars later, we were back in business. Of course, due to this, I couldn’t make it to class, so I asked Doug to teach in my place. This was the first time I have had someone take over class for me and I felt oddly guilty about it.

No, this probaby is not what you had in mind!

How fantastic is this video? Someone at Virgin realized that people will actually watch a safety video that is well made and entertaining. Makes me want to watch it a few times, actually.

Today was a mix of good and bad with regards to the kids. This morning, Chloe walked over to me while I was sitting in one of the chairs in our living rook and indicated that she needed to be changed by repeating “doo doo, doo doo” over and over. She’s been doing this for a week or two now and I would say that she’s right about half the time. So, I picked her up and sniffed her bottom (she always giggles at this seeming invasion of her personal space) and she was definitely right about having a load in her pants this time! As I stood with her in my arms, she sort of bucked/jumped as kids sometimes do and just about shot out of my arms. I managed to “catch” her as I gained my feet and kept her from falling to the floor, but it was a pretty clumsy grab that was not at all delicate. I’m not exactly sure what happened, but I think I managed to smack the toy phone that she was holding into her eye as I grabbed for her. She cried a bit at first and then suddenly ramped up about two minutes later until she was completely incosolable. Looking at her slightly swollen and rather bloodshot eye we assessed that nothing was seriously wrong and we got her to calm down. Although she was completely fine, I felt guilty for most of the morning and early afternoon. I could only imagine how those parents who manage to accidentally cause serious injuries (and worse) to their children must feel afterwards. Thinking about it makes me ill….

Let me preface this second part of the story by saying that my kids LOVE to run around with their clothes on their heads. When we undress them, we don’t throw their clothes directly into the hamper, we drop them to the floor and let the other one (the one we’re not changing) play with them. It’s very entertaining for them and it keeps us happy, too. Anyway, tonight, as I changing Gabriel in preparation for bedtime, Chloe had grabbed her old clothes and walked out of the room with them. It was oddly quiet for a bit, so I called to her. I heard a couple of thumps and then some laughing and then I heard her making her way down the hallway. As she came into the kids’ bedroom, I turned to see her moving at a quick pace with her sleeper draped over her head completely obscuring her vision! She was making a beeline for her brother’s crib.

“Chloe, slow down! You’re going to hit your….”

Before I could complete the sentence, she crashed right into the crib. There was a second of silence and then she cried. I couldn’t help but laugh both because of how she came into the room, but also because she didn’t fall onto her butt or make any attempt to take the clothes off of her head. She just stood there, arms by her side, sleeper hanging from her head like a cheap Halloween costume, crying.

I sped up my efforts to get Gabriel changed, but she stopped crying pretty quickly – probably due to my laughing. I did manage to grab the clothes from her and keep them out of reach, though.

I should have just let the leaves continue to pile up in the yard. I spent a few hours on Sunday blowing, raking and bagging leaves. I was able to get about half of our back yard and half the front yard cleaned up and looking good on Saturday but to see the yard today, you would never know that I did anything! I got a bit of a late start after making a “quick” trip to Home Depot to get some light bulbs and lawn bags. This shopping excursion took me about an hour round-trip! The holiday shoppers were out in force on Sunday! So, once I got home and began the yard work, it was already past 2pm. I worked until it started to get dark (that’s about 4:15 now) and then headed back inside. It rained a lot on Sunday night and Monday morning, so the leaves fell with a vengeance and covered the lawn again. Granted, it was a beautiful fall day to be outdoors, but it would be nice to look out and see my immaculate lawn.

I guess I have no one to blame for this wasted effort but myself. Oh, and maybe my neighbor who seems to be somewhat obsessed with keeping all the leaves off his grass. The guy is fastidious with his lawn and his cars. I’d love to see what their house looks like on the inside! I feel ashamed to have a leaf-covered lawn next to my their spotless one. The ironic thing about this is that the majority of the leaves (and about a half-ton of acorns) in my yard come from two trees that are on his property but seem to lean more our way. I think he may have spent years shaping them before we moved in!

This video ([url=http://www.thingamababy.com/baby/2007/11/thanksgiving.html]along with 7 others for the same Thai insurance company[/url]) was recommended on one of the parenting blogs that I read on a regular basis. Okay, go ahead and watch it….

Now, if you are a parent, let me know if this did NOT make you cry.

Anyway, Gabriel took his first couple of steps on Thanksgiving morning (yesterday). He’s been walking all around the house using his little toy walker. It’s been so funny to see him push the thing down the hall until he crashes into a wall and then yank it backwards and shove it to the side in order to change direction. Based on his seeming confidence with the walker, I’ve been saying that he could probably walk on his own for the last few weeks, but he didn’t actually do it until yesterday. He’s been keeping up the trend by taking a few more steps today, too. It’s great to see!

[b]UPDATE[/b]: I must have been in some very emotional state when I posted watched that video mentioned above because I re-watched it with Robyn when she came home and I didn’t cry and wasn’t that struck with emotion at all. Maybe it was having another person there to bring me back to reality or maybe I was touched by having watched all the other videos in that collection as well. I’m not sure. Anyway, your emotional mileage may vary. heheheheh.

I’ve done two things this week that I have not done in a long, long time.

Yesterday, I drove out to Bronnxville to attend a Tuesday night class at the [url=http://www.bnyd.com]BNYD[/url]. I haven’t been out there for a regular class since before the kids were born – so, well over a year! It was fantastic to be back among friends and true [i]buyu[/i] (martial friends) after being away for so long. One thing that surprised me is how good I felt during and after training. Since most of my extended training periods are when I am teaching, I don’t generally get a good “workout”. But I had no problem keeping up the pace last night.

Tonight, I got together with John to go see The Mist. That’s right, a movie at an actual movie theater! Overall, the film is an excellent adaptation of one of my favorite Stephen King “short” stories. You know, with all the Stephen King talk on this blog lately, I should think about dedicating it to him! heheheheh. Anyway, the movie was great and I ate waaaay too much popcorn!

When we woke up yesterday morning, we were surprised to see several inches of snow on the ground. It then proceeded to snow throughout the day. There was no additional accumulation. In fact, a lot of it was melting away. This may be the earliest I can remember getting any serious snow.