Ben’s Blog

As of Thursday last week Holly and I still hadn’t firmed up plans for this weekend but everything came together nicely.

On the way to Allendale for a Friday morning meeting I heard an ad on the radio for the Grand Rapids Griffins hockey game, featuring $1 beers and hot dogs so I called the office and invited a couple of coworkers.  It was a good game, the Griffins beat the Lake Erie Monsters 5 to 1 and the beer was cold and cheap - the hot dogs weren’t bad either.  The best part was that tickets were only $10 because we all posed as college students with our old student IDs, and the seats were really good too.

Saturday morning I woke up very early and caught a couple black and white Westerns on the Starz movie channels.  Holly woke up a bit later and began a cleaning spree so I tried to clean the basement a bit too.  By early afternoon I was a bit crazy from being cooped up all morning so I loaded a couple monitors in the back of the truck for recycling in Rockford.  I knew a coworker had a couple monitors to pitch so I picked those up and dropped off 6 old monitors in all at the recycling station - that is a lot of monitors even for two computer nerds.  I thought I was being green and sustainable until I watched 60 minutes tonight and saw a story on the pollution Americans are causing in China by throwing away electronics, especially CRT monitors because of the amount of lead in the tube.

Sunday morning I woke up early again, it must be the time change, so I had to wait a bit until the Sunday morning news shows came on in mass.  Armed with the power of DVR technology I was able to watch Meet the Press AND CBS Sunday Morning - amazing.  Several hours and a pot of coffee later I decided to replace the leaky kitchen faucet so I jumped in the car and headed to Lowes.  I found a nice Moen faucet and several other tools that were “required” to complete the project and headed home to start the project.  Everything went pretty smooth except for one one rusted nut attaching the faucet to the stainless steel sink basin.  The nut turned out to be no match for my new plumber’s wrench with telescoping handle and in no time (2 hours to be exact) I had the new faucet in place.  Before pic is on the left, after is on the right.

With that project done all that was left to do was watch football which I’ve successfully done up until writing this blog entry.  With opening day coming up I have a couple more busy days in front of me - I’ll be heading to the U.P. Thursday afternoon so I’ve only got a couple days to get everything organized.  Organization is not my strong suit so I really mean I have to find everything because it is likely strewn all over the house.

I just helped my mom order tickets to see Wicked in Detroit the weekend after Christmas with a small group of family members…by help I mean order all the tickets and relay to her how much she owes me.  If I were spending my own money I think I would have decided not to see the show after seeing how much Ticket Master charges in additional fees!

The ticket price started at $70.00, then you add $9.20 per ticket for a convenience charge and $3.00 for a facility charge.  The site was not at all convenient - convenient would have been calling and talking to a person to find the best seats for the money while comparing a couple dates that my mom had available.  Ticket Master can’t even be bothered to tell you ahead of time what shows are already sold out for the quantity of tickets you’re looking for!  I guess I could have called them, but when I tried the hold time was over 10 minutes and there were additional fees for more convenience.

Next you get to the parking section - Detroit Opera House lets you pre-pay for parking which I thought was pretty cool.  $10.00 for parking isn’t bad in Detroit, but wait…there is another convenience fee of $1 per parking pass for this feature.  Fine…whatever, what is one more dollar at this point.

Now it’s time to select how you will receive your tickets…the first option is to print them out at home - how convenient, right?  Think of how much time and money Ticket Master saves when they don’t have to pay for manpower to print the tickets, stuff envelopes, etc - not to mention the savings in printing and paper stock related costs.  Well, in case you’re spotting a trend here, you’re right - more fees.  $2.50 to print your own tickets at home, with your own paper, printer and ink.  Ridiculous.  I choose the UPS option for $14.50 because I want those bastards to do something in this whole ticket buying process.

Finally I get to the bottom of the page and see the submit order button.  I am so happy there are no more options and fees to deal with…until I get to the confirmation page and see that to add insult to injury, to rub salt in the wound, they have added a $4.35 ticket processing fee.  Really, how is this not included in any of the above fees I’m paying for ordering tickets online?  Isn’t that part of the overall convenience?

I really don’t see how, in good conscious, they can gouge so much money out of consumers - in my opinion this should be criminal.  I had to order 8 tickets tonight for my mom’s group so by the time all was said and done I paid $103.95 for the convenience of Ticket Master allowing me to order my own tickets on their crappy, clunky, barely-usable website.  Thanks so much for the experience!

Another from Holly’s sister Jill…This is just an excerpt, you’ll have to look at the PDF below for the rest.

What to do in a Terrorist Attack
The US government has a new website, http://www.ready.gov. displaying public service symbols for terrorism readiness, in the tradition of the old “duck and cover” campaigns after WWII. The fun thing is that these pictures are so ambiguous they could mean anything! Here are a few guesses about what they mean:

Click here to view the full PDF.

I usually hate email forwards but Holly’s sister, Jill, sent her this one (to Holly) that made me laugh.  The “moral” of the email was that parent’s should always double-check their kid’s homework.  Holly brings home pictures that her 1st and 2nd graders draw in class and they look like this one (different content, of course):

According to the email, the funny thing is that the kid’s mom worked at Home Depot and she is selling a shovel.

I noticed last week that Bailey had broken another tooth - the last one he broke in mid 2006 had to be removed, which cost a pretty penny and also left him with no feeling in his hind leg after a shot of antibiotics gone awry.  I tried getting him into the Vet’s office Friday morning before our Chicago trip but had to wait until this morning before they could see him.

It turns out that Bailey’s very aggressive chewing is reeking havoc on his teeth - in addition to breaking another tooth he has worn the enamel off several more and is at risk of chipping or breaking those too.  The Doc today was very thorough and fit him in tomorrow to remove the current broken tooth and clean the rest of them while he is knocked out.

In an attempt to fins a long term solution we are going to try Prozac to see if we can’t stop him from chewing as a result of his separation anxiety.  The Doc also informed me that Target offers the generic form of Prozac under their $4 dollar prescription plan, or three months for $10.  The same pills at the vet’s office would be $20 more a month so kudos to him for helping me save a bit of money.  We left the office with a script for Bailey Rapin and will soon find out if this will help calm him down while we’re out of the house.

Stay tuned for updates…I’ll see if the vet will snap a photo of his teeth while he is under.