Sunday Pic: Plus

1) I tried to get the girls signed up for some art classes that the city is hosting for kids; it was pretty good deal, just thirty to forty dollars a kid for an hour long class a day, for two weeks. Go figure, it'd fill up within the first two days of registration, and I was nowhere near the first two days. Instead, I decided that I will be doing one class a week for the girls all summer. We have invited three cousins who live a half hour north of us to join in. That way we get to see them once a week, and they can justify the trip. Seriously, with gas prices what they are nowadays, it's hard to just hop in the van and go a-visiting for visitings sake. I think that for the first two weeks we will be making paper mache masks and then decorate them. I haven't thought further than that, and am open to suggestions. The ages of the kids range from seven to four, Pearl will probably just be-bop around, and maybe help me slap a few hunks of slop on a mask, or whatever project we end up doing. I'm thinking about keeping it to a budget of no more than $20 a kid. I'm thinking we will have approximately ten classes.

2) It rained like a beast earlier this week, for two days in a row. On Thursday morning (the second day) we awoke to WATER IN THE BASEMENT!! I found it first as I went down before anyone else was up to turn the laundry over. I freaked out a little, cried a little and then went upstairs to tell Dadguy who literally leaped from bed saying "Oh S*T!" And if you know Dadguy.... he never, as in never-ever swears. I asked him about it later, and he replied that it was the only applicable thing to be said at a time like that. Can't argue with that.

2a) Long story short, the follow-up to this occurrence has reminded me that there are good companies that hire intelligent, competent people and like to do good business and keep customers by treating them right. Short story long, because of the appearance of the leak, we thought that we had a foundation leak behind the sheet rock and called Intermountain Foundation Repair. I use the name of the company because they are one of the companies I'd like to give props to. The repair guy the showed up just four hours after I called and looked at the basement, what was left of the puddle (we had shop-vac'ed it up), inspected the window well, and then explained to me why he was pretty sure that we did NOT have a foundation leak. He then took about twenty minutes explaining to me how to keep water from ever coming in the window well again, how to then test to make absolutely sure that he was right about the foundation, and then he took me outside to make some other recommendations as to how to keep the water away from the house altogether. He then left me his card and did not charge me a dime for the visit and the advice. When was the last time that happened to YOU!?

2b) Next company is Woodstuff, a rock, mulch and bark supply company. I called them Saturday morning to see when they could deliver a yard or so of one inch rock. Dadguy had just dug out a huge amount of muck, silt and peagravel from the window well, and after I dumped it against the side of our house in bucket after sodden bucket, we realized that our plan "A" of picking up a few bags of rock from Home Despot was just not gonna cut it. The guy I talked to said that they did indeed have one delivery spot open that day. I told him I would be right there, and when I showed up to pick out and pay for the rock, I discovered that he had actually held the delivery place for me. Pretty sure he had picked up on the desperation in my voice. A simple thing perhaps, but a very powerful message to me as a customer.

2c) Next stop: Jones Paint and Glass. I needed to purchase a couple of five dollar tubes of exterior caulking. Hardly a big ticket sale, but I didn't have to break my back to find an employee who was willing to listen to me describe what it was that I needed, and then direct me to the right thing. Seriously. Nowadays that's a pretty big deal. Listening, thinking, assisting; I was in and out within five minutes.

2d) I had to get some groceries afterwards, and Wa!-m@rt was on the way home, but I was fairly sure that the shock of going from customer service to dis-service would kill me, so I opted for Macey's instead. I like Macey's, it's clean, there are always carts, the employees know where things are, and when they don't they will drop what they are doing and go look. This was Memorial Day weekend, so the shoppers were out in force baby... this store's answer? All the checkout stands were open and I didn't even wait for thirty seconds. As a matter of fact, in all the times that I have gone to Macey's, there was only once that I had to actually wait for any significant amount of time in a check out line. It was Christmastime, and while every single register was open, they were each at least four overburdened, groaning carts deep. The management sent two employees around with boxes of full sized candybars, offering them to the folks who were waiting, and their kids. Add on top of this the fact that they close for Sunday, and I am a lock as a customer except for when I am forced into a pilgrimage to the land Hell-Mart.

3) Pearl calls Mickey Mouse and all of his friends "Munk-a-saurs." Near as I can tell this is a cross between the Disney Playhouse's "Mouse-kateer" and the Mickey/Goofy/Donald version of the "Three Muskateers."

4) I had to go back and change the actual name of my old city to "Albooboo, Noo Moo" in an older post, as my Christmas Stories got picked up by a roboblogger for a news site. Seriously, my rather horrific and personal tale up there with all the other real-news stories from Albooboo. So much for sliding under the radar! They kindly took it down when I asked pretty please, but YIKES!

5) It is past time for me to quit piffling around and go finish preparing to teach my RS lesson in church today. SSSsssssslacker!