Do it Yourself Baby Legwarmers

I laughed at the $11.95 price tag on these "Baby Legwarmers."

Really? Are you kidding me?

Try this on for size:
Find an old pair of knee socks -- one with heels that are almost worn through -- and cut the feet off. PRESTO! Instant baby legwarmers ... probably much better looking than the wacky, fashion-victim patterns that are on sale in stores.

Everyone needs a new TV by Feb 2009, huh?

Years ago, when I first heard about the government mandated shift to high definition, my first thought was "Yeah, right. This is going to be an exercise in permanent postponement" Shockingly, I have been correct in this assessment. Yet again, the mandatory transition from analog to digital television broadcasting has been postponed, from February 17 to June 12, 2009.

The part of this whole ordeal that is surprising is how little Media attention this has garnered over the past months.

• Why haven't there been complaints regarding the vast government sponsorship of the electronics industry? In particular the companies manufacturing these converter boxes?
• Where is the social commentary? The poor and the elderly are clearly impacted by this transition. Heck, I imagine that some people don't even know it is going to happen, honestly, and they'll just be very surprised one day when their TV stops working
• Have I somehow missed the environmental uproar? Given that most affluent consumers are simply going to trash their old TVs -- for no other reason than this mandated change -- and get new ones? And thousands of perfectly good TVs are going to end up in our dumps?
• Is there not one investigative journalist who thought it would be interesting to compare the lobbying effort that helped to pass this mandate with the combined forces that made marijuana illegal (thus boosting the tobacco, cotton, and wood pulp industries in the process) and the Great American Streetcar scandal (where established urban streetcar systems were dismantled by the american automotive industry, in order to sell more automobiles. )

Not one journalist thinks any of these topics are worth investigating? I guess not. I suppose this is because they've all been too busy covering the more important stories, like the ever-growing family size of Brad and Angelina.

But now that the Campaign is over, and Obamessiah is in office, and the Pitts aren't quite ready to have another baby, we are finally starting to see a few stories on this topic. Will the transition ever happen? Maybe. Personally, I've got my coupons in hand and I'll be going to get my boxes, soon. Do I need the coupons? No. Can I pay for the boxes myself? Of course I can, just like most folks who have requested these coupons. But I guess this topic isn't interesting to reporters, either. Oh look ... is that Britney over there? Quick! There's news to be told!

Cover the Event, Please

Unless you are hibernating in a cave somewhere, you probably watched, listened, or read about the Obama Inauguration today. This was one of my days home with my 1-year old (he'll be 1 year old in about 2 hours!), and so I was lucky enough to be able to watch a great deal of television coverage.

I rotated between the big 3 TV networks: ABC, CBS, and NBC.
As we live 15 minutes outside of Washington DC, we had non-stop coverage all day, even when the nationals went to 'local' coverage.

I want to applaud the local coverage. It was interesting. They talked about road closures, metro issues, parking problems, etc. It was just the sort of stuff that we locals can't really get enough of.

The national coverage went off the path a bit. What I wanted to see and hear about was what was happening right then and there. But for the most part, especially during the parade, what the announcers were talking about had nothing to do with what was being shown on the screen.

Example:
As the new first couple left the Capitol building, the cameras showed a very interesting colonial marching band. I wondered ... is this a military band? A band from Colonial Williamsburg? Unfortunately, the announcers were interviewing some talking head pundent (I think it was Jesse Jackson in this case, on ABC) about race relations in the USA, blah-blah. This is what people have been talking about for MONTHS. Could they have not covered the moment and talked about what was happening? As my husband wryly commented, "Of course not ... that would take research. It is much easier to just snap photos and editorialize so you don't need to really know what is going on."

Some of the stations did better at times. I believe it was NBC who had a former police chief with them, and he was talking about security. For example: He noted that the motorcycle police had the side carts on their motorcycles so that the motorcycles would be stable at such low speeds. That was interesting.

Even if the quality of commentary was not exactly what I was hoping for, it was still great to see such an array of live coverage. It really felt like being there, but about 60-degrees warmer.

Chronicles of the New Giant: New Giant = New Stop and Shop

As I pointed out in my first post about 'New Giant,' both Giant and Stop & Shop are owned by Royal Ahold, and both were rebranded with the funky fruit basket logo. Interestingly enough, they have continued to print the names "Giant" or "Stop & Shop" on the various items like bags, receipts, etc. However, it is pretty obvious that at some point they are going to merge into one name as the clearly share the same system.

Case in point: I got several point-of-sale coupons for baby food while I was in Connecticut, visiting a Stop & Shop. When I returned to DC, I redeemed them at Giant. No muss or fuss. The computer read them properly with no complaints. (Whoo-hoo!)

I wonder what they will call the new combined store? "Stop Giant" doesn't sound so great. I'm sure they'll come up with something.

Toys, Toys, Toys

Christmas was a whirlwind for us. But now we are catching our breath and taking in the cornucopia of gifts that 'santa' brought. (Please note that we, his parents, bought him absolutely nothing. Everything came from his grandparents and our friends.)

There are 3 in particular worth mentioning.

Busy Gears

Nanna picked up this toy for us, and I thought 'Oh no, not another toy,' BUT I must say that Hasbro Playskool Busy Gears holds the interest of our 11-month-old longer than any other toy we have, with the exception of Mozart's Magic Cube which is the best toy EVER. Yes, I do realize that the recommended age for Busy Gears is 12 months to 3 years, but I believe that is scaled way too high. As other reviews have noted, a bunch of spinning gears isn't very exciting for a 2+ year old.

PROS: bright gears, seems durable (so far), colors, lights and music are diverting for a little one.

CONS: No extra gears, stacking the gears is a miraculous feat, and the carrying handle is a ridiculous feature given that as soon as the product is held upright all of the gears topple to the floor (as nothing but gravity holds them on to begin with). Made in China.

BOTTOMLINE: A good bet. I'd definitely buy it again

Busy Zoo

I guess anything with the word 'busy' in the title must be good, eh?

Grandma and Grandpa gave him the Busy Zoo activity center. At first he only paid attention to the beads on the top, which he tried and tried to pull off. Now he is looking at the various doors and spinners on the sides, too. He crawls right over to it when I put him down and he enjoys it a lot. His Ultrasaucer has been left in the dust by Busy Zoo.

PROS: Bright colors, well made, not HUGE like the saucers and other toys

CONS: Still large enough and heavy enough to not be terribly portable. Made in China.

BOTTOMLINE: It's awesome ... but shop around before you buy. It is listed as $250 on
Amazon, but it was $50 at Target.

Rescue Rider

A friend of ours has finished having her kids and gave us her used 'Rescue Rider' fire truck. All 3 of her kids loved it. It's a little beat up, and it's missing it's horn and radio, but he just loves it. He pushes it around like he does his tiny toy cars. But what he really likes is that the seat opens up to reveal a storage area, and I've put blocks in here. So he loves to 'open' and 'close' the seat to see the blocks.

PROS: Made in USA, very durable as it survived 3 kids and still works, bright red color

CONS: I don't think this is made anymore, so it's not available for purchase. In fact, I don't think that Tim Mee Toys exists anymore. I've searched and searched, but can't find any reference to them other than vintage toys at Ebay. There is one review online at ePinions from someone who had issues with her child continually flipping over in the Rescue Rider, but my friend never had that issue with any of her 3 children, and I'm going to keep it on the carpet with my son, so I'm not too worried about this.

BOTTOMLINE: Any toy can be dangerous, depending on the child and the situation. We're going to let him continue to enjoy it, and maybe we'll pass it along to a 5th child someday.

E*Trade vs. Disney Investor Services: FIGHT

I used to work for The Mouse. Yes, I used to work for the Walt Disney Company. This is probably why I am so fixated on customer (ahem, 'Guest') service. They brainwash you into eating, breathing and sleeping customer service ... assuming it is making a tidy profit along the way.

While I was working for Mickey, I was participating in the Employee Stock Purchase Plan (ESPP). When I left, there was no way to keep the stock with Disney, so I transferred it to my E*Trade account.

This was years ago. Several things have happened since then.

• Disney now has its own brokerage arm -- Disney Investor Services (DIS) -- to handle purchasing, selling and reinvesting Disney Stock
  
• My parents bought me 100 shares of Disney stock as a gift, being held with DIS
• E*trade decided to impose HUGE quarterly fees on those of us who don't trade much
• My friend who works at E*trade told me that there are security holes in the 'secure' code big enough to fly an airplane through.

All of this combined together to make me decide it was time to close up my E*Trade account. But instead of selling my Disney stock, I wanted to transfer it to DIS. Seems straightforward, right?

NO. It was not straightforward. In fact, as of 5 minutes ago, I declared FAILURE, gave up, and sold my stock. (Gee, I can't wait to figure out the cost basis of stock that was bought fractions at a time, each week, for 7 years, ha-ha-ha.)

I went back and forth with each of them multiple times, and just sat in despair in the middle as they pointed to each other.

1. Emailed Disney and asked 'How do I transfer the stock from E*trade to you?' Answer: E*Trade must initiate as they currently hold the stock. Give them all your info and they will initiate.
2. Called E*Trade. Their response: No, Disney is wrong. The receiving end must initiate. Call them back. Here is the info you need.
3. Called Disney. Their response: No, E*trade is wrong. Call them back.
4. Called E*trade. Their response: Disney is totally wrong. How could they be more wrong? Call them back. Tell them how totally and utterly wrong they are and give them your account info.
   
5. Called Disney. Their response: E*trade is wrong. They are absolute total idiots. Get them on the phone with us and we'll tell them how stupid they are. Then, once we are done telling them how dumb they are, we'll do the transfer with them.
6. Called E*trade. Their response: Disney is crazy. The SEC has a LAW that says that the receiving end MUST initiate the transfer. Also, E*trade doesn't have the capability to do 3-way calling so sadly there is no way for us to listen to them tell us how dumb we are while we tell them how totally ignorant they are.

I told E*trade how FURIOUS I was, thought about calling Disney to do the same but decided it would waste too much time, then put in an order to sell all of my damned E*Trade stock.

Disney and E*trade: you both get a customer service rating of F from me this week. But I imagine you don't really care.

What the hell is wrong with Christmas Lights?

I'm going to file all modern Christmas Lights under the category of "they don't make 'em like they used to."

My parents used the same strands of lights year after year after year. The old ones with the big bulbs that heated up to a zillion degrees and melted the snow for mile in every direction. Ah, the good ol' days.

Those good ol' days are GONE. Here is the saga of our lights ...

When we put our lights away last year, neatly packed in a labeled box, all 4 strands worked. When we took them out of the box last week, they were ALL BROKEN. Not one strand would light. What the hell happened to them? Did the evil Christmas light gremlins get them?

So, I went to Giant (gad) to get more. I bought 4 strands of clear lights. Of these 4 strands, one was broken out of the box, two were actually colored (even though the box said they were clear) and ONE actually worked. So, I went BACK to Giant and exchanged three of them for three more. Of these 3 new ones, only 2 worked. But we had enough to do the front steps. More or less.

Then, we decided to try some of the new LED lights on our big, outside tree. They all worked out of the box. Groovy. So we spent the time to put them on our big pine tree. They all lit up, and it looked great. For 5 minutes. Then the middle strand died. We have no time or energy to pull them all off, so I confess that our tree looks quite odd.

As I'm sure that these will all be dead by next year, I am starting to think ahead. Our ARC (Architectural Review Creatures) have decreed that all decorations must be "colonial in tone and nature" so I am thinking that next year we'll just decorate with candles and be done with it ... at least until the house burns down.