Well, $95.00 later, the minimum charge, our plumber had drawn two lines on the watch glass and said he’d be back Wednesday or so.    That sounds bad, I know, but actually he’s doing the right thing from an investigative standpoint.   He said it’s one of two things; a bad valve in the feeder pump, which while still not the price of a cup of coffee is cheaper than the other problem, or the other problem which may be a pinhole leak in the heating coil in the tankless heater unit.    So he shut off the water to the feeder, drew the two lines and said call back on Wednesday to let us know if the level had gone up.    $95.00 happens to be the minimum charge from these guys, and that was for 30 minutes.

I’ll pause for a moment here.  Yes that’s horrid.  Ideally I’d rather see it top out at $60.00 for the time and actual work done.   But, this guy shows up when he says he will, does a good job, and even often shows up earlier than expected and his office calls ahead to let you know that’s the case.

So anyway, guess what?  The water level’s gone up.

$hit.

There’s not a whole lot for someone that age to actually participate in, but there are some rides accessible to him, and we had already paid for the tickets, and I love roller coasters, so we went.

But I hate lines.

I’m extraordinarily impatient, this is hardly a secret.  Since I hadn’t been to the amusement park in about 6 years, I splurged and dropped $80 for the platinum Flash Pass.

A Flash Pass is a little doohickey made by a company called Lo-Q that allows you go virtually stand in line.  But it’s so much more.    There are three levels:

• Regular: Stands in line for you, but for the same amount of time you might already be stuck there.   But you can roam the park in the mean time and it buzzes when it’s your turn to ride.
• Gold: Still stands in line for you, but let’s you jump some undisclosed portion of it, reducing the amount of time you’ll be waiting.  Again, you roam, you get buzzed when it’s time.
• Platinum: Let’s you reserve a spot in line and cuts out 90% of the wait time, AND allows you to ride the rides twice consecutively without waiting again.

The cost for these ranges from $31-$80.   Guess which one I dropped the money for?  [psst...check the title of this post]

Given I was going to split my time between taking the little one on rides and spending time with the family, and also trying to go on some really awesome rides, it was worth the splurge.  On average the time between reserving and when I was allowed to arrive for my time was less time than it took me to actually get to the ride.  In a phrase, “boo yah.”

I have to say, I was more interested in the time savings, I wasn’t looking for the consecutive riding powers, and I didn’t use them.    It’s bad enough to run past all of the folks who’ve been waiting for over an hour in line, jumping in front of them and having your fun.  It’s worse to make the folks behind them watch you make them wait even longer.

But it’s an awesome power to have if you want it.

My only complaint, such as it is….only ONE ride operator asked if I was going to take a second trip.  The folks over on the Flashback ride asked.  So either’s there’s a “learning opportunity” (in HR parlance) for that operating crew, or the rest of the park.  The platinum holders are noted by a wrist band issued that show’s you’re one special and well funded guest and he was the only that made note that I had one and inquired as to whether or not I planned to go a second time.    My hat’s off to you good Sir, bravo.

That’s not to say I’m knocking the rest of the park staff, they did a great job.   One interesting thing I notice far too often, was that every other train on the Bizarro ride was held up when at least one guest had to be ejected from the ride because they didn’t fit inside the restraints.   Interestingly, to me at least, most of the folks I observed being shown the exit weren’t necessarily obese.  In many cases they simply had stocky football player builds, but weren’t necessarily ‘fat’.    The restraints are designed to accommodate x height and y weight, and to keep the occupant safe given the physics of the ride within those constraints.   But perhaps Six Flags and ride manufacturer Intamin should embrace the opportunity to develop for a niche market, but hopefully while not being branded as enablers.

Otherwise, we had a fantastic day at the park.   The park was clean, most of the other guests were well behaved, and our youngest had a great time on the rides he could partake of.   He was quite relieved to see me at the end of the day where I was willing to pick him up and give him a lift back to the car.  He was asleep on my shoulder before we got to the car in the parking lot and slept the entire way home.

********

One downside of the day….

My wife and I stopped at a McDonald’s on the way home to get an unsweetened ice tea, one of their much touted Caramel Frappe’s, and two McDouble’s as a quick snack since we had eschewed must of the usual amusement park junk food (yay!).

I’m not sure what the complicated part of this order was, but at 6:30 at night you’d think this would be a fairly easy order but alas, it was not.  I received my iced tea in a timely fashion, but apparently the McDouble’s and the Caramel Frappe are a complicated thing for McDonald’s employees to construct.  I’m a bit confused about this.

The drink is essentially made by a machine which near as I can tell doesn’t even require literacy.  From what I can see from the drive through window (thank you corporate level standardized set ups), the worker merely has to push some pictures on the screen to have a drink happen.

The McDouble’s are two slabs of meat with a piece of cheese, ketchup, and some onion bits between bread, and given McDonald’s core business is the hamburger, I was quite astonished that I pushed the employees to new heights with my order, however we found ourselves having to “pull forward to the corner” to wait for our food.  It took so long, in fact, that I found myself going inside to find out what the hold up was.

I have to wonder if McDonald’s has gotten a bit ahead of itself with it’s menu and away from the fast food, assembly line, concepts that made it the corporate behemoth that it is.  It’s gotten so bad that I’ve actually been to one outlet that has two spaces in their parking lot specially marked with signage for waiting for drive through orders that go awry.

The food’s largely unhealthy anyway, perhaps I should just avoid them.   Happily, in recent months I’ve cut way back on my visits.

That’s OK though, we weren’t looking for tribal history.  My wife and I went just for dinner, possibly a drink, and a little window shopping at the on site mall.

My chief complaint however, is that the casino smells like ass.

I’m assuming this isn’t by design, since it’s fairly rare for a business to intentionally want to make their space smell like stale farts.   But the problem is that the entire casino, even the smoke free casino, smells of stale cigarette smoke.  Stale cigarette smoke in turn, smells like butt.

I’m not an expert on the scent of derriere, but I can assure you, the place reeks.   It’s noisy as all get out, as all casino’s are but the smell is something you wind up taking home with you.  The only place that didn’t reek of smoke was the area around Todd English’s restaurant, Tuscany, which instead greeted it’s customers with the chlorinated stench of the indoor waterfall.  Given their prices, you’d think you could have a meal without a complimentary side of chlorine.

The trip wasn’t all bad.  There’s a Starbucks, so I was able to get coffee, which my faithful readers will know is good for everyone.   Over near the Chihuly sculpture there are these gorgeous beaded mural panels adorning the ceiling.   And for the most part, the buffet (to be pronounced boo-fay for maximum effect) wasn’t too horrible, though a little pricey at 16.00 per person.   Oddly, the one thing the unwashed masses don’t have ready access to is the soda dispenser, which is probably the least expensive thing served in the ‘restaurant’.

So I’d like to offer my suggestion for a name change to just throw it up front.   Perhaps they could just call it “Mohegan Ass” so people know what sort of takeaway to expect.

Oh, and for those of you wondering, no, I didn’t get a chance to try out the zombie dancing they advertise as one of their activities for patrons, but maybe next time I can visit with a small posse and we can give it a try.  And no, that’s not Kristen Chenowith, but it is her understudy from Wicked.

and heading back to the house.  Normally I do a solo act, so it was really nice to have such an awesome co-pilot to help out and keep me company.

But on to the business end of things…

Weather wise, it was pretty darn nice.  Mostly sunny, but windy as all get out.  I do believe that our location in an urban canyon had quite a bit to do with that, but I travel with some cement filled PVC pipes that I had lashed to the legs.  I did try something new later in the day that I believe helped; I

Hey baby, wanna buy some glass?

hung the weights from the tent corners with bungees.   I’m not an aerodynamics engineer, but my guess is that having a flexible tether meant that as the tent corner lifted the weight descended slightly holding it down.  Regardless, I didn’t feel a need to hold onto the rails as often.   My table signs, however, they got tossed back into the boxes.   Mysteriously, the only thing lightweight thing that didn’t try to go airborne was my business cards.  I did hear of at least one tent that went skyward and almost came down on someone.   Glad it wasn’t me.  Oh, and I lost 2 glass pieces to the wind, more on that in a moment.   As my plastic Visa/Mastercard sign started to lift off the table, my wife made a pretty good joke, “In

Holding down the fort. Literally.

Worcester, Visa/Mastercard takes you!”  OK, I found it amusing.  After a day of gusty wind, jokes were helpful.

Monetarily…the day was a bit of a bust.   There was a $50 table fee and I made 6.00 over that before taxes, so I came out 2.50 ahead.  But I also lost 40.00 worth of product to wind induced gravity, so really, it was a bad day for sales.   There were a lot of people, and a lot of people interested in the product, but not a lot of buyers.  I’m not really sure what if anything would have really helped matters along.   I didn’t put prices on most things, so maybe folks didn’t want to ask, but my pendants, aside from one, were all a perfectly reasonable $20.  Glass pens (inserted ones, not glass nibs) were 10 a piece, bottles $10.00, etc.  Fairly low really, but most folks didn’t even ask.   In case you’re wondering, most of my items were “de-tagged” for a home show I did and I didn’t bother to put them back on.

Greetings Professor Falken, would you like to play a game?

There was plenty of interest on my chess sets too.  Interestingly, a lot of the folks interested were younger, 20′s and the like.   It was nice to see.   Unfortunately the sets were priced at $200, and $150.   I didn’t honestly expect them to sell today and I brought them as showcase pieces, but still, it was nice to see folks liked them.

So all that’s the bad news.   There is good news though.

Back in the second half of last year, a customer bought 2 of my drawer pulls from me at a show.  I had them mostly as a sample for custom work, but it was a slow show, so I sold them.

Drawer pulls on display

She expressed an interest in maybe wanting more for her kitchen cabinets, but I figured I’d never hear from her again.

Today she turned up.

And she’s still interested.  She’s so interested in fact that she took one of the pulls to another glass artist asking if they could do them, but she said she was swamped at the moment.  The customer wants 26 drawer pulls AND her downstairs neighbor is interested in some too.   So she’s got my card and she’s going to get in touch with me about sizes, design, etc.  While I didn’t earn much today, there’s a pretty good order coming on the off season.

One of the most fondled items today was my drawer pulls, and this generated a lot of business cards heading out into the public meaning there’s the potential for more orders to come.

Also, I met a very nice woman who has recently opened an artisan consignment store in one of the nearby towns and was interested in having some of my glass in her boutique.  While I’ve heard some nightmares about consignment situations, this actually has a pretty good feel about it.  She’s going to send me some information on her shop.

And….I met another woman who’s organizing a jazz festival in a couple of months out in Springfield, MA and was looking for some unique artists to sell at the show.   She’s going to be in touch with me as well.

So financially, the day was a bust.  But I reconnected with a former customer who’s was tickled pink to find me at the show, and I got some good networking connections.  Sometimes those can be the best kind of shows.

I could have done without the sunburn though.  I guess sun screen and a floppy “emergency” hat are going on my gear list.

More pics below:

The big table

Marbles, marbles, everywhere

Wine stoppers, bottles, buttons, and pens

Layout by Gillian, later destroyed by Mother Nature

Only the iced one is mine, honest

Oooooooh, pretty! Yeah, I made that.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mean this as a how to.   But at the moment groups like Al Qaeda are more like a herpes infection than a devious adversary.    We’re fed the line that if we don’t stamp out grumpy people then grumpier people will fill the void.   Guess what?  That’s going to happen anyway.

The lack of evolution in their tactics suggests that their command structure truly has been distorted, if not broken.   Consider that the main domestic threats communicated to the American people continue to be:

• Threats to airplanes
• Threats to New York City
• Threats to landmarks on holidays

Call me crazy, but if I’m going to rob a bank, I’m not going to use the most heavily fortified door as my means of entry.  So why are these these still the main targets that we hear about?   Sure, occasionally the TSA in conjunction with XYX as part of a joint effort of the PDQ catches some guy trying to light his underwear on fire on a plane, but that’s about it.  Granted there may be more that gets caught/prevented before it makes the news, but I seriously doubt the number of incidents is really that high.   Any governmental agency is eager to justify it’s budget in the eyes of the American people, and therefore would happily crow about successes.

Which brings me back my original question, why haven’t the tactics changed?    The most insidious threat to US soldiers has been the IED, effectively a coffee can full of nails and some form of explosive.  This has been the most effective tactic employed, so why aren’t there phantom road crews “filling potholes” on main roads in the interior of the country?  Why aren’t there fake road crews “repairing” bridges?    Most of the bridges in the US are in disrepair anyway, I can’t imagine it would take much to create a disruptive hole during rush hour traffic.

Why are major landmarks still targets?   Sure, it’s showy to take down a skyscraper, but it’s just as effective to take out a nursery school in Kansas.   Using large scale targets only inconveniences honest people with heightened security.   Make them scared to go get their morning caffeine fix at Dunkin Donuts, now you’ve got their attention.

Someone might chime in that in the FBI we have one of the world’s best explosives forensics teams, and that may be true.  If I were to buy C4, detonators, and a triggering switch, I imagine they’d find me pretty quickly.   I assume if I bought 55 gallon drums, nitrogen laced fertilizer and a hundred gallons of diesel, that would set off some bells.    But what if you get 6 people to buy each of the ingredients of a lesser bomb on their own then combine them?   There’s no pattern to catch, there’s no warning, there’s just a mess.   So while we have one of the best teams to go in after the fact, on a preventive level there’s not much they can do to stop a more intelligent attack.   It’s the lack of an intelligent attack that we’ve yet to see.

Let’s hope they never wise up.

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Thank you for all this information!  When I gave this address to the school system I assumed it would be used for emergency notifications, but since we’re shilling for other things via email…

I’d like to invite you to check out the fine selection of handmade glass merchandise available at http://munkinarts.etsy.com.  Whether it’s a handmade marble, hummingbird feeder or a pendant for you or as a gift, I’m sure you’ll find something to love.

Custom requests are always welcome, simply use the contact form at my website.

If one of their employees happens by, I’ve tried:

The unsubscribe link..it didn’t work

I tried politely asking…that didn’t work despite assurances someone would take care of it.

I tried changing the address on my account so it would email somewhere else, that didn’t work and now I can’t access the account because I don’t remember what benefit cosmetics newsletter address I used for the address.

And now their “customer service” people write back using a no-reply address.  My wife loves their products.  If *she* wants to buy more let her, but they won’t be seeing anymore of my money getting her the stuff as gifts.

Hello Tom Kies,

Thank you for writing to us at Benefit Cosmetics.

We value you as our customer and do not want to send you unwanted promotional e-mails.

If you wish to be excluded from any future promotional notices, please follow the unsubscribe link at the bottom of any promotional e-mail you receive from us.

Thank you for shopping with Benefit Cosmetics.

Kristie Black
Benefit Cosmetics Customer Service

—- Original message: —-

E-mail:menty666@yahoo.com
First Name:Tom
Last Name:Kies
Order Number:
Comments:Stop emailing me, I don’t give a shit about your rash inducing creams.

This email is regarding the Our Products.

Thanks
Tom

I wonder how they’d respond if, when it was time to pay, I handed them a blank credit card and the number for Visa to call and find out what the account number is.

I’ve unsubscribed, I’ve complained when that didn’t work, I even tried changing my email address to your address so it would stop, but that doesn’t work, so how the hell do I need to tell you people to stop sending me ads?   I’m really regretting ever buying my wife your crappy products at this point and I can assure you it will NEVER happen again.