Zoned. Straight up zoned.

Adelaide has started this thing where she wants to be sat up all the time, and her favorite place to be propped is that corner of the couch. So this morning Will said she could watch Go Diego Go with him. Apparently they like it...Anyway, they do look an awful lot alike in this picture, huh? 

Will's Thanksgivin' Party

Will is calling the turkey holiday "Thanksgivin'" and it is driving me nuts! He must have learned to say it that way at preschool. I think it bothers me because he speaks in that McNutt way (as Ben pointed out early in our relationship) where we all enunciate the "-ing"s at the end of words. And Will usually does that...but he thinks it's supposed to be said that way. Regardless, it was a cute party and they did a bunch of songs (with props!) for us. Here's Will doing one with his paper bag crafty thing... 

Turkey in the hand

I think they're doing a song about turkeys here...I can't really remember, but it was all cute. 

Slideshow of my new pictures of the kids

http://www.flickr.com/photos/93796159@N00/sets/1352055/show/

New pix of Will, too!

I know it looks like I only take photos of Adelaide, but Will's class pix in preschool are coming up this week, and I swore that I would never pay anyone to photograph my children again (except special circumstances, obviously.) So I am going to get the class picture, but Ben suggested that I take some photos of him so they'd be at the same time, but we wouldn't be getting mediocre shots from someone else. So I did. You can see a lot of them at www.photosbyalyson.blogspot.com (if you click on the title of this entry, it will also take you there).

He's a handsome boy, though :o) 

And she's teething!

Yeah, this toy does double duty. Pretty impressive a baby this young can get the ring in her mouth, but she is determined! 

Adelaide's Doggy

She loves this little dog toy my mom got her -- it makes crickly and jingly noises, but it is quiet enough that I can use it to amuse her in, say, a dr's office waiting room. It has a little bone that hangs down that she's actually reached out for! 

Laugh it up!

You can't tell from the picture, but she's yukkin it up at her wacky big brother. Good thing for us she thinks he's really funny! 

Smile, Adelaide!

Isn't she so pretty? 

Daddy does his Daddy Thang

Well, this happens to both of us a lot, but I had to grab the camera and preserve it. The baby is usually content to sit in our laps while we're on the computer, but Will usually wants to get in on the act, too. This is a pretty calm moment -- it gets tricky when Will tries to commandeer the lap. Yeah, the sibling thing can be hard sometimes, big guy! 

Companies I HATE #1 -- Cox Communications

Okay, so I think rather than just be frustrated, I'm going to start informing everyone about "Companies I HATE." Installment #1 will deal with Cox Communications.

I hate Cox Communications.

When we moved to Louisiana (the apt. in Gonzales), they sent someone to do an install who spoke marginal English, stepped through the ceiling in our bathroom, and left the house without mentioning the damage. (He thought we wouldn't NOTICE? I mean, I had his name RIGHT THERE on the installation sheet.) So I called Cox and notified them of the damage. They said they would have someone out on a certain day. No show. Landlord got involved and FINALLY got two illiterate hobunks with maybe seven teethe between them the come push the broken drywall back into the ceiling and spray acoustic ceiling covering over it.

Needless to say, it wasn't sucessful. But then we were concerned with wiring problems. It took three sets of people from Cox to come do a SIMPLE wall fish and drop a line. THEN someone moved into the apartment next to ours. He got cable, which meant he was FORCED into the government-sanctioned monopoly of choosing overpriced bad service, and Cox was back out to our apartments again. When the next sub-functional moron was "installing" the guy next door's cable, ours got cut off. We waited for it to come back on. And waited. And then, less then patient (imagine that) we go outside and tell the guy that by the time he leaves, our cable BETTER be back on. Finally, our cable comes back on. We were relieved. But then we had problems with our reception again so we had MORE cable guys come out.

When they were "fixing" it, they told us that Mr. Magoo who had installed guy next door's cable had actually CUT the wire to our apartment and had just patched us into the other guy's line. Yeah, we were stealing cable thanks to Cox's COMPLETE AND TOTAL INCOMPETENCE. Fortunately, the guys who figured that out recognized that we were not culpable and just fixed it.

Funny enough, a couple of weeks after the patched line debaucle, guy next door had a DirecTV satellite. That definetly got us thinking...but we knew we were moving soon, so we decided to grudgingly accept the crappy service from the hapless fools at Cox.

When we did move, we just did as we were conditioned to do and switched our service. But then we weren't getting all the channels we subscribed for. Turns out that the people who lived here before only had basic cable, so that was all they had turned on for us.

When I called to complain, I was hit with fee after fee for someone coming to our house to fix the problem. THE TRUTH IS, ALL THESE FEES ARE CRAP. Most of the time, they can just flip a switch, change a code in a computer, etc. Making us pay to "self-install"? TOTAL CRAP.

So we just told them to take their crappy service, their bumbling morons of "technicians," and their monopoly and shove it. Sort of...we cancelled all television services and signed up with

DirecTV

and we are very happy. GREAT customer service. Act like they CARE whether or not you stay with their service. Unfortunately, we had to make a deal with the devil. We wanted to get Vonage for our telephone service...but we needed a cable modem to do that.

So we pondered, distressed: Do we stay with cable modem from COX or do we go with the equally repulsive monopoly of Bell South? We decided to go with the cable modem and Vonage. So far, we had been happy with our decision -- just having the computer hook-up drastically reduced the amount of time I had to spend on brain-drain dealing with their minimum-IQ staff. (Why would you need customer service that is actually responsive if people HAVE to have your service because there is no other choice? You don't. So they don't.)

WELL, what prompted my diatribe today was this: We had recently put our old TV from college in Will's bedroom. We knew that with Cox, if you had the "limited basic" service, you got a discount on your cable modem. We didn't want to give Will a real hook-up with DirecTV, but we thought it would be nice if he could watch, say, PBS on the little TV. So I called Cox.

BIG MISTAKE.

I asked them to switch us to the limited basic + internet deal. Okay, so we would be paying an extra $4 or so a month. I thought...we'll try it for a month and see. Then the "customer (dis)service" rep came back on and said that the soonest they could "install" was next Thursday. The conversation that ensued:
ME: Wait. This is just limited basic. All you have to do is send the signal to our house. There's no box. There's no need to send anyone out here.
IDIOT: Yes, ma'am, we send technicians out on all installs.
ME: And there is a charge for this, I assume.
IDIOT: Yes, $32.99.

GET THAT? They wanted to charge me $32.99 to send some moron out to my house so he could look and say, "yup, you're all ready for service" and flip a switch or something. I was like, just forget it.

See? That's what I get for trying.

Moral of the Story: CABLE COMPANIES COMPLETELY SUCK, thanks to our government and Supreme Court who recently confirmed, basically, that no one could use the lines of any company without permission. Phone, Cable, etc. Sincerely, I am all for reasonable business protections. But the "logic" was that there would be little incentive to make the capital expenditures to lay new lines if anyone could use them. My thought? Why are we protecting cable companies ad nauseum but pharmaceutical companies, who spend billions of dollars on research and development and formulation of drugs that save peoples lives every day, have only a limited amount of time to hold a patent on these medicines? If that's the way we're going to be about that, it seems that cable and phone companies should be assured no greater protection. They are not saving lives. They are not changing the world for the better. But no one seems to complain that they have no choice in this matter. Why not?

Besides, it seems to me that there would be GREATER incentive to lay lines, etc., if one's market share were shrinking because of competition. I mean, what if there were only one clothing store...let's say The Gap is the only store that the American government will allow to sell clothing in Louisiana. If you want to shop at Talbots or J. Crew or any other store, you have to move to a different part of the country. And their clothes are crappy because you HAVE to buy them or else make your own, which isn't practical for a lot of people. And the reason they can do this is because the government says that The Gap would have no reason to build new stores or create new product lines if they weren't assured of profit.

Sounds totally stupid, doesn't it? Seems like you wouldn't get the clothes you want, you'd only get the clothes they want to sell at the prices they set.

But add in other stores, and you get greater variety of styles, prices, and quality. You get sales. You get innovation. You get service when you walk into a store and ask for help. Even though they have to compete...or is it BECAUSE they have to compete. (Let's all have a big "DUH" together, now.)

I think we should be throwing major fits over this to our legislators. WHICH brings me to my next rant, when my blood pressure is back down again...coming soon, I HATE VERIZON WIRELESS. Stay Tuned. They totally suck in a serious way, too!

Trick or Treat!

Here are Daddy and Will preparing for their evening of plunder. We learned last year that Will's spirit is willing, but his body gets weak this late, so Daddy hooked him up with a cool ride. They had a great time and got A LOT of candy!!! 

3-D Boy Means Business

He was so into the picture taking in his 3-D Boy costume! He also demanded that that huge spider ring was part of 3-D Boy's get-up. I was like, whatever, but after I sat down and looked at this picture, I was glad that he had worn it -- it looks cool! He's standing in that huge tree that was downed during Katrina. Next weekend it will be kindling for those in the neighborhood who come to chop it up and get rid of it. Ben has borrowed a chainsaw for the event. 

Baby Ballerina

Adelaide's first Halloween was spent being the honorary candy hander-outer. She looked really really cute.